WHY FIVE PLANETS IS THE LIMIT
by Hazed
A PO asked me in the game whether he could buy a sixth planet for his star system, so he could have one at each economic level. Well, such decisions are not mine to make, so I went to visit Bella to find out whether this was possible or not.
For once, she wasn’t in the bath. She was reclining on a chaise longue, sipping a rather large green chilli vodka.
As she played with the little umbrella in her drink, she pondered the request. “Well, technically there’s no reason why not... after all, the Solar System has many more than five planets in it and the universe is well able to cope. But there are other reasons why it wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“What are those reasons?” I asked her, sighing as I saw the extra slithy income the potential sixth planets could garner slipping away.
She sucked on her straw and made disgusting slurping noises as she drank the last vestiges of her drink. Signalling to a waitdroid to bring her another (and, I should add, not offering me a drink!) she explained. “Because that would make a system totally self-sufficient which would mean they wouldn’t have to do any trading with other players. It’s called Autarky. If we allowed closed economies in Fed DataSpace it would take away the main reason for POs to deal with each other, thus leading to galactic stagnation.”
So there you have it. Star systems are limited to five planets to keep lines of communication open across the galaxy.
Here’s some more information about autarky, should you be interested.
