a secret convoy transporting the first contained sample of antimatter through uncharted space between Arta Caelestis and Cantus collides with an uncharted asteroid belt, creating the worst intergalactic accident site ever. The massive explosion creates a black hole that sucks anything near it in and spits it out near cantus, in a wasteland of semidestroyed vehicles and stations...

would help trade routes and make the top half of the map more visited... as well as being exciting

It would also perhaps create the ability for larger capital ships to jump between one system and another instantainiously. Seeing as antimatter would gradually become more availible.

Catchy. :)

The reason the Itani and farther Serco sectors are seldom visited is simple: if you kill someone there, chances are you just blew your standing in that nation. Likewise, the only reason the Union is more populated is that it's closer to greyspace, where you can shoot people up to your heart's content without fear of standing loss; also, the Union boasts some rather fiddly security issues, like the fact that being hated by the UIT proper still allows you to trade with TPG, Orion, etc. And thus you can be Union-hated and still find safe harbor within its territory, something that doesn't happen in the other two nations.

Many suggestions have been made for "shortcuts", and some good "reasons" for them have been proposed, but I for one dislike the idea, and see no point to it. I trade a lot to that region, where I usually find good prices and good profits because the lazier traders won't go there unless it's a 9-or-10-jump procurement mission; I'd really hate to lose those markets simply because these lazy people were catered to and given their shortcut.

This is what I really hate about the map, cause everyone thinks that the systems that the wormholes connect are close in actual space, when in fact, Bractus and Sol II could potentially be neibors. The only way to get a short cut would be to be able to create artificial wormholes. Hopefully this will be clearer when/if they ever create a 3D map, and add the exploration expansion so that you can see that heading out from a known system does not get you any closer to the next WH jump. Correct me if I'm wrong but that's been my understanding of the VO universe as it is now.

A 3D map, as shiny and fun as it might be, would overly complicate navigation. I don't think that's a good idea...

I completely agree with the point you're making, though, johnhawl. The 'flattened' map probably doesn't, uh, map 'reality', but simplifies it for the user.

An example of a pretty complex flattened mad would be EVN's top 'pole' of the galactic map, where systems are wildly interconnected. Navigation there is already tedious (but facilitated by Ambrosia's awesome route planning/navigation system).

LOL, there was a bug in Nova that would sometimes let you click in areas that you hadn't mapped yet and set a route. I mostly encountered it in the North and also sometimes in Polaris space... It was odd, but fun.

Well, as I pointed out somewhere else on the forums, Odia is pretty damn close to Earth (76 light years or so), and Deneb is as well (1500-3000 light years, but closer than any of the other systems).