Pyro, Size Matters

Pyro is unquestionably the beating heart of piracy. An otherwise desolate, lifeless star system crippled by a flare star, Pyro is most notably the home of the shared pirate outpost of Ruin Station. The system is a case of criminals filling the void in an abandoned star system. Unlike the more settled honor-among-thieves Cathcart, factions here are in constant conflict.

Link to Alysianah’s Custom Visualization Summary of Pyro

From CIG…

Pyro was first visited in 2493, twenty-four years after the first person suspected something was there. In 2469, the watch officer of the Roustabout, an Earth-flagged tanker ship moving through the Cano System, noted a gravitic anomaly thirty thousand kilometers off the transport’s port bow. A detailed report was sent to the ship’s corporate owners and eventual namesake, Pyrotechnic Amalgamated, but no action was taken. Twenty-four years later, when Pyrotechnic sought new mining territories, they began reviewing old scan records when it noted the original report from the Roustabout. They dispatched an explorer to the region only to formally discover Pyro.

End Quote…

RUIN STATION

Ruin Station is an outlaw station populated by the system’s only permanent population.  Pyrotechnic Amalgamated initially built the station as a hub for their industrial divisions. However, the station was abandoned after the outlook for a profitable return seemed dim. The name Ruin Station is a moniker earned from the location’s dilapidated condition. Despite the dangers of visitors being swallowed whole by the crumbling edifice, criminals and opportunists flock to the area seeking black-market trading.

Of importance to surrounding, more settled systems such as Stanton are recent Advocacy reports naming XenoThreat as the station’s current occupants. A mere one Jump Point away from the highly populated star system, the denizens of Pyro can pose a credible threat to the peace and stability of Stanton.

WHEN SIZE MATTERS

Personally, I’ve never been bothered by the travel times we encounter flying around Stanton. However, that may have always been colored by knowing that Stanton is among the smaller star systems we’ll be traversing in Star Citizen. Before we had any playable modules, combing through the lore contained in the star map was my mini-game. It’s how Alysianah’s World of Star Citizen was born. With a background in analytics, the numbers surrounding the planned universe fascinated me. How many planets are within the known universe? How many are habitable? How many asteroid belts? Which star systems have the most asteroid belts? Where are the gas giants and so on? You can find answers to those questions in an old post I’ll link in the show notes.

I figured the speeds and travel times we experience now would be tweaked as the larger star systems arrive. And when I say larger, they’re on an order of magnitude that is so much bigger than Stanton. I’m sure things will get tweaked, but if long rides in space aren’t for you, this might not be the right game. Space is big, and size matters.

Calculating size as the distance from the star at the center to its furthest planet, Stanton is only 2.9 astronomical units. Pyro is 9.8 AU. That’s right; it’s more than three times as large. That’s nothing. We’re still talking about tiny star systems. The largest in the known Star Citizen universe is Tamsa, at a whopping 305 AU.

If we consider the other distances you have to traverse, calculating the size by the furthest object such as the Jump Points we’ll use for interstellar travel, Stanton is 4.6 AU and Pyro is 13 AU. Things are about to get a whole lot bigger. We know we’ll have space stations around each of the planets, rest stops, and refineries, but to make the spaces seem less devoid of life, I’m curious about the other elements CIG will add. Or will they take the point of view that deep space, even once humanity populates it will, in fact, remain empty – desolate and devoid. Time will tell. Buckle up, ladies and gentlemen. When Pyro arrives space will be a whole lot bigger.