[quote=@Willy Vereb]
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I never once said I expected any of you to actually explore that volume of space. Again, I said that was the potential envelope of space that could be explored in that time.

[quote=@Nilesapa]So we scout 10000 cubic light years per week?[/quote]

That would be incredibly impressive, so I doubt it.

The fact of the matter is that you should not need to worry about scouting in literally every single direction. Various signals and signatures indicative of intelligent life will point you in the direction you need to go, and those will have propagated further from their nations of origination than anybody can scout.

The 40,000 lightyear figure was set up specifically to indicate how long it might take you to locate another nation if you followed sensor readings. If they're more than 40,000 lightyears away, chances are they will be much harder to detect and take much longer to find - so you wouldn't encounter them immediately, if at all. Other nations at or within 40,000 lightyears are more likely to be detected at the start of the RP and can potentially be reached in (relatively) short order.