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In the long run, we are planning to put some of this on a slider and also provide 64-bit support to allow huge and densely colonized galaxies. For now, what we did was decrease density a bit at the largest levels, not much on the smaller galaxies, to make sure that folks would not hit the limit on 32-bit systems.

There need to be less than optimal systems in the mix otherwise there is a reduction of the variable search requirement which in my opinion adds a great deal to the randomness of the galaxy over just having all systems colonizable by all. That is also a way different species can have advantage or disadvantage.
Bob Viener

That is wonderful news.

I would myself enjoy a large map with a bit of space around my colonies and the option of maybe upgrading certain planets/moons at extreme cost for added flexibility in planning an empire. Even then I would not want the colony to be anything but slightly subpar in that respect. Grade AAA planets and even rarer moons, imo should be few and far between as that should be central to whatever plans you have be it conquest or economic domination. But giving people the option of how dense they want their map would be the best thing.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

In the long run, we are planning to put some of this on a slider and also provide 64-bit support to allow huge and densely colonized galaxies.

I think it may be useful to consider revisiting exactly where all this RAM is going in the first place. Colonies shouldn't actually be informationally dense objects, given that have very few attributes that can actually be manipulated in any way, so you'd think they would amount to only a few bytes of data on top of a planet. Yet somehow, they chew up an immense amount of RAM, probably in memory leaks, as data from a game is clearly persisting even when you exit back to the main menu.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

For now, what we did was decrease density a bit at the largest levels, not much on the smaller galaxies, to make sure that folks would not hit the limit on 32-bit systems.

Doesn't this essentially defeat the point of a larger galaxy, since having a larger galaxy which is filled with unusable crap is basically the same as not having those systems at all, so the amount of stuff is basically the same?

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

But it still raises the question of: what would be a good balance and range of variation in proportion of systems that are colonizable?

IMO only very colonizable systems with good resources should be represented in game, the millions/billions of other systems should be abstracted.

ORIGINAL: Mus

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

But it still raises the question of: what would be a good balance and range of variation in proportion of systems that are colonizable?

IMO only very colonizable systems with good resources should be represented in game, the millions/billions of other systems should be abstracted.

No the exploration part of the game should not be predictable.Master Of Orion and all other 4X games agree with my view.

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

No the exploration part of the game should not be predictable.Master Of Orion and all other 4X games agree with my view.

Well most 4x games are crap and Master of Orion, while a good game in it's time, is approaching 20 years old now, and doesn't even come close to approaching the complexity and scale of Distant Worlds, so I don't know that I would be claiming that as proving the validity of an opinion.

Having a realistic proportion of inhabitable planets in proportion to the different environmental tolerances basically every system in a Distant worlds galaxy should be inhabitable, or have something unique about it that makes it worth representing out of the countless stars in a galaxy.

Otherwise what is the point of representing it?

And as for exploration becoming predictable, in a galaxy with so many stars there has to be something observable that made it worthy of exploration in the first place, some kind of unique emission, observable bodies within the band of having liquid water (or whatever the species doing the exploring prefers), etc.

This is the only way these kinds of abstractions make sense. To represent a system that is empty, not colonizable by any species in the game and has nothing unique about it is stupid.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

In the long run, we are planning to put some of this on a slider and also provide 64-bit support to allow huge and densely colonized galaxies. For now, what we did was decrease density a bit at the largest levels, not much on the smaller galaxies, to make sure that folks would not hit the limit on 32-bit systems.

I would focus on getting the current game to run at a reasonable speed before I would try to make things bigger.