Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: aldo_14 on August 01, 2001, 10:40:00 am
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I've been doing some thinking about this, so here goes...
There are roughly 20-23 systems (excluing Sol).... now I'm assuming that around 10-15 have been fully colonised. Each of these systems probably has 2-3 habitated planets, excluding moons and installations.
Given Earths current population (5.5 billion rough), and the likelyhood of larger populations being suported in the future over similar sized areas, I'm assuming there are around 5 billion inhabitants on average for each planet (possibly much more).
At an average of 2.5 planets per system, this gives 5x2.5x15 = 187.5 billion. If you include fronteir worlds /systems, ships, and installations, this would mean the GTVa has a combined population (Terran Vasudan) of around 200 billion, probabaly more.
Assuming 1% of these people are willing, and able, to sign up to fight, this would give an armed force of 2 billion soldiers... taking into account planetary defence, this would give the fleet a couple of 10s of million soldiers at least.
And, it would indicate that the NTF had several million active combatants, based on their success against the GTVA.
Finally, given the likely rate of ships, top speed of Argos', hippocrates, etc at around 20m/s, and the likely capacity of refugee convoys, i would guess that at least 5 billion were killed in Capella. And also several million in the NTF / Shivan wars.
Also, it would indicate the Lucifer killed at least 10-12 billion with it's attack on Vasuda Prime, as it would be most heavily populated Vasudan planet.
Any comments?
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you're being too subjective.
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Originally posted by PhReAk:
you're being too subjective.
In what way?
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You think too much. But it's OK.
That number would make a fair amount of sense, considering the crew numbers of the capships... it mentions an Orion and Hecate with 10000+ crew, and the Colossus had something like 100,000. At the rate large capships get thrown away like so many used tissues in the game, this is obviously not a very significant number. Roughly 20 Corvettes alone bite the dust in FS2, and each must have about half the crew of a destroyer...
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I disagree on the assumption that each planet had 5 billion people. Yes, they probably could have supported it, but its unlikely that 5 billion are there. Some of the major systems might have populations that high, but most probably have only a few million, probably fewer. Space is still mainly a frontier, and frontiers aren't highly populated.
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I know there is a method, but all I see is madness.
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Core GTVA systems (Delta Serpentis, Beta Aquilae, Vega, Beta Cygni, Ribos, (during Great War) and Antares Terran wise and Sirius, Deneb, Alpha Centuari, and Aldeberran for the Vasudans [Vasuda Prime is more then likely a core system due to infrastructure built in orbit after the Great War, but the planet itself is still being reclaimed])
These systems I'd estimate would have populations total in the 3-6 billion range, with the population scattered over several planets in the system.
On Capella, I'd agree with the estimate that 2 billion or so died, and that the other 3 billion were evacuated to nearby systems.
Infrastructure would be able to support the exodus, though the rebuilding of the former NTF axis would be tedious.
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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/ ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/")
[This message has been edited by Ace (edited 08-02-2001).]
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I'm not sure that vasuda, even if it was the fishies homeworld, was the most populated of their planets. It was just a block of sand and undrinkable water. I think the vasudan population expanded really only when they began colonizing other planets.
Well, that's what I think anyway.
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Make sense, considering ho thay recovered so fast, thei homeworld must not have been a huge loss after all. However, you'd think a species evolved in a desert would prefer desert to somewhere... not desert.
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yeah, but vasuda was said to be a tough place even for vasudan standards
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Originally posted by Ace:
On Capella, I'd agree with the estimate that 2 billion or so died, and that the other 3 billion were evacuated to nearby systems.
Didn't Capella have a population of 250 million?
And stop to think for a sec..... how massive an undertaking do you think evacuating 3 BILLION people would be, over a few days? Seriously, we're talking building-Rome-in-a-day level here.
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So would building a star-killing fleet of 5000000000 juggernauts. And the Terrans showed in FS2 that compared to the Shivans they were no pansies about doing tough stuff.
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..... And that has what relevance to the discussion?
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Impossible things are possible in the imaginary future, man. Logistics do not apply.
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I would agree with Ace on the 3-6 billion range, but whether that would be the whole system combined or scattered I'd say the former, and there probably wouldn't be many habitable planets in one system... I mean, both Earth and Vasuda had only one, whole Capella had what, around 3 juding from the command briefs?
