Galaxy
The Elite: Dangerous galaxy is based on the real Milky Way and planets will rotate and orbit their stars, thus constantly changing a system's landscape and adding lot of depth. The galaxy is scientifically accurate and includes around a 100 billion star systems (around 400 billion stars considering most systems contain multiple stars). The Elite Universe is modeled on current galactic charts. Planets and moons will rotate and orbit in 1:1 scale real-time, therefore constantly changing a system's environment.
Elite Dangerous features an immersive, evolving galaxy with dynamic society, economy and stories, allowing pilots to join each other and together change the story of the Milky Way.
The vast, scientifically accurate 1:1 scale of the seamless Milky Way galaxy is created using a mix of procedural generation and artist direction.
- Around 400 billion star systems according to current scientific theories of star system formation with planets and moons that orbit and rotate.
- Cosmic phenomena like black holes, supernovas, active binary stars etc.
- Specially handcrafted overrides for 160,000 known stars in the night sky and planetary objects that we know and love. For example, our solar system Sol with Earth, Moon and Mars, other systems with recently discovered planets, etc.
- 141 nebula in the Milky Way galaxy.
- 32 external galaxies are visible from the Milky Way.
There are several sentient races in the Milky Way galaxy. The most notable are Humans, Thargoids and Guardians. More races are yet to be discovered.
Milky Way Galaxy
Elite Dangerous players are the first people to experience interstellar travel. The sky is not a painted backdrop, you can travel to each and every star you see. The constellations change with parallax as you explore the galaxy, and the night sky viewed from Earth is, of course, accurate.[1]
We achieved this by starting with as much information as we could gather about the 160,000 known star systems from our galaxy.
We know the temperature, size and metallicity (the periodic elements that make up the star's composition) of those stars. And we also know the mass distribution of the Milky Way.
Our unique Stellar Forge system takes that information, rolls time backwards toward the Big Bang, and simulates from there the composition of hundreds of thousands of celestial bodies using the first principles that astrophysicists believe govern our universe. It uses the nebula hypothesis to simulate the composition and orbit of all the undiscovered stars, exoplanets, moons and black holes in our Milky Way galaxy.
We end up with a huge amount of technical information about each star and its planets, moons and asteroid fields, such as temperature, chemical composition and orbit.
This delivers both an incredibly accurate and beautiful cosmic ballet, with all the motions of the celestial bodies correct, and is also the foundation for the different economies of each system in-game.
The System Map displays a system's layout and information. Any discovered celestial and system information is documented on the System Map.
Planets
For Planetary Landings we've extended the simulation still further. We take into account the factors that govern the formation of planets, from the basic chemical composition, size, neighbouring moons and tectonic activity.
We simulate the compression of tectonic plates, so we can see where they'd move together and move apart. That creates where ridges are formed, mountains, or canyons and trenches.
We simulate impact craters, volcanism and ageing. The minerals and elements making up the planet determine its appearance and colors.
You can seamlessly approach and land anywhere on a 1:1 scale planet and experience every square meter of terrain first-hand, either flying your ship close to the mountains and in the canyons, or landing and driving your SRV.
And again the simulation feeds directly into gameplay, with resources to be collected and synthesized, huge surface starports to trade in, shipwrecks to explore and fortified settlements to be defeated.
Nebula
People have found 141 nebula in the Milky Way galaxy and 32 external galaxies. They are all present in-game. The distances range from 380 lightyears from Sol to the Pleiades Nebula and up to 27,900 light years to the G2 dustcloud.
Population
The galaxy's total NPC system population is aproximately 6,632,313,733,791 NPCs on January 12, 3303. Executive Producer Michael Brookes confirmed the total number.[2]
The number is based on eddb.io data, so it depends on when a system was last updated. The number was derived from downloaded the data from eddb.io. Here are the bash commands that jasch used.
Code:
#!/bin/env bash wget https://eddb.io/archive/v5/systems_populated.jsonl cat systems_populated.jsonl | sed "s/.*\"population\"\://g;s/\,\".*//g" > popnum awk '{ sum += $1 } END { print sum }' popnums
Credits: Olivia Vespera - original idea, got jasch to calc the number eddb.io - providing the data community - filling eddb with data
Online
The online galaxy of Elite: Dangerous is a shared universe maintained by a central server. All of the meta data for the galaxy is shared between players. This includes the galaxy itself as well as transient information like economies. The aim here is that a player's actions will influence the development of the galaxy, without necessarily having to play multiplayer.
The other important aspect for the developers is that they can seed the galaxy with events, often these events will be triggered by player actions. With a living breathing galaxy players can discover new and interesting things long after they have started playing.
The game features a shared persistent galaxy server, where macro effects and events such as economy, society and war status etc. are recorded.
Powerplay is an ongoing battle for interstellar conquest and control in the galaxy. Powers are powerful individuals and organizations which players can pledge allegiance to help guide their strategy, and take on special objectives to advance shared goals. Player choices and actions have a direct and visible impact on the balance of galactic power.
The bubble is a sphere of about 150 light years around Sol with 19 thousand inhabited systems where powers compete for influence, resources, territory and control. The territory volume is about 13.8 million cubic light years.
The server transparently creates free roaming sessions (instances) when meeting other players and NPCs within that galaxy based on a perception bubble around you, that is defined by your scanner/visual range. That means that those instances are not a fixed location in space as in most other MMOs, but they dynamically move around. The effects of those instances are then stored on the central galaxy server and shared by everybody.
Because the game features very high speed twitch combat and very detailed damage models, this is the most reliable way to do it, also keep in mind there can be many sessions within a star system and those sessions can dynamically move around, also because this game uses a 1:1 scale Milky Way galaxy, sessions will typically be spread out much farther away (although most of the action will be within the core systems) and it wouldn't be immersion breaking as opposed to a space game in a smaller area.
