Population of the Imperium

[ShawnDriscoll]

Started mapping today. No sector labels yet. But I did notice that Gateway (top-right sector) has its stars spaced out evenly almost. Big dots are high pop worlds.

 

[sudnadja]

Started mapping today. No sector labels yet. But I did notice that Gateway (top-right sector) has its stars spaced out evenly almost. Big dots are high pop worlds.

In general that looks pretty close to what I get (for Gateway sector), though in this I scale the size of the dot representing the system by Log(population).



However, I do count 34 worlds with the Hi (High population) remark, which seems to be more than you show.

{"Guntar", "Granth", "Shaneyfelt", "Galvestar", "Tarkaan", "Nng Min \
Sa", "Wolden", "Windfleet", "Vosrin", "Foriv", "Quetzal", \
"Condominium", "Plavis", "Tamerij", "Tharver", "Salur", "Galesta", \
"Hanumisk", "Cresta", "Perelaar", "Urel", "Orage", "Taravesh", \
"Trindel", "Vole", "Dolmen", "Dover", "Megucorp Alpha", "Sardis", \
"Harper", "Balaclaron", "Santee", "Ravashar", "Megucorp Beta"}

 

[GypsyComet]

Much of the Gateway region is more thinly populated with stars. Turn off sector names and borders in Traveller Map and zoom to where the dot map is widest, and you can see that the area between the Lesser and Delphi Rifts is thin through Ley and Fornast. This extends through much of Glimmerdrift and Crucis Margin, and I lowered the density in much of Luretiir!girr to keep the thin region from being blatantly bounded by sector borders on all sides.

At a meta development level it keeps the K'kree bounded a bit, as their ships are already payload inefficient. Making J2 or J3 the only way to do business in the region squeezes cargo space even more, so Humans and others dominate the region through cheaper infrastructure.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I was just looking at the highest of the high.

 

[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".

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).

A more complete follow up:

I'm now more confident in my import and processing of the datasets. Presuming M1105 && (Official || InReview || Preserve) && OTU:

The Imperium proper has a population between 18049041349210 and 21832723838665 in 8988 worlds.

Including the Solomani Confederation, the population is between 20701956137140 and 25213709314036 in 10771 worlds.

Third Imperium and client states, but not including the Solomani Confederation, population is between 18213653971700 and 22050763178831 in 9223 worlds.

Third Imperium, Client States and Solomani Confederation: 20866568759630 to 25431748654202 in 11006 systems.

Population of all of charted space, given the constraints above (M1105 && (Official || InReview || Preserve) && OTU): 41200510238232 to 50581438437642 in 25494 systems.


For the Imperium proper, 98% of the population is in the 1127 most populous worlds, and 50% of the population is in the 118 most populous worlds.

I noticed that the estimates in places like this: http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Sword_Worlds_Subsector
Sword Worlds, subsector J of Spinward Marches has 28 worlds, of which 23 have native gas giants. The estimated population for the subsector is 35 billion sophonts (not necessarily humans)


The population count I get is 35783800060 to 48277200046, implying that the estimates in the wiki uses the low bound rather than the mean of the low and high bound (which would be 42030500053). Is there a reason for that, do you know?

 

[tjoneslo]

I noticed that the estimates in places like this: http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Sword_Worlds_Subsector
Sword Worlds, subsector J of Spinward Marches has 28 worlds, of which 23 have native gas giants. The estimated population for the subsector is 35 billion sophonts (not necessarily humans)


The population count I get is 35783800060 to 48277200046, implying that the estimates in the wiki uses the low bound rather than the mean of the low and high bound (which would be 42030500053). Is there a reason for that, do you know?

Because I used the same method in generating the population estimate you did: [pop code] rather than your later estimate [pop,pop+1). I have been considering updating the auto generation process to include the range and mean since you posted it, but not updated the wiki. The wiki gets updates infrequently.

 

[sudnadja]

Because I used the same method in generating the population estimate you did: [pop code] rather than your later estimate [pop,pop+1). I have been considering updating the auto generation process to include the range and mean since you posted it, but not updated the wiki. The wiki gets updates infrequently.

Ok. I'd originally used what I did because it was some time before I ran across a statement saying how the population and multipliers worked and the range they represented. I also must adjust my population density computation as world size also represent a range, and I'm guessing hydro-graphics does as well, but just to be clear we want (if pop code is n and pop multiplier is m), with the additional adjustment that if m is 0, treat it as 1:

[ 10^n * m, (10^n *(m+1)) ) ∈ ℤ

or in other words, pop code 1, multiplier 2 would lead to a population of 20 to 29?

 

[tjoneslo]

Ok. I'd originally used what I did because it was some time before I ran across a statement saying how the population and multipliers worked and the range they represented. I also must adjust my population density computation as world size also represent a range, and I'm guessing hydro-graphics does as well, but just to be clear we want (if pop code is n and pop multiplier is m), with the additional adjustment that if m is 0, treat it as 1:

[ 10^n * m, (10^n *(m+1)) ) ∈ ℤ

or in other words, pop code 1, multiplier 2 would lead to a population of 20 to 29?

This is correct. Most people I've seen doing analysis of population simply assumed the simple case. I know I did.

In general the only reason the multiplier would be 0 would be the case where the pop code is also 0, and indicates the world has no people, and should also have the trade code of Ba (barren).

Both the world size and hydrographic percentages are middle of the range values. For example, Hydro 3 indicates a 25% to 35% hydrographic coverage of the world.