As for Capella... Wouldn't 250 million seem a little low for a whole system? Well, yes, they probably convoys every... What did we see in the final mission? 5 minutes? Then let's say a convy of maybe 3 Argos and a Hippo and Tritons every 30mins to 60 mins (when they weren't that desperate)? Ouch..
. They only had a few days. And some of the ships were lost too. So then assume 2 convoys every hour (don't forget that command had to find some escorts for them too!) of 3000 people... That would be 144,000 a day... Give them 5 days and 720,000 would be close. Ow. Then there were probably more than that, but it balances out those who had bad luck and were killed trying to escape. That means either billions were killed or else the each convoy could carry more refegees thank I could guess they can or else a lot more conoys.
A possibly more effective system would possbily to cram a few onto warships, but that would have its own sets of headaches too.
[This message has been edited by Ypoknons (edited 08-03-2001).]
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250 mill actually sounds about right to me. After all, the system was colonized relativly recently (especially compared to Sol and Delta Serprentis). And remember, there is a thriving space trade going on, so there were probably lots of civilian transports, colony ships, bulk freighters, ect, that we never saw.
As for Vasuda Prime, it wasn't a major world. Near the beginning of FS1, the Vasudans were actually on the verge of losing it. So its likely most of their key industrial and govermental structures had long since left the planet (think Soviet Union, WWII). When the Lucifer wasted it, it took nothing for the Vasudans to get right back up and get going. Earth was a much harder loss, as it was the industrial and govermental center of the GTA.
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I know there is a method, but all I see is madness.
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Originally posted by Ypoknons:
Give them 5 days and 720,000 would be close.
That's about right, for the area that Alpha was sent to take care of. IIRC, the third wave of transports that came through on Alpha's watch was the last, which would mean that there couldn't have been that many more - however, I'd have to play the mission again to be sure. Sandwich should know...
And Eish is also correct in that Capella was very much a border system and as such, probably much lower populated than systems closer to the GTVA core. If Capella were not a border system and had more people in it, I doubt they would have been willing to blow the nodes off it.
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Originally posted by Setekh:
IIRC, the third wave of transports that came through on Alpha's watch was the last, which would mean that there couldn't have been that many more - however, I'd have to play the mission again to be sure. Sandwich should know...
Which mission is that, Exodus? SM3-06. Lemme check.
EDIT: Doesn't look like it's Exodus. Maybe the final mission?
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[This message has been edited by sandwich (edited 08-04-2001).]
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250 million for Capella sounds right. Although an industrial centre is was colonised only recently.
But for the rest of the planets, the estimates seem too high. Humans only aquired subspace-technology a short while before the T-V War (it says something like that in the FS Reference bible). So lets assume the Terrans had interstellar capacities for about 80 to 100 years. This is still too short a time to create populations that range into the billions.
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Not even, more like 30-50 before Sol was cut off.
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I don't believe that any solid figures were given on Capella's population.
Also the evacutation began at the moment the Sathanas was first sighted in the nebula and began moving towards GTVA space.
The time between that encounter and the collapse of the nodes I believe was at least a week and a half.
I'll need to check, but each convoy ship carried at least several hundred thousand or so.
Between the amounts of ships per convoy, and the relative large amount of time, a figure of slightly under a half a billion I believe seems reasonable.
Also on the amount of convoys per hour, I'd assume that the evacutation would be going at a slightly slower pace then shown in the final mission, but not by a large amount.
So per hour I'd estimate 12 convoys. (since in 10 minutes we saw 3)
The reason why my before figure on Capella was so high was because I forgot that it was a less populated rim system.
Even then Capella must be a mid-range system to be allocated it's own fleet. (which the Aquitaine was flagship of)
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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/ ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/")
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Originally posted by Ace:
I'll need to check, but each convoy ship carried at least several hundred thousand or so.
No way in hell could you fit that many people inside those ships. A thousand, maybe two each.
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1. Despite the fact that the last convoy jumps in only a little before the nova, only about half of the convoy actually gets to the node, they didn't appear to be much in a hurry...
