The galaxy in Avorion consists of different sectors. Sectors are an instanced portion of the game's world, where the core gameplay takes place.
Types
Sectors can be populated with quite a number of objects, depending on the type that is generated, such as faction-controlled sectors typically populated with asteroids, stations, and jump gates. As you explore the galaxy, you will come across many regions that spread across many sectors, controlled by factions that may be at peace or war.
A rift in the map, easily seen by the lack of a grid. Cannot be warped into via hyperspace jumps.
Several types of signals can be seen on the map. A radar upgrade on the ship will show more of the populated areas.
- Energy Signatures: These sectors contain some activity, possibly belonging to a faction, which controls the space around said sector. On the map, these kinds of sectors look like pulsing green blips. They are not always peaceful encounters, and in more dangerous areas where you are seeking to escape they are best avoided.
- Hidden Mass Signatures: These sectors are not empty, and may contain structures such as smuggler hideouts, pirate bases, encampments or asteroid fields. These sectors are seen as a pulsing yellow blips.
- Space Rifts: Rifts are tears in the space-time continuum that render a sector location unavailable, and cannot be traveled through. Without an Avorion Hyperspace Core, the player cannot jump over these tears and must jump around. The sectors around rifts become notoriously dangerous areas as the player moves to the inner galaxy, with many hostile areas populated by Xsotan and pirates.
- Empty Sectors: These sectors do not contain anything of typical interest. They are however less likely to contain dangerous activity than a sector with energy signatures.
Some types of objects spawn in specific types of sectors.
- Asteroid Fields: These can spawn in any sector that has a signature, and can hide hidden treasure caches in the denser portions of the field. There's a small chance of finding a ship with a failed distress signal attempt, and an even smaller chance to find an uninhabited, but working, ship.
- Pirate Encampments/Bases: Pirates like to hide in these hidden mass sectors, mainly to get the surprise on unsuspecting miners. There is a chance that one of these types of sectors will have a pirate faction warfare with another pirate faction.
- Wormholes: Also an object that can spawn in any sector of any signature types, these wormholes can link that sector to another in a gate-like fashion, although usually connect to a faraway sector, to the point of bringing you to the other side of the map.
- Smuggler Hideout: A station that resides in hidden-mass sectors that can be used to sell off or unbrand stolen goods.
- Various Wrecks: Sometimes a hidden mass sector will be filled with wrecks of old stations that have now been long since defunct. This can be a good place for salvaging, whereas in Scrapyards (marked green) a license fee is usually charged.
Jumping Sectors
Sectors can be changed by doing a hyperspace jump. To do so, the player must right click a sector on the map, select "Enter Coordinates Into Navigation Computer", align the ship to the blueish marker on the player HUD, and then press space to initiate the jump.
Ships have a limited hyperspace jump range, in which the player can only immediately jump to sectors that are within range of the player's current sector without intermediary jumps.
Creation of Sectors
Sectors are procedurally created when the players explore the galaxy, which happens as soon as a player executes a hyperspace jump into it.
Most of sectors are simply empty. For those that aren't, a creation script is chosen at random, based on a weight provided by all sector generation scripts and then executed when the sector is created.