Visible Galaxies
A total of 32 galaxies have been identified by CMDR Dr. Kaii (including dwarf and irregular galaxies). The nearest galaxy is the Large Magellanic Cloud at 158,200 light years. The furthest is NGC 6703 at 106 million light years.[3]
Here's a table, to make it easier.
| Name | Other Designations | Type | Number of Stars* | Direction | Distance (ly)** |
| Large Magellanic Cloud | Nubecula Major | Irr | 20 billion | Towards the Magellanic Clouds | 158,200 |
| Small Magellanic Cloud | Nubecula Minor / NGC 292 | Irr | 3 billion | Towards the Magellanic Clouds | 199,000 |
| Ursa Minor Dwarf3 | E5 | 7 million | West Up | 200,000 | |
| Sextans Dwarf | Sextans I | E4 | 25 million | East Up | 290,000 |
| Sculptor Dwarf | ESO 351-30 | E0 | 50 million | Towards the Magellanic Clouds | 290,000 |
| Carina Dwarf | E3 | 35 million | Towards the Magellanic Clouds | 330,000 | |
| Fornax Dwarf | E4 | 130 million | Towards the Magellanic Clouds | 460,000 | |
| Leo II | DDO 93 | E0 | 90 million | East Up | 690,000 |
| Leo I | DDO 74 | E3 | 40 million | East Up | 820,000 |
| NGC 6822 | IC 4895 / MCG -2-50-6 / DDO 209 | Irr | 700 million | North Down | 1,600,000 |
| IC 10 | UGC 192 / MCG 192 / IRAS 177+5900 | Irr | 160 million | Above Andromeda | 2,200,000 |
| IC 1613 | UGC 668 / MCG 0-3-70 / DDO 8 | Irr | 2 billion | Below Andromeda | 2,380,000 |
| Andromeda I | KK 8 | E0 | 70 Million | Below Andromeda | 2,400,000 |
| Andromeda III | KK 5 | E6 | 8 Million | Below Andromeda | 2,440,000 |
| M32 | NCG 221 / UGC 452 / MCG 7-2-15 | E2 | 1 billion | Below Andromeda | 2,490,000 |
| Andromeda | M 31 / NGC 224 / UGC 454 / MCG 7-2-16 | Sb | ***1 trillion | Below Andromeda | 2,500,000 |
| Cassiopeia 1 | KK 19 | Irr | 6 billion | Above Andromeda | 2,550,000 |
| NGC 147 & NGC 185**** | E5 / E3 | 1 billion | Above Andromeda | 2,580,000 | |
| Leo A | DDO 69 | Irr | 40 million | East Up | 2,600,000 |
| Triangulum | M 33 / NGC 598 / UGC 1117 / MCG 5-4-69 | Sc | ***40 billion | Below Andromeda | 3,000,000 |
| Pegasus Dwarf | DDO 216 | dIrr | 50 million | Below Andromeda | 3,000,000 |
| WLM | Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte / DDO 221 | Irr | 830 million | Directly Down | 3,000,000 |
| Aquarius Dwarf | DDO 210 | Irr | 8 million | North Down | 3,200,000 |
| Sagittarius DIG | ESO 594-4 | Irr | 40 million | North Down | 3,390,000 |
| Antlia Dwarf | PGC 29194 | E3 | 50 million | East Up | 4,000,000 |
| NGC 3109 | ESO 499-36 / MCG -4-24-13 / UGCA 194 | Sb | 15 billion | East Up | 4,300,000 |
| Sextans A | DDO 75 | Irr | 570 million | East Up | 4,310,000 |
| IC 5152 | ESO 237-27 / AM 2159-513 / IRAS 21594-5132 | Irr | 1 billion | Towards the Magellanic Clouds | 5,800,000 |
| Andromeda IV | Irr | 600 million | Below Andromeda | 6,100,000 | |
| NGC 404 | UGC 718 / MCG 6-3-18 / ZWG 520.20 | S0 | 900 million | Below Andromeda | 10,000,000 |
| NGC 69462 | UGC 11597 / MCG 10-29-6 / ZWG 304.6 | SBc | 100 billion | West Up | 22,000,000 |
| NGC 69521 | NGC 6951 / UGC 11604 / MCG 11-25-2 | SBc | 170 billion | West Up | 74,000,000 |
| IC 15023 | UGC 12706 / UGC 12105 / MCG 13-1-2 | Sa | 7 billion | West Up | 82,000,000 |
| NGC 59851 | UGC 9969 / MCG 10-22-30 / ZWG 297.25 | SBb | 1 trillion | West Up | 100,000,000 |
| NGC 67032 | UGC 11356 / MCG 8-34-20 / ZWG 255.14 | S0 | 110 billion | West Up | 106,000,000 |
*Taken from Space Engine (not reliable, but probably good estimates) **Almost all distances taken from wikipedia. A few I had to find some papers or astronomy sites to get some of them from ***Taken from Wikipedia - check source there ****Physically paired galaxies 1Only one (or neither) of these is correct 2Only one (or neither) of these is correct 3Only one (or neither) of these is correct
References
Gallery
- Milky Way galaxy in Elite Dangerous
- Terrestrial planet and a brown dwarf.
- Planet with city lights and a ring system.
- Terrestrial planet and a Cobra
- Gas Giant SRV and Asp
- Nebula and SRV.
- The bubble is where powers compete for influence, resources, territory and control.
- Gas giant with a ring system and SRV.
- Visible Galaxies below Andromeda.
- Visible Galaxies Towards Magellanic Clouds
- Visible Galaxies West up
- Visible Galaxies East Up
- Visible Galaxies Above Andromeda
- Visible Galaxies North Down
- Visible Galaxies Directly Down
