Population of the Imperium

[sudnadja]

I'm trying to sanity check my import of the TravellerMap datasets, and I'm curious what the canonical population of the imperium is. I got a total of 13 trillion 120 billion 378 million 976 thousand 264 in 8750 populated Imperial systems.

I counted systems with an allegiance starting with "Im" and used the algorithm of 10^(uwp population) * (ru factor, if it exists, 1 if it doesn't, and 0 is counted as 1).

According to that algorithm a population code of 0 results in a single person (10^0 = 1), and I'm not sure if that's correct, but that won't make much of a difference in population.

The curious thing is that there are only 8750 populated systems, isn't the Imperium supposed to be an 11,000 world empire?

I'm still early on in this and it's possible there was some problem with the import and merge - but just so I know what I should be looking for, what is the population of the Imperium?

The distribution looks mostly random:



The median population of a populated world in the Imperium is 200,000. There's plenty of room available, if I were to guess. I'll have to do the land area available per population next.

Given that, it seems like for the majority of worlds there's probably a single or perhaps two smallish cities, and most of the land area is unused?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

I did the work which appears on the Traveller wiki. I have a system similar to the posts you have described on your process except I did it in a Microsoft Access database. I got different numbers, (8856 systems, 15 trillion) but I may have done something wrong also.

1.There is no canonical "official" population. If you refer to population figures found in the wiki as the source, those were derived by me.

2.You are correct. Travellermap only has ~8800 systems/hexes which have the Imperial allegiance. Yes, the term "11,000 worlds" is often used, but no official reference as to where the other 2,000 or so worlds are hiding.

MY GUESS is that these are secondary worlds contained not accounted for in the mainworld population. An example of this is Terra, where Mars and other worlds in the system are canonically populated, but the UWP data in Sector files refers ONLY to the population of the "mainworld".

3.The T5 UWP "Worlds" column is not very useful because it refers to worlds in the system (gas giants, belts, and the rest). Filtering out the Belts and Gas Giants helps, but no indications as to the populations found on secondary worlds. Also the worlds column would not help in the case of populated moons, if found, as the column refers to the bodies which orbit the star(s).

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Fun stuff!

 

[sudnadja]

I did the work which appears on the Traveller wiki. I have a system similar to the posts you have described on your process except I did it in a Microsoft Access database. I got different numbers, (8856 systems, 15 trillion) but I may have done something wrong also.

1.There is no canonical "official" population. If you refer to population figures found in the wiki as the source, those were derived by me.

2.You are correct. Travellermap only has ~8800 systems/hexes which have the Imperial allegiance. Yes, the term "11,000 worlds" is often used, but no official reference as to where the other 2,000 or so worlds are hiding.

MY GUESS is that these are secondary worlds contained not accounted for in the mainworld population. An example of this is Terra, where Mars and other worlds in the system are canonically populated, but the UWP data in Sector files refers ONLY to the population of the "mainworld".

Thank you very much for the reply. One thing that I did have to do was a deduplication pass, which I suspect was needed because sectors from different time periods are stored independently (?) - I didn't look very closely yet, I just deduped everything that was exactly identical. I ended up with only one Terra (in the Solomani Rim Sector, at least) out of an original 4 or 5, so I'm guessing that it was correct, but that is just a guess.

 

[sudnadja]

MY GUESS is that these are secondary worlds contained not accounted for in the mainworld population. An example of this is Terra, where Mars and other worlds in the system are canonically populated, but the UWP data in Sector files refers ONLY to the population of the "mainworld".

Where is the data for the secondary worlds stored or recorded?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

The distribution is fine. Remember, that population is generated as 2d6-2 so 5 being the average over the course of ~8800 records is not a surprise.

Different Milieu and specific sectors over the course of the decades have perhaps used different rolls or been tweaked, but the general roll is 2d6-2.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Where is the data for the secondary worlds stored or recorded?

Nowhere, unfortunately.

Until the Traveller 5 rules came out, there was nothing in the record format of the UWP records storing this desired, useful information. Planetoid Belts and Gas Giants, yes, but no other worlds. In the case of Belts, no indications as to what populations may lie there.

With Traveller 5 youu have the W (Worlds) column, terrestrial worlds are counted, but not moons. Also again, no additional population information.

 

[sudnadja]

The distribution is fine. Remember, that population is generated as 2d6-2 so 5 being the average over the course of ~8800 records is not a surprise.

Different Milieu and specific sectors over the course of the decades have perhaps used different rolls or been tweaked, but the general roll is 2d6-2.

Taking a random imperial citizen, they have a 77.9% chance of being born on one of only 239 worlds, the population A worlds, and a 97.8% chance of being from a population A or 9 world (of which there are 845). Given that the average traveller character will be from ~5 or 6, that implies that imperial citizens from high population worlds don't get out much.

 

[whartung]

According to that algorithm a population code of 0 results in a single person (10^0 = 1), and I'm not sure if that's correct, but that won't make much of a difference in population.

So that's where you got the 264 .

