There are about 1.5 million stars within the charted space of the Homeworlds (not including the ongoing Deep Space Automated Warp Exploration program). The vast majority are uninhabited, but a sizable minority of those are still claimed by some faction or another as potential expansion zones.

Some numbers about stars:

Observed and catalogued

1,577,816

Visited by probe

886,412

Reachable within typical jump carrier range of jump gate network

394,445

Visited by humans

146,901

Permanently inhabited by machines

93,408

Permanently inhabited by humans

12,917

Population >1k

1,950

Population >1M

709

Population >1B

12

Core Worlds

6 inhabited

Colonies

1,508 inhabited, 188,990 claimed

DMZ

11,403 inhabited, 336,400 claimed

Space doesn't map well. It is hopeless to try to chart Homeworlds space on a 2-d plane, with colored regions delineating political control. A star system with a jump gate to another 500 light years away is much closer than it is to a neighboring star only 5 light years away without a gate.

The most geometrically accurate maps are three-dimensional, and show the connections between worlds. They resemble neural networks, a web of interconnected stars with a few bright hubs and occasionally some long strands. The connected systems intertwine with others, but never collide.

Such maps may be useful for charting deep space exploration, but are not helpful to everyday life. Instead, simplified, abstract charts are used; these look much more like a municipal subway diagram than like a traditional map. More populous worlds are large and central, and lesser worlds branch off of the trunk lines connecting the large worlds. The connection lines are thicker where more traffic occurs, narrowing as they become less traveled. The length of connecting lines has little correlation with distance, as travel time through gates is instantaneous, and overall travel time is dominated by the demands and capacity of the system, which is not a function of geography.

Similarly, charting an individual star system is necessarily a dynamic task, not something that can be rendered once and remain accurate. All charted systems have the obvious list of planets and moons. Well-inhabited systems will have vast catalogues of millions of satellites, both natural and manmade, and will keep track of all bodies traveling between orbits. Without traffic control, collisions are a greater danger than the vastness of space would suggest, at least in the vicinity of popular destinations.

As a rule, the distance between any two stars is measured in jumps, whether by gate or jump drive. One jump will be quick, ten jumps not so quick. Much of any long journey will be taken up with sublight travel, as the destination of a jump is not another gate, but the point at which the star's gravity well disrupted the tunnel. Furthermore, the jump gate or ship must be in the right part of its orbit of the star to face the desired direction; the path of the jump cannot cross any deeper into the well of the origin star.

The number of ships wishing to travel to a populous system is vast. Billions of passengers and trillions of tons of cargo pass between the Core Worlds every day. And yet, the traffic capacity of any system is given by the size of its sun--there can be only so many gates or jump ships per volume of space before they interfere with one another. As most habitable worlds orbit dwarf stars, the Homeworlds are quickly encountering a seemingly intractable traffic problem. Even with industrial megacenters churning out jump hardware at prodigious rates, the capacity of the jump system is a fraction of the previous gate system, and travel is bogged down in the populous core, causing many to seek sparser climes. Worlds in the Colonies and even the DMZ boast of low or nil wait times for jumpgates.

In the Core, meanwhile, discussions range hotly on the issue of reestablishing linked gates, which do not contend for solar resources. Proponents argue that relics of the Earthgate War have taught scientists how to better defend against intrusion by drones, and that simply burying the technology is a foolish waste of its potential. The opponents' case is self-explanatory.

Using the Reyes Star Catalog.