This is also a frontier where the USCM main body, as well as the Fleet, have taken interest. It's apparently one of the more important sectors, and as such, it's not unlikely that governments would form. Also saying DirtyGoblin needs to wipe the badass out of his eyes is like telling America to stop being Communist.
The USCM "Main Body" certainly didn't take much an interest. They had a backwater bunker while the vast majority of their meager assets were, and are, continuously canonically being spent trying to find a way to reclaim Earth. The Fleet was still a minor military extension of a pre-existing faction sweeping a frontier for threats and exploitable resources before retreating back to Avos' sphere of influence. I'm not saying that governments are bad. I'm saying that logistically their over-ambitious and result in a weird inflation effect where everyone's trying to make the next cool faction, rather than thinking about their characters on a Human level. Things become overcompetative, where people find accomplishment in having the most members instead of good stories. It also results in weird logistics issues like NPC populations, resource acquiring, resource refinement, asset fabrications... Etc. And while big, amazing, wowzer factions are cool and all, you can have just as interesting a group without needing to involve super-advanced technology, incomprehensible off-screen resource networks, inflated economics, inflated populations, etc. Personally, I always found a simpler, more down-to-earth environment was more conducive to a wider variety of roleplay and a closer-knit community. When you begin to complicate things with not just factions, but super-factions represented by a minor skeleton crew, then things become more watered down. And about how much better your character is at something than someone else. Or at everything. Point being: We don't actually have the population to support such extensive factions. Small outposts that exists as trade-hubs or colonization efforts make much more sense than super-cities and empires springing up over night.
But then, keep in mind, the faction regulations are there entirely to get rid of the "super-factions" that you're saying are causing such problems, which to be fair, they were. But they're gone now.
Most of mentioned super-factions have been dissappearing for one reason or another, so there aren't an issue anymore, and there have been smaller factions that have also been over-ambitious, but the natural course have been killing them. It's more concerning the ludicrous amount of 'fighting' characters which continues to represent... around 90% of population, more or less? Changing that mindset is harder than regulate a small number of factions. We could see some sort of 'realistic' government if there was a settlement with 9-11 active members, most of them pure civilians. Not every settler owns a weapon, much less being proficient using it.
It's a frontier, there's bound to be people who need to know how to defend themselves. I don't think there would be large scale armies though... You know, come to think of it. You could compare Antares to the frontier in Red Dead: Redemption, more or less. Minus the bad-ass gunslinger main character who killed like 100s of people. EITHER WAY. Small cities and towns with a lots of dead space in between, maybe a gang or two. Perhaps a militia for a larger village. I in no way see a bustling city existing within Antares, nor do I see massive army movements coming to seize the sector for their own imperialistic gains, it's like the badlands of space. I don't think there's some hidden gem in Antares either, for example: The gold in California in the Western Frontier. It's just that one off-side sector in that one spiral of the galaxy that's just sort of... there. If you've played Endless Space, think of Antares like that region of the galaxy in the back-back-back section of an unoccupied wing. Sure, free citizens could go there and settle, but neither you or the other competing empires would focus efforts to get that one little area when there is mass galactic war, production efforts, colonization, and advanced research going on near the center of your empires... and probably closer to the denser core of the galaxy. Starbound as a game isn't designed for mass city and organized conglomerate RP, it's not even designed for mass RP at all. It's based off of exploration and discovery, and maybe building a cool space outpost with friends. People in the Antares frontier would be just like the space explores each character is based off when you play the vanilla game. P.S. I like black holes, black holes are fun, I gravitate towards black holes, discussions about black holes really pull me in.
