Question for the players. From looking at the active players chart, it seems like Serco is consistently the most active faction, closely followed by UIT, with Itani having a much lower percentage of the active players in comparison. And I just don't understand why...? Itani control the most systems and have pretty cool lore so I expected them to be one of the more popular factions. If anything, I expected my own faction (UIT) to be the least popular since their lore (particularly when it comes to the individual corporations other than TPG) isn't quite as fleshed out right now compared to Itani and Serco. The active players chart was so much different from what I expected, and I was surprised.

So... what do y'all think? Why do you think Itani is less popular than the other factions? And (just for fun) what made you choose the faction you picked (for your most played character)?

That's a "stacked" graph, meaning that the thickness of each respective color indicates the scale of that nation (and only that nation). The order of the colors (which is "top") isn't relevant, only their relative thickness in the graph.

So, generally speaking, UIT is always the most popular, then the Itani, and lastly the Serco.

I'm considering completely re-structuring how we show this information, because it seems to be un-intuitive for people to read. But, I have a lot of bigger priorities right now.

I will say that for brand-new users, the nations are split evenly. The differences I mentioned above tend to evolve after longer-duration play in the game.

UIT ends up being the most popular, because they have the most flexibility in transit and trading. This isn't sufficiently offset by the nation-exclusive combat capabilities of the other two nations.

What an absolutely mind blowing thread, I must be hallucinating this!

Ah, that makes more sense. Interpreting it the correct way, the difference in popularity between factions is less significant than I thought. It's kinda ironic because the lore makes the UIT sound like it's smaller than the other two factions, but I guess people love their trading. It's fitting that experienced players prefer UIT because of... capitalism :D