The Stars Our Destination

[AlexanderHowl]

Within the Milky Way Galaxy, there may be as many as 1 trillion stars (recent research suggests that the old figures vastly underestimate the actual number of stars) and there may be an average of ten planets per star (though that depends of the individual researcher). In addition, there are likely millions of lesser objects of interest per star system. So, how do you deal with that wealth of locations in your space campaigns?

[Anaraxes]

Ignore the boring ones, which they almost entirely are. You don't name, map, and stat every grain of sand on a beach, because they're beneath your notice. When your setting is such that you have galaxy-spanning tech, it's the same with every rock around every red dwarf in the galaxy.

Actually need a pointless boring rock for some reason during play? Okay, there's probably one just over there. Maybe call for a roll if the player is looking for something specific. How do you answer questions like "is there an oak tree nearby in this forest?" I'm guessing you don't randomly generate every tree to fill out a one-meter grid to have a forest map prepared to consult on demand as the party travels cross-country, but just improvise common features as the situation and story suggest.

[Astromancer]

Always remember that many a pointless boring rock turned out to be a shocker when actually looked at. But seemingly dull and empty spaces are great for secret bases of many types. Also remember, that space-faring civilizations might not prefer planets. Space habitats as cities/homebases and use drones and telepresence to mine the local uninhabitable star system. A star system with no habitable planets and no terraformable ones either could still hold a large human or alien population.

[Nemoricus]

Detail the worlds your campaign is actually take place on or around, and ignore the rest. That may mean that points of interest are thousands of light years apart, depending on the interstellar travel tech available, but there's no point in detailing places that barely warrant a catalogue number if your players aren't going to visit them.

[Joseph Paul]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Ignore the boring ones, which they almost entirely are. You don't name, map, and stat every grain of sand on a beach, because they're beneath your notice.

Yeah, but....There is now an awful lot of boring places to have to search in pursuit of someone with a reason to flee. If FTL in a flavor that leaves little to no traces is in use then illegal actions in the 'bright spots' are followed by a random hop to anywhere. The question of life support for that ship as a limitation on activity can be met with taking tech that will get them CHON+ and whatever else is necessary to stay for a while or to continue hopping around. With sufficient power and tech life can be maintained anywhere which has implications for the setting that acknowledges that all those grans of sand even exist.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

Yeah, but....There is now an awful lot of boring places to have to search in pursuit of someone with a reason to flee. If FTL in a flavor that leaves little to no traces is in use then illegal actions in the 'bright spots' are followed by a random hop to anywhere. The question of life support for that ship as a limitation on activity can be met with taking tech that will get them CHON+ and whatever else is necessary to stay for a while or to continue hopping around. With sufficient power and tech life can be maintained anywhere which has implications for the setting that acknowledges that all those grans of sand even exist.

Of course, this can be seen as a feature rather than a bug: it makes piracy and random adventuring much easier.

[AlexanderHowl]

FTL also allows reactionaries, revolutionaries, and terrorists to be effective, especially if tracking is difficult or impossible. A ship used in an attack on a government base one month can, with an electronic and physical 'repaint', be used for smuggling weapons the next month, and can be used to lure government ships into a trap the following month. Due to the dangers associated with 'uninhabited' systems, I imagine that most government will maintain forward bases and/or listening stations in every star system, just to make sure that undesirable elements do not find a safe haven.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

FTL also allows reactionaries, revolutionaries, and terrorists to be effective, especially if tracking is difficult or impossible. A ship used in an attack on a government base one month can, with an electronic and physical 'repaint', be used for smuggling weapons the next month, and can be used to lure government ships into a trap the following month. Due to the dangers associated with 'uninhabited' systems, I imagine that most government will maintain forward bases and/or listening stations in every star system, just to make sure that undesirable elements do not find a safe haven.

Or likely just the ones nearby them. This also makes sense from a self-defense point of view: You don't want foreign bases all over your back yard.



An pan-galactic listening post effort would only be made by the equivalent of a British Empire deciding to do away with piracy on a global scale.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

FTL also allows reactionaries, revolutionaries, and terrorists to be effective, especially if tracking is difficult or impossible. A ship used in an attack on a government base one month can, with an electronic and physical 'repaint', be used for smuggling weapons the next month, and can be used to lure government ships into a trap the following month. Due to the dangers associated with 'uninhabited' systems, I imagine that most government will maintain forward bases and/or listening stations in every star system, just to make sure that undesirable elements do not find a safe haven.

If you FTL is good enough (fast, cheap, etc.) to make all these worlds reachable, your civilisation will likely find itself unable to patrol them all. Cheap fast FTL means rapid spread, and that means that the civilisation will be spread very thin just trying to watch everything, let alone do anything else.

This is one of the things seen in E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensmen novels, when the Patrol realises that the so-called 'pirates' are actually effectively an entire civilisation living in parallel with the 'main' one, hiding on worlds that the Patrol, etc. never get round to visiting because there are simply too many worlds to check them all.

As one's civilisation grows and matures, and its population and production capacity grows, it should be able to 'fill in' the holes in its coverage of systems it otherwise has no use for, assuming it doesn't fragment under the weight of administering all those millions of worlds, or from wars and other disasters, natural or sapient-made.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

With sufficient power and tech life can be maintained anywhere which has implications for the setting that acknowledges that all those grans of sand even exist.

But you would give a general or statistical description of how many "Type-M planets" there are, and not sit down and stat them all out individually. You'd do the same in a Pirates of the Malacca Straits campaign- there's no need to label and map every one of the 18,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago, which is what seems to be the concern of the OP.