Sorry for the delay, I recall seeing this mentioned 2 or 3 times before so I wanted to check with a few others as well as generate a few new galaxies before responding. Seeing as I now have up to date data generated using the latest patch, available from the Downloads section of this site, I can post a reply.
I really don't know what to tell you, my Game is v1.0X March 3rd, 2006 (Previous comment was based off an older build)
Galaxies generated with the following settings:
Galaxy Size: Gigantic
Custom Map: None
Habitable Planets: Abundent
Number of Planets: Abundent
Number of Stars: Abundent
Star Density: Scattered
Anomalies: Rare (read comment below)
Technology: Rate Slow
Scenario: Normal
Victory Conditions: All Enabled
Comment on Anomalies:
Each parsec within a given Sector may contain a Sun, Planet, Anomaly, or Resource.
It can also contain a Starbase and/or Ships, however during Map generation only 2 parsecs per Race are lost to this.
Taking that into consideration it makes sense that perhaps lowering the number of Anomalies generated leaves more room for Stars. I don't think it seriously amounts to a lot but without the hard coded data who knows. So for the purposes of this test I set it to Rare as noted.
As a test I generated 12 galaxies using the above settings, exiting the game completely between each new galaxy generation. Here's a common Galaxy I see:
Gigantic Map is 18 x 18 Sectors for a total of 324 Sectors.
Each sector is comprised of 15 x 15 parsecs (as an aside, if you're unaware 15 parsecs is the new max sensor limit).
A total of 100 Sectors were empty, leaving 224 Sectors containing Stars. That amounts to a minimum of 224 Stars.
At least 50% of the 224 sectors contain 2 Stars, with the remaining 50% being split fairly evenly, having either 1 or 3 Stars.
That gives an approximate total of 448 Stars or slightly less for the stated Galaxy.
Even if that remaining 50% (112 Sectors) contained 1 star each that would still be roughly a minimum of 336 Stars.
The maps generated during the test were pretty evenly scattered. The biggest cluster of empty sectors seen was (3 x 4) set on the edge of a map. I noted probably 30 -35 of the empty Sectors always seem to appear along the edges of the Map, usually 1 wide. One thing I noticed is that I don't seem to see 4 Stars in a Sector any more, it seems limited to 3. That's not to say it isn't possible just that in the 12 tests performed it was never seen.
Now granted the test should probably have more data but the dozen or so others I asked to do the same claim to have results closely coinciding with mine. Even so, considering those results, it doesn't appear to me now that a Map might use the full 1800 names in the Star list while generating a Galaxy. I apologize for making that statement before running tests with the latest build. Hey I occasionally have brain farts what can I say...
In case you don't know, a new map can be re-generated while in-game by simply pressing Ctrl-N. This is pretty handy if you don't like your/others position on the map or if it didn't generate as nicely scattered as you might have hoped. Have a bit of patience if you try this though, it can take a bit for the new map generate and render.
Try looking at the minimap fully zoomed out and counting the empty sectors, subtract them from the total for the given map size, this will quickly give you an idea of how many Stars may have generated.
If you do give this a try again post back with your results, hopefully your future maps will contain more than 100 Stars.
Now excuse me while I hook up an Intravenous Coffee bag to stave off future Brain Farts for the day
Ubbax