2. Who said that most of the Capella people survived anyway? Half is a bit high, I agree partially
3. They had longer than a day. The evacuation began immediately after the first Sathanas popped up, it would have taken quite a while for that army of slow-moving Sathani to gang up at the staging area, disperse through the node, travel all the way to capella, and finally fly the long stretch to Capella's sun (they never mentioned the Juggernauts taking it in warp stages, in fact indicated slightly the contrary, so that must have taken days...) Capella's population had quite a long time to get the hell out of the way, and since the entire Terran-Vasudan fleet was presumably involved in helping out, I think the efforts of half a galaxy would transport most of the Cappellans out in time...
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12 convoys an hour? That seems to be overdoing it a little... Since the last pre-supernova was the desperate final evac. I personally wouldn't say more than five at the earlier stages. So for the high estimate let's 7.5 days with 9 3000-ppl convoys an hour. Note that this would a more optimistic estimate, so...
4,860,000 would be the number. Still *just* 4.8 million people - yikes if you think there were billions.
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No way in hell could you fit that many people inside those ships. A thousand, maybe two each.
In SM3-06 the entire convoy (two Argos, a medical frigate, and a Triton freighter) has an amount of "several hundred thousand" as mentioned in a failure debriefing.
I'd guess that the medical ship contains 100 thousand and each Argo contains 50 thousand.
That of course is guessing that "several hundred thousand" is 200,000. More then likely the number was higher.
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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/ ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/")
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Which is blatantly unrealistic. A Hippocrates can provide medical care to 'several thousand patients,' cramming 100,000 people inside a ship that size would be impossible, simply from a volume standpoint. An Argo, at a mere 171 meters long, would likewise be patently incapable of carrying 50,000 people.
Any evacuation effort would be hampered by several things. Firstly, the transport capacity of GTVA ships. There is a finite number of people you can cram into a ship, beyond which you'll run into casualties simply due to transport. Secondly, there's getting them into orbit in the first place. Ships like the Hippocrates are obviously not designed to land on a planet, which brings us to point 3, that being moving the people to the ships in the first place. How long do you think it would take to load even 1000 people into a transport, launch into space, rendezvous with another ship, transfer them over, then repeat on the other end? Finally, judging from the condition of many of the transports, they wouldn't be able to make more than one or two trips, you can't do repairs in the middle of an evacuation efforts.
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Well Shrike, go yell at Mike Breault at Volition for making such a blatantly unrealistic line in an FS2 mission (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/ ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/")
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I'll yell at him for the 500 tons of AM in a Tsunami as well. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/lol.gif)
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Naturally sizes are going to be averaged... huge ships shrunk and tiny ships expanded... this is perfectly natural and used for the sake of convienience (Imagine trying to pass a ship that really could fit 50000 people, what with all the other stuff a ship rtequires, as well as life support, it would be as big as a large city and take a boring 5-15 minutes (if you think this is acceptable time, time yourself during a game, time sense gets expanded to the point whee 30 secs seems like 5 mins.)just to pass in front of on even the fastest fighter... A game with the actual scale would not be packed with action or indeed fun at all, it would be boring and seem unrealistic.
Also, another thing to consider, just because a capship is so big in proportion to your fighter, often throws off your idea of scale... look at the game in the outside camera mode for once, see how tiny that little cockpit is compared to your fighter and then how big compared to a destroyer- they really would have quite a volume.
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So sayeth the Human Crab.
Left Behind:
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The Colossus had a crew of 30,000 don't forget, and that wasn't an enormous part of the ship's volume. However, the ships involved in the evacuation were not particularly large, really.
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Like I said- the game is not really to scale. Although generally they say that there are a few hundred people in an Argo- which looks right, particularly since refugees would be packed in like cattle.
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The Colossus is ridiculous, however. It is NOT 3 times the size of a Hecate!
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By volume however (note:these are bound box sizes)
Hecate: 4.073284664 Cubic KM (1532/1223/2174)
Collosus: 19.352792836 Cubic KM (1327/2204/6617)
So you see, the Collossus, even considering it's only ~1/2 the size of it's boundbox, is ~3 times the volume of the Hecate by my estimate.
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Like I said- the game is not really to scale.
Also, FreeSpace ships are to scale.
All vessels are within meters and are accurate to one another in this respect.
