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Author Topic:   Population sizes for planets
Marc
Stormtrooper

Posts: 66
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 11 February 2000 09:10 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Marc   Click Here to Email Marc     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Has anyone ever realized that Coruscant has only 5 billion people living on it? If earth right now can have over 6 billion and coruscant is basically one giant city 100's of levels high, why do only 5 billion people live there. Besides that, can anyone give me pointers as to assigning populations to planets i make up. Are there any general guidelines to do this. I feel that the books give planets much less than they should have. I realize that there is a whole galaxy out there to expand into but most homeworld planets still don't have much more than a billion.

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Marc Prados

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Jedi_Shadow
Trooper

Posts: 346
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 11 February 2000 10:33 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Jedi_Shadow   Click Here to Email Jedi_Shadow     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
5 billion? The number I saw was 400 billion, which is closer to the mark. Where did you read 5 billion?

As far as other planets are concerned, there are a lot of factors. Outer Rim planets can range anywhere from several million to several billion, whereas Core Worlds tend to have a higher population. Also, if the planet has been isolated, for one reason or another, it's population would explode because nobody was leaving, and babies are always born...

[This message has been edited by Jedi_Shadow on 11 February 2000 at 10:38 PM.]

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Armage Bedar
Emperor

Posts: 477
Registered: Oct 1999

posted 11 February 2000 10:46 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Armage Bedar   Click Here to Email Armage Bedar     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
"Also, if the planet has been isolated, for one reason or another, it's population would explode because nobody was leaving, and babies are always born..."

Not always. It depends more on the ratio of births to deaths rather than immigration and emigration - if people are dying at the same rate they're being bored, there is zero population growth. Earth, for example, has a positive population growth rate - we are getting close to 6 billion, and this factor will increase exponentially.

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- Armage Bedar
The STATS Man
Administrator, SW-RPG HoloNet Discussion Forums
Imperial Technology Systems

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Jedi_Shadow
Trooper

Posts: 346
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 11 February 2000 10:54 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Jedi_Shadow   Click Here to Email Jedi_Shadow     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
That's true, Armage, but as I said earlier, "..there are a lot of factors." Technically, you could put any number you wanted, as long as you gave a plausible explanation. I've had characters visit planets where the population hadn't passed 1,000.

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Marc
Stormtrooper

Posts: 66
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 11 February 2000 11:22 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Marc   Click Here to Email Marc     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
It said 5 billion in the thrawn trilogy source book. Anyway, its just the few places I've looked in just gave what I thought to be some low populations for most planets. The thrawn tril book and tramp freighters are two i know I was looking in.

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Marc Prados

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Kayle Skolaris
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Posts: 674
Registered: Feb 2000

posted 12 February 2000 04:14 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Kayle Skolaris   Click Here to Email Kayle Skolaris     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
You wanna see a more realistic figure for a planet-wide city? On Curtis Saxton's page he speculates that if Coruscant is as densely populated world-wide as a mid-sized Earth city (He used the Australian suburbs of Perth in his example) then the population of Coruscant must be on the order of 9 TRILLION beings! He goes on to say that since the majority of the suburbs of Perth are single-level homes and the spires of Coruscant average two miles high, the total population of Coruscant is on the close order of several THOUSAND TRILLION beings and certainly no less than several hundred trillion! That's assuming no more than 10,000-20,000 people per square kilometre. And you thought New York City was crowded!

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Ubiqtorate
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Posts: 487
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posted 12 February 2000 03:01 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ubiqtorate   Click Here to Email Ubiqtorate     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Uh . . . wow.

--Ubiqtorate

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Kayle Skolaris
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Posts: 674
Registered: Feb 2000

posted 12 February 2000 03:30 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Kayle Skolaris   Click Here to Email Kayle Skolaris     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Agreed. When I saw those numbers I nearly fell out of my chair! If it were anyone BUT Curtis Saxton posting them I'd say they were flat fraggin' insane, but I've spent a lot of time on his site and I've conversed with him via E-Mail. He is one of the most level-headed, down-to-earth people I know on or offline. If he says those numbers are reasonable, I'm inclined to believe him.

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Ubiqtorate
Trooper

Posts: 487
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posted 13 February 2000 07:49 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ubiqtorate   Click Here to Email Ubiqtorate     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Suppose we assume that Coruscant, in general is a lot more crowded than suburban Perth (which seems reasonable). If we were to assume that the entire planet is as densely populated as, say, downtown New York, what kind of population estimate would that give us? More than nine trillion, it'd have to be, but probably less than a quadrillion. That figure seems like just a little too much.

--Ubiqtorate

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Nealos
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Posts: 140
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 14 February 2000 10:57 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Nealos   Click Here to Email Nealos     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Actually Armage, the Earth does *not* have a truly positive growth rate. This is how it goes:

Picture a wide bowl that you are pouring water into from above. As you start filling the bowl, the water falls to the center and pushes out along the sides. Then, it recedes to a natural settling point, only to get pushed more by the additional water coming into the center. This very much mimicks the tides.

As the Earth fills with people, the growth does not steadily increase. It experiences peaks and recessions, much like a tide does. This info is, of course, only useful to those that are really into calculating population stuff.

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Nealos
Webmaster, SWSRC
Co-webmaster, Starwars-rpg.net

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Ubiqtorate
Trooper

Posts: 487
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 14 February 2000 02:23 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ubiqtorate   Click Here to Email Ubiqtorate     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Nealos, are you trying to tell me that the population of the Earth has always been five or six billion, or is this just an incredibly large uptide that's lasted for the past six thousand years of recorded history?

--Ubiqtorate

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Armage Bedar
Emperor

Posts: 477
Registered: Oct 1999

posted 14 February 2000 08:05 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Armage Bedar   Click Here to Email Armage Bedar     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
"As the Earth fills with people, the growth does not steadily increase. It experiences peaks and recessions, much like a tide does. This info is, of course, only useful to those that are really into calculating population stuff."

I meant to say "average population growth", but Ubiqtorate proves my point anyways...

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- Armage Bedar
The STATS Man
Administrator, SW-RPG HoloNet Discussion Forums
Imperial Technology Systems

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Ubiqtorate
Trooper

Posts: 487
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 14 February 2000 11:02 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ubiqtorate   Click Here to Email Ubiqtorate     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Thank you, Armage.

And has anyone seen the projections for population growth, just in the next century? They're pretty impressive. And if we can sustain that kind of growth, and that kind of growth acceleration, which some experts suppose we can, the sort of numbers Curtis Saxton is coming up with don't seem quite so far-fetched after all.

--Ubiqtorate

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