Welcome to second installment of post series about topology of New Eden. Previously, I have rambled about how gate network is a graph and what properties such graph can have. In this part, I will present you such properties but on per region basis.

What is region in EVE? Basically, it is a set of solar systems. They might be connected with stargates, as in New Eden gate network, or not, as in wormhole space systems. There are only few ways how regions affect the actual game play, for example:

• Market is limited to region.
• NPC empires tend to have their borders aligned to region borders.
• All belt pirates within the region have are of the same faction.

Most of us rarely notices the fact that we crossed region border. Nevertheless, this artificial division gives an opportunity to find out how they differ among each other.

Let’s start from the simplest properties – the size. The smallest of all 64 regions accessible in New Eden gate network is Fade, with 27 solar systems and 33 internal connections. It is 7 times smaller than the biggest player around: Domain – 192 systems and 266 internal connections. As you can see, the span here is quite large.

As a measure of gate network density, we can use an average number gates in system within given region. I have counted only the gates that do not lead to other regions. Given this definition of density, we get minimum in Impass (2.16) and maximum in Everyshore (3.26). If we focus on gates leading to other regions for a change, we will see that Impass, Stain and Omist have only three connections to other regions and Sinq Laison 30 (yes, that much). But this counts each stargate pair as distinct connection. If we count how many regions are connected, the results are:

• Omist
  • Feythabolis,
  • Tenerifis,
• Solitude
  • Aridia,
  • Syndicate,
• Paragon Soul
  • Esoteria,
  • Period Basis.

And the knot of New Eden – Sinq Laison, that has connections to 9 other regions (The Bleak Lands, The Citadel, Domain, Everyshore, Essence, The Forge, Genesis, Heimatar, Metropolis).

In part I we have discussed two graph properties: diameter and radius. We can calculate them for each region, treating it as separate graph. I made a small exception to this. Since shortcuts through other regions are part of the game, I have decided to include them in the calculations. So what are our extremes?

In the contest for smallest diameter we have a draw. Both, Fade and Molden Heath scored 11. On the opposite, we have Stain with diameter of 42. I guess Sanshas like long travels. Because radius is related to diameter, it is no surprise that Fade has smallest radius (6) and Stain biggest radius (21). On the other hand, Molden Heath was replaced with Essence as the one to draw with Fade. In case of most well behaved graphs, radius is exactly half of diameter. Cloud Ring is definitely not well-behaved in that matter, as it has diameter of 12 and radius of 9. The reason behind that is the circular structure of the region (it is called Ring for a reason).

And now something for corporations interested in having a central base of operations for a specific region. Well, not now. You will have to wait for a bit. First, I will mention some interesting cases of regional centers. In the mean center category, the system that is on average the closest to any other system in the region is… Sosala (2.97 jumps), representing the lovely region of The Bleak Lands. And on the other hand… Stain… again… 37S-KO – 11.22 jumps. In case of radial center, we have some draws. As mentioned above, two regions have a radius of 6: Fade and Essence. For those regions, there are following radial centers: O1Y-ED, VRH-H7, O-CNPR and Villore. For Stain, there are only two: PSJ-10 and GDEW-0. One more region is characteristic in terms of radial centers. It is Molden Heath and it has total of 10 radial centers: Aedald, Bosena, Ennur, Heild, Horaka, Meildolf, Muttokon, Oddelulf, Orien, Teonusude. Quite a few for a region with 38 systems total. This anomaly has similar roots as the one for Cloud Ring – circular structure.

This covers all regional statistics for this episode. If you managed to get so far, here is a little gift – a spreadsheet with all those metrics for all regions in New Eden gate network. You can use it to find out what is the best location for your regional logistical centre.

Stay tuned for next episodes.
Archentar Symonia