Galaxy Organization

General Notes
As factions have been added, they've generally been tacked on in whatever corner made the most sense at the time.

This isn't necessarily problematic, but it's made it impossible to travel from one new faction to another without crossing through older factions' space, namely the Empire and Dvaered. Sirius, in particular, is only reachable via Dvaered space, and autonav will typically take players through Frontier space as well. It's reasonably easy to make the FLF hostile via DV patrols or siding with the Dvaered in the anti-FLF mission string, which makes reaching Sirius either hazardous or immensely tedious.

I'm not quite sure how to fix that (or if it needs fixing). One possible approach would be to remove most of the Frontier↔Sirius links and instead connect Dvaered and Sirius space in the gap between Maus and Scarlet.

It's also impossible to get from Soromid to Za'lek without passing through Empire or Dvaered space, but that's less important, as rehab missions make it impossible to be permanently hostile with the Empire or Dvaered if the player doesn't want to be.

In the future, it may be desirable to add some roundabout routes that let you bypass faction space.

Highways
Za'lek ↔ Empire is 4 jumps (Ux, Vega, Ganth, Olypmus (sp?), Vost)

Empire ↔ Dvaered is 3 jumps (Arcturus, Goddard, Ogat, Doranthex)

Za'lek ↔ Dvaered is 6 jumps (Pultatis, Limbo, Gammacron, Daan, Daravon, Gremlin, Dvaer)

Dvaered ↔ Sirius is 4 jumps (Millstone, Druiud, Fidelis, Eye of Night, Ruttwi)

Empire ↔ Soromid is 9 jumps through pirate-heavy space

Dvaered ↔ Soromid is 8 jumps with several systems having moderate pirate and FLF presence The start and end systems of a highway route should have highway jumps leading to them. For example, Arcturus is the end of the Empire highway, and has a final highway jump leading to Goddard. The jump from Goddard back to Arcturus should also be a highway jump.

I'd like to make the following changes:
 * Dvaered
 * Extend highway north to Ogat
 * Extend highway west to Daravon
 * Link Ogat to Draygar, and Draconis to Thorndyke
 * Empire
 * Have the southern portion of the Empire highway be further east
 * At Gamma Polaris, the highway should go south to Waterhole
 * Za'lek
 * Swap Pultatis and Sollav, link Hargen-Pultatis-Provectus Nova
 * Have the highway go from Hargen to Pultatus
 * Soromid
 * Extend the highway down to Pilatis

If the above changes are made, the Zalek and Empire highways will be 2 jumps apart, Dvaered and Za'lek four. The Soromid ↔ DV route will also be safer and only involve five non-highway jumps. In the north, the Dvaered and Empire highways will link up at Goddard, forming a continuous route.

Presence
As a general note, I think that highway routes should be sprinkled with trader presences, while civilian presences should be found just about everywhere in faction space.

No trader presence in the northwestern Empire systems.

Civilian and trader presence on the whole is too low, particular in Za'lek, southern Dvaered, and Soromid space.

Sirius space has excessive pirate presence (low value, high range).

Because of dead-end routes, many less-connected systems only have their owning faction's presence, e.g. Griffin (in the Empire core, yet has no trader or civilian presence).

Ruadan has 3 Za'lek medium presences, resulting in 2100 Za'lek presence. Two of them should probably be removed. PSO Moniter has 15 Independent presence with 5 range, rather odd.

A few systems, like Capricorn, have no faction military presence, and so are effectively under perpetual siege from pirates.

Jump Connectivity
While the galaxy map shouldn't be a grid, I feel some factions have too little jump connectivity. Of particular note is the uninhabited arm in Za'lek space that goes from Straight Row to Qulam, which is 9 jumps with zero landing opportunities.

I'd like to see disconnected arms within faction space be no longer than 2-3 jumps, and preferably everything should connect back to a common core, as with Empire space. I see it as unintuitive and frustrating to have visually-adjacent systems like Corinth and Orion be nine jumps apart.

In general, I'm mostly content with Soromid, Dvaered, and Empire space. Sirius space has a few more dead-ends than I'd like, but it's largely organized as a series of hollow loops, so there aren't many adjacent systems that are actually far apart, jump-wise. Za'lek is the faction I'm most concerned with, because it's more or less nothing but dead-ends. Ruadan, in particular, requires players to pass through two uninhabited systems before reaching it.