 

[Nathan Brazil]

And this makes sense. Within the context of Traveller 5 world generation, worlds with a sum of Government + Law Level (converted to decimal) of 22 or more (again decimal) are Red Zone. This is supposed to mean the system is interdicted and the Navy prevents on or off system travel. A high population feeds to having a higher government code and law level.

Or to make it a story "how did you sneak off your homeworld?"

 

[sudnadja]

So that's where you got the 264 .

There's actually only 54 of those. There are 431 population 10 persons worlds which added to that would make 4364, then 669 population 100 persons worlds, which added to that gives the 1026264 (least significant 264).

I also have the suspicion that the Imperium is the kind of place where those counts are tabulated by hand.

 

[tjoneslo]

The population of the each world should Pop multiplier (the first digit of the PBG numbers) times 10 ^ Pop Code. . Since all of the worlds in the Imperium for the 1105 data set have been reviewed by the T5 Second Survey, they should all have this number.

It is possible for a world to be Barren. It will have a trade code of Ba, with both a pop multiplier of 0 and a pop code of 0. This case really should be counted as a population of 0.

For the extra picky, the way the pop multiplier is generated violates Benford's Law. For the Trade Map summary in the wiki, I have two different methods of re-scaling the population multiplier to match Benford's and you end up with a population between 10 and 12 trillion.

Finally, for the missing worlds. As the Imperial Propaganda minister writing the copy for the majesty of the Imperium, I would include the 1,783 worlds of the Solomani Confederation. The Solomani Rim war never completed with anything other than a ceasefire, and the Imperium still claims those worlds. So just to give the Solis another poke in the eye, remind them the Confederation lost their war.

You can make up handwaves about counting the secondary worlds, or the star systems with far companions as two main worlds. But that's a technical argument.

 

[aramis]

I'm trying to sanity check my import of the TravellerMap datasets, and I'm curious what the canonical population of the imperium is. I got a total of 13 trillion 120 billion 378 million 976 thousand 264 in 8750 populated Imperial systems.

I counted systems with an allegiance starting with "Im" and used the algorithm of 10^(uwp population) * (ru factor, if it exists, 1 if it doesn't, and 0 is counted as 1).

According to that algorithm a population code of 0 results in a single person (10^0 = 1), and I'm not sure if that's correct, but that won't make much of a difference in population.

The curious thing is that there are only 8750 populated systems, isn't the Imperium supposed to be an 11,000 world empire?

I'm still early on in this and it's possible there was some problem with the import and merge - but just so I know what I should be looking for, what is the population of the Imperium?

The distribution looks mostly random:

Many of the other worlds may be non-mainworlds.

Note that several published sectors were not validly generated by the Bk3 rules. Most notably, Core, The Spinward Marches and the Solomani Rim.

 

[sudnadja]

The population of the each world should Pop multiplier (the first digit of the PBG numbers) times 10 ^ Pop Code. . Since all of the worlds in the Imperium for the 1105 data set have been reviewed by the T5 Second Survey, they should all have this number.

That changes things: new population count is 19 trillion 110 billion 227 million 397 thousand 920 in 9258 worlds. Using the correct value for population multiplier changes things pretty dramatically.

Mean world population is 700,000.

Mean Tech level is 9.82, Median is 10, which I also think is below the general Imperial Propaganda Department claims. The average Imperial Citizen can expect to grow up in a Tech Level=11.96 environment, implying that higher population worlds tend to have higher tech levels.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

How are you counting Tech Level?

There are different ways to generate the result.
Per World will give you one result based on the 8000-9000 records
Another way to do it would be weighted sample based on what each member of the 13 trilllion/19 trillion sophonts enjoy. So a world with 200000 TL 5 is 200000 votes for TL 5, a world with 6 billion TL F is 6 Billion votes of TL 15.

IN ADDITION
You may need to assign weight to Tech Level itself.
Traveller 5.09 rules pg. 495 imply (but does not explicitly state) that each Tech Level is a logarithmic progression of Tech so TL 2 is 10 times more powerful than TL 1, TL 3 is 100 times more powerful than TL 1, etc. Power of 10 and magnitude used here implies a logarithmic scale.

DESCRIBING TECHNOLOGY
Technology is described by a hierarchy of Technological Levels (or Tech Levels or TLs). Each TL represents a significant increase over the capabilities of the previous TL.
Powers of 10. A TL is roughly an order of magnitude increase in capability (across the three measures of technology: labor enhancement, quality improvement, and achievement of impossibilities).

So for 200000 TL 5 = 200000 x (10⁵) and so on. Once you have total points, divide by population, then determine the Log₁₀ value of that result to determine "average TL" or some such to determine median or mean.

 

[sudnadja]

So for 200000 TL 5 = 200000 x (10⁵) and so on. Once you have total points, divide by population, then determine the Log₁₀ value of that result to determine "average TL" or some such to determine median or mean.

By that math the average citizen's tech level is 14.3163, and if we presume a new derived unit based on that, "Tech Power" of a world, which is population * 10^TL, then only 20 worlds have 43% of the Imperium's Power. The top 40 worlds have 2/3rds of all imperial tech power. The top 100 worlds are 89% of the Imperium's power.

