I never pinned anything on the word 'Imperium'. Instead, I've based my views of the information within "Pocket Empires", which is canon and the only canon macro-economic ruleset for the Imperium thus far (afaik... not TCS, nor Striker....). The fledgling Imperium used access to tech goods as the carrot to get worlds to join and the Navy, and trade restrictions/interdictions ( control of trade ) as the stick.
Sorry, I don't own Pocket Empires and have never set eyes on it. I've heard other people talk about it, but the only canon I know comes out of CT and those bits of GURPS and MegaTrav that I've been able to get my hands on - and some of the old JTAS mags.
As regards Pocket Empires vs CT, I'd think that CT canon was more relevant to the CT universe; nothing inconsistent about assuming the fledgling empire of a thousand years back was different from the "modern" empire. Perhaps over the course of a thousand years of expansion, civil wars, regicides, and wars with neighbors, they found reason to alter their modus operandi.
Almost completely autonomous.
Almost completely autonomous. No political system operated by humans will ever perform exactly as advertised. The CT description of the Imperium is best thought of as the version taught to elementary school children; the adults quickly figure out that it's a good deal more complex than what they were taught as kids.
The Imperium controls space and they also own and control the starports. Nothing can legally go in or out of the world without Imperium's authorization.
Where there are significant starports, yes. There are also worlds where the starport is nothing more than bare ground and a beacon. Clearly the Imperium exercises control only where the level of traffic warrants control.
Go through the starports or else you're smuggling. Suppression of such is one of the police actions the Navy engages in.
It also has a large measure of control over 'official' flow of information between worlds with the xboat link data being the 'official' data used by governments.
True, but the official flow of information is not the only flow of information. Anyone who wants info to go from A to B can carry it themselves, formally pay a ship to take it, secrete it in some other cargo, or pay some crewman under the table to carry the far future equivalent of a flash drive or data disc. Ergo, while the Imperium can use the "official" pathway to indicate sanctioned information, it cannot block the flow of information with any confidence of success.
As far as trade disparities go, tech levels cost money and thus are distributed along wealth or income distribution curves. Gini values are something that the game designers never considered.
Apparently something I never considered either. What's a GINI value?
...Unfortunately, that definition is self-contradictory. It assumes that ability to manufacture and ability to maintain and repair is one and the same. This is clearly not the case. You can import and maintain a lot of stuff that you can't manufacture. And it's not what the setting description assumes either. Strictly speaking mining colonies should have a TL of 0, since they import everything and manufacture nothing, yet there no mining colonies in canon that does not have a higher TL than that.
I've been plugging a revised defintion that goes something like this: A world's tech level is the level of the bulk of the technology enjoyed by a significant fraction of its population. That way, it can be locally manufactured or it can be imported. ...
Agreed. The canon definition applies best to heavily populated worlds; it doesn't make sense when applied to small populations such as a mining or agri colony. I find your definition makes a lot more sense, though it's less able to explain significant tech disparities. I'd say economics could play a role except that newer tech tends to cost less and be more productive.