FRED2 also operates within a meter scale, FreeSpace 2 craft as well as FreeSpace ships are all built to work in the proper scale.
Perceived size often is smaller then actual ship size due to angles or in many cases poor mission design with 3rd parties.
(for example, the FS1 demo gave the impression that the Fenris was massive due to the initial angle)
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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/ ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/")
[This message has been edited by Ace (edited 08-05-2001).]
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the Fenris is massive.. take a Serapis and fly right next to it and look at an outside view.... hehe
Its kinda like Independence War 2, you think all the ships are so small(and you being small as well) but they are rather large!
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However, the cockpit view (the one everybody has to use, so it's what matters) is not. It's larger than the actual fighter. Which does tend to give a diminished sense of scale.
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yea thats probably right.... it should be narrowed down a lot, not this huge thing (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/lol.gif)
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-Director of the staff of Hidden Terror. ("http://www.hiddenterror.f2s.com")
-Fleet Admiral of The Ancients Armada ("http://ancientsarmada.cjb.net/")
The fear always controls our attitude, let us fear no more!
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And besides, it doesn't matter that they talk about the meters, etc. If a fighter ship needs that much stufdf just to support a single person, than a ship holding 10000 people would need to be 9000 times as big at least. Which the capships aren't.
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Orion: 1073144856 m3
Erinyes: 3640 m3
1073144856/3640=294820.0154
As you see, the Orion's volume is 30000x larger. Also, you must remember, most of the space is taken up in a fighter by engines and munitions, which would not take up as much room in a destroyer.
[This message has been edited by Grey Wolf 2009 (edited 08-06-2001).]
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Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009:
Orion: 1073144856 m3
Erinyes: 3640 m3
1073144856/3640=294820.0154
As you see, the Orion's volume is 30000x larger. Also, you must remember, most of the space is taken up in a fighter by engines and munitions, which would not take up as much room in a destroyer.
[This message has been edited by Grey Wolf 2009 (edited 08-06-2001).]
lol, I doubt the erynies is 3km3 lol
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Stop being right, dammit! How about an Argo?
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Originally posted by venom2506:
lol, I doubt the erynies is 3km3 lol
A cubic km is 1 billion cubic meters. Argo=1255854 m3, and if the Orion holds 30000, considering the removal of the massive weapons system, I'm guessing it could hold maybe 200 people, and that would be a tight fit.
Edit: On second thought make that 100.
[This message has been edited by Grey Wolf 2009 (edited 08-06-2001).]
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The Argo is a 171 m long transport. That's sufficient room, going by modern seagoing vessels, to fit at least a thousand people, if it's configured properly.
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Yeah but no, coz a seaboat doen't have to protect against vacuum, doesn't have to bring air for I don't know how long, doesn't have to carry shields to protect from extremely cold temperature on one side, and extremely hot on the other (if you're not to far from a star of course). For the same capacity, a space is ship necessarly bigger imo.
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venom2506 (http://terra.sourceforge.net/images/xanim05.gif)
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*sigh* I think you're all losing sight of the real reason here- it's a game!!!
Don't get so hung up on details. A few posts is plenty about this mind-blisteringly uninteresting and surreal topic. Who knows what tech they would have/need? Maybe the entire mechanism would fit in the palm of my hand! Maybe it has to be the size of Manhattan! It was interesting for a while, but it's really past time to just shrug yer shoulders and move on, because there is no good answer.
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Well, detail is exactly what this thread is about.
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Yeah but no, coz a seaboat doen't have to protect against vacuum, doesn't have to bring air for I don't know how long, doesn't have to carry shields to protect from extremely cold temperature on one side, and extremely hot on the other (if you're not to far from a star of course). For the same capacity, a space is ship necessarly bigger imo.
You're assuming that its difficult to do something like that in 200-300 years from now. Even if the armor plating is thick...and the engines are rather large...that still leaves room for significant personell space.
The evac ships would probably be stuffed to the gills remember.
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Not really. Like was pointed out before (I think), the fighters are huge, and most of that space would not be necessary to hold rockets or guns, etc. Those little one-person interceptors are at least a hundredth the size of an Argo (more like a thirtieth or less), which is supposed to hold a thousand people.
And you're right, Steak, but I had no better answer at the time.