In the most resent podcast it was mentioned that in the games circular sectors (The Reach, The Blue Kingdom etc.) the general difficulty increases as the player reaches segments further from the sectors centre. This makes sense for The Reach, as the player (supposedly) starts in the middle of it. For other sectors however, where the player approaches from the outside wouldn’t it make more sense for the difficulty to increase in sections closer to the centre (this especially makes sense thematically in the blue kingdom since its mad god/monarch supposedly resides in the middle of the sector).
General difficulty might not just include enemies, but also attaining fuel and provisions and making skill checks. The more peripheral your location, the higher the prices and the riskier the port visits.
And who’s to say the center of the Blue Kingdom isn’t dangerous as well.
You are probably correct, I wrote this post several days after I had seen the actual podcast so my memory may have changed around a few details. Upon rereading the Aphelion post, the segments that it mentions seem to be aimed at reducing the load on computers rather than a system to order ports/content (but it will probably have some role in this aspect, but maybe only within the three layers of the circle).
edited by Zarrg on 3/21/2017