Slowly at first players will spread across the system. The starting area will continue to be the area with the most activity but most players will move out once they can. Creating your own station won't be easy but many will at least try. Later it will become possible to move out by renting in someone else's station or joining certain established factions. The largest trade hub will be in the starting safe zone, adjacent the NPC markets and newbies, but others will develop. The largest player-made trade hubs will make a specific point of allowing anything except piracy, though there will be a few lesser trade hubs that allow everything including piracy. Players won't be able to deplete the map as a whole, but the starting safe zone will eventually become noticeably depleted. Many will try to mine the areas immediately outside the safe zone as a intermediary step to moving out, but this area will become overrun with pirates. Unfortunately the depletion of the safe zone, and pirates immediately outside will become a problem for newer players and probably new player retention. Large hostile player factions may also act like barricades. FTL warp gates will help with this "barricade" problem. Even if larger factions own most of the warp gates, if you can rent out FTL travel, it will help smaller factions more. Some PvP groups will stay near the starting safe zones, but ones who want exclusive control of territory will move farther out. Non-PvP groups will either stay completely in the safe zone, or move the farthest away from the safe zone, out to relatively empty areas. Some of those areas might start out empty but eventually become rather busy.