System-size dependence of strangeness saturation

The final state in heavy-ion collisions has a higher degree of strangeness saturation than the one produced in collisions between elementary particles such as p-p or p-(p) over bar. A systematic analysis of this phenomenon is made for C-C, Si-Si and Pb-Pb collisions at the CERN SPS collider and for Au-Au collisions at RHIC and at AGS energies. Strangeness saturation is shown to increase smoothly with the number of participants at AGS, CERN and RHIC energies.