A world by the name of Vincennes would be the most powerful world within the imperium, at tech level 16 and 10 billion population - and I'd never even heard of that name in a traveller context before today.

The distribution of those top 20 worlds, by the way:


Only one of the top 15 has a naval or scout base - 1431 Argi, which is interesting. Given that to seize the imperium's power, based on this metric, you'd think the top worlds would be more protected.

 

[sudnadja]

Finally, for the missing worlds. As the Imperial Propaganda minister writing the copy for the majesty of the Imperium, I would include the 1,783 worlds of the Solomani Confederation. The Solomani Rim war never completed with anything other than a ceasefire, and the Imperium still claims those worlds. So just to give the Solis another poke in the eye, remind them the Confederation lost their war.

You can make up handwaves about counting the secondary worlds, or the star systems with far companions as two main worlds. But that's a technical argument.

Counting Im* and So* Allegiances, there are 10987 worlds, however, discarding worlds that have a distance of > 300 parsec from Terra we are left with 10694 worlds with a population of 20 trillion 701 billion 956 million 137 thousand 140.

I'm not sure what those worlds are, "JGGR" sector, for example, apparently ~ 4000 parsec away from Terra.

It looks odd on a histogram:

 

[Nathan Brazil]

A world by the name of Vincennes would be the most powerful world within the imperium, at tech level 16 and 10 billion population - and I'd never even heard of that name in a traveller context before today.

The world is referenced in the old DGP Traveller Digest magazine which is out of print and not available. It is also in the MgT1e book Deneb Sector and an important world there.
Technology is an indicator sophistication, not necessarily "power". Traveller 5 uses RU (Resource Units), derived from the Ex (Economic Extension) values. That determines economic power or production capacity. Traveller 5 does not use it for anything in its rules, but this has significance in T4's Pocket Empires

If I may ask sudndja, what is your background in Traveller? Some of your statements indicate a lack experience or focus, but your analyses spot on from what you have to go on. It's not disparagement. As an example, I have most printed Traveller books, but know little of HiWG from the '90s. I am also not the one to ask for details of ship design or space combat. My brain cells do not work well in those areas. OTOH I just may have OCD or obsessiveness on obscure world data. Guilty as charged. :coffeegulp:

 

[tjoneslo]

Counting Im* and So* Allegiances, there are 10987 worlds, however, discarding worlds that have a distance of > 300 parsec from Terra we are left with 10694 worlds with a population of 20 trillion 701 billion 956 million 137 thousand 140.

I'm not sure what those worlds are, "JGGR" sector, for example, apparently ~ 4000 parsec away from Terra.

The JGGR sectors are old versions of the Judges Guild sectors. They are included in the data set as "Far Away" sector for historical interest, but should not be included in your data set. There are a number of these "Far Away" sectors in various places on the map.

 

[sudnadja]

If I may ask sudndja, what is your background in Traveller? Some of your statements indicate a lack experience or focus, but your analyses spot on from what you have to go on. It's not disparagement. As an example, I have most printed Traveller books, but know little of HiWG from the '90s. I am also not the one to ask for details of ship design or space combat. My brain cells do not work well in those areas. OTOH I just may have OCD or obsessiveness on obscure world data. Guilty as charged. :coffeegulp:

I got the original LBB set when I was a early-teenager as a present and was fortunate to have a group that also played. I didn't have any of the supplements at all. The group had a long going, epic campaign which was enormously fun, but we were using complete roll-your-own space combat which was physically based, 3d, and very math heavy. My memory is rusty of that time, but I believe my first contact with ordinary differential equations was through playing traveller and planning space combat.

Our group had only a vague idea of the intended setting and we had largely generated our own, sometimes reusing names but no other details of worlds that we thought were in canon, and I think we might not have been aware that Terra was even in the setting, I don't remember those details.

In the middle of high school I moved, and lost contact with the game for a while, when I found it again and a group that was interested in playing, that group knew about the setting in detail but I would describe certain members of the group as overly fascinated with female Vargr characters and I would describe as furries, had I known the term at the time. My original group was high academic performance and psychologically well put together and the new group felt like a broad collection of varying mental health issues.

That was too much culture shock and it completely turned me away from the game so I ended up buying game materials without actually playing, and kept in contact by reading supplements or BBS / usenet / what have you posts about it.

In the past couple of years I have picked it up again and have a small gaming group, once again respinning our own 3d space combat, but trying to fit traveller ship design rules into that. Our gaming sessions tend to just be settings for us to re-run variations of ship encounter space combat and then several weeks of refining the model of space combat (which, by the way, turns out to be almost impossible. We have never once had an unguided projectile ship to ship hit. Self guided, high acceleration missiles with nuclear munitions are the only thing that works, per our more physically-based rules). I'd describe the space combat in more detail but I think the majority of Traveller players would not even remotely enjoy the way in which we carry it out.

Anyway, that probably explains my history in more detail than you were asking. Original non-supplement LBB with lots of gameplay without the official setting, then becoming familiar with the setting without gameplay.

This time around I am trying to become much more familiar with the canon setting but I still enjoy attempts to explain that setting in the context of the physical universe. I know that is effectively impossible, but it's a fun distraction.