DUST Motes: Running the numbers

     DUST 514 is still in some flavour of beta-ness.  Depending on who you talk to, listen to, and when such interaction occurs, it's either "closed", "open" or just "beta".  It's all very tedious, really, but I suppose NDA games need to be played as much as DUST does at this point.  At the present time, there are a number of blogs and podcasts that are talking about DUST and the devs are decently active at appearing on or in them.  As such, they have thrown out a few interesting numbers.

- In the Eve-verse, there are a little over 5400 systems and about another 2500 wormholes on top of that.  For the time being, CCP is going to start out DUST with interaction on the temperate planets only, and only those in high sec.  Worm hole space will have "something different' but nothing more has been defined about "different".
- Apparently, there are something on the order of 7200 temperate planets.  1115 of those are in high sec.
- Each planet will have a number of "districts" that are distinct areas on the planet and that can be warped to by Eve players in their ships.  The number of districts will depend on a number of factors, like planet type and size, but the number of districts will apparently be in the 10 to 20 range.
- Each one of these districts will be further subdivided into "zones" that hold individual structures and resources.  It is in these "zones" that the actual fighting will take place.  Now, I'm not sure where I read or heard this, but I remember a number of 2 or 3 zones per district.  I don't remember if that was an average or not, but it's all speculation at the moment, so an average will suffice for now.
- Based on the time of day (the planets spin), the planet's location relative to the sun, general geographical features, and the colour of the system's sun, the server will randomly generate the map's terrain and lighting for each zone.

     So, taking a low district average of 10, and a zone number of two, when all the temperate planets in high sec are rolled out, that's a ballpark number of 22,300 separate and randomly generated maps.  Over 140,000 maps when all the temperate planets are rolled out.  When all 46,172 of the "K-space", or normal space, planets are included, that is a low average of over 923,000 individual maps.  There are another 21,000+ planets in worm hole space too.

     Safe to assume that you won't be likely to get bored running the "same old" 1 million+ maps in DUST 514.

     Also, just as an aside, the ASCII code for 514 is this; ☻.  Just sayin'  ;)