This popped into my head, we know a fairly lot about our Milky Way, and we’re not even a properly spacefaring civilization yet.
What do people of EVE know about theirs? EVE itself even with over 5000 systems is AFAIK a relatively small cluster, something like the very tip of a spiral galaxy’s arms worth of stars. Do we know what kind of galaxy this is? Only mention of the greater galaxy I can think of was among the lore relating to the wormholes and Seyllin disaster, something like “isogen5 stores in the Eve cluster and beyond were set off simultaneusly”.
Additionally I have some recollection that the reason the world hasn’t expanded in the past decades is because apparently there hasn’t been any more suitable stars nearby that jump drives could lock onto / stargates could be built on.
We players of course know quite a bit even less, as I remember there being a theory that the wormhole space was by many theorized to be the eve cluster in the past or in the far future (because they are a mirror of the solar system of our current game space, with
few exceptions).
AFAIK the 5000 systems available for travel are not all the systems in the cluster, only those somebody figured were worth putting a stargate in. I recall reading somewhere (no idea where) that people have even observed points in between destinations on the auto-pilot that move in such a way that indicates there are stars there. That is: as you jump between two stargates on the network, you may well be jumping over stars that nobody felt needed to be included on the network.
Can’t say much about Eve’s Galaxy, but to continue the math:
If the Milky Way contains about 100 billion stars and if the star gates in New Eden connect on average only every 1.000th star in its space, then New Eden would use 0,005 % of Milky Way’s space and cover an area of around 700 light years across.
But without any “hard facts” those are just number games.
Edit:
There is another possible way to at least estimate the size of New Eden. Look at the nebulae of the four major factions and compare there size with real life nebulae.
I’m too lazy to do the math now, but 700 light years, give or take, does fit.
I remember reading the Old Man Star chronicle to form a connection you send a ship with crew and everything needed to build a gate moved at the exit point the old fashion way which takes many many years.
It’s possible the EVE Gate collapse destroyed alot of stars leaving us with just what we got or colonizing more systems is ongoing but it’ll take dozens or hundreds of years for seed ships to reach and built connection gates or an ancient EVE race like Talocan reshaped the cluster for their needs somehow
AFAIK new eden is a globular star cluster of the milky way galaxy. so omega centauri, pyxis, or any of the other 150+ known globular clusters in our galaxy (or just a made up one)
If we ignore that in the real world globular clusters are generally low on the elements required to form planets, most everything else about them makes a lot of sense for eve. Low hanging fruit, eve is often called a cluster. but going beyond that, the average star cluster is only about 100,000 stars, which means that at ~5000 systems roughly 5% of the cluster is connected by stargates. so fairly well colonized but still leaving plenty of room for “boring” or “un-profitable” stars that no one ever bothered to connect with.
Globular clusters are also much more dense than the rest of the solar system, with the cores of some clusters having seperations between stars only about as far as our solar system. now obviously the eve cluster isn’t QUITE that dense, but when you compare it to the main milky way they are practically crammed in there.
For reference, there are only 12 or so stars within 10 light years of earth. Choosing a semi-random system in eve (I went with osht in curse because the name amuses me) there are 372 systems within 10 light years.
Finally, globular clusters are somewhat seperated from the rest of the galaxy, they still orbit the galactic center so are still “part” of it, but there is generally a band of rather empty space between them and the rest of the galaxy (not completely empty mind you, and some are closer than others. but relatively speaking). which would explain why none of the 4 races have ever tried to expand beyond that cluster. since even sending a ship out there at the highest warps they can manage would still take hundreds or even thousands of years (assuming they can even keep their warp engines going for that long) just to reach the galaxy proper, and even then there is no guarantee that a gate network could be set up over those kinds of ranges.
so its likely that the empires of eve are aware of the rest of the milky way galaxy. in much the same way that we are aware of it. but likely pay even less attention to it than we do, since, being so distantly separated from it its unlikely that they would ever be able to reach it anyways making it more of a mild scientific curiosity until technology develops further (and they have bigger things to worry about)
Yes building gates sucks the old fashioned way BUT we know Sansha nation stole wormhole generating technology and Jovians had it too just before they passed their mantle to SOCT and drifters have same tech also available.
So,if we really really wanted to traverse immense distances to unknown systems we may have a way to do it without doing a thousand year warp trip to get a gate on the exit.
The existence of a supermassive black hole at the centre of New Eden and the close distance of the stars which are usually between one or two light years apart would allude to it not being a cluster but the centre of a galaxy which is mostly occluded from observation due to all the dust and nebulas in the local area.