PlanetsCentral

vcnc, I must admit your topic "fell over" a little during the many PlanetsCentral topics. However, we were talking about two hops (165 ly range), and tightening these rules does not guarantee similar situations in 4 hops. Actually, even the classic Echo Cluster has areas where you have like 2 planets in range; in Titan 6 I'm sitting in such an area.

Any colonization beyond 3 hops involves the contested territory and combat actions. That is the point where player's skills come into play. But the core planets are another story. They should support at least the initial decent fleet for an interesting gameplay in the first half of the game.

The reason I did not immediately tighten the settings was concerns about processor consumption (I don't want the server to get into an infinite loop when given too tight restrictions). Good news is that I'll be able to script and measure such effects soon.

I have tested some variants of settings.

FarPlanetsNo = 10, 15

With this there is no significant increase in the generation time, so you can use them right away.

FarPlanetsNo = 12, 16 HomeworldsRadius = 486

These settings are much more cpu intensive but also much more fair.

Anyway the decision on how to address the problem is yours. I just hope that this will happen someday.