Originally posted by GrandAdmiralAbaht:
I recently played the FS1 campaign over again and Admiral Shima said in a command breifing that the death toll on the planet was over 10 billion.
That is more people that lived in the entire Capella system! I think that that planet had to be quite habitable to sustain so many Vasudans.
I don't remember if it was 5 billion or 7 billion or 10 billion Vasudans that died on Vasuda Prime when the Lucifer arrived and blasted the planet. Regardless, it was several billion, I remember that much at least. CP, could you check Admiral Shima's Command Briefing to see what the actual count of Vasudan deaths was?
As for Capella, Admiral Petrarch mentioned in one of his Command Briefings that the total population of the Capella system was 250 million Terrans, considerably less than the 10 billion Vasudans who died at Vasuda Prime 32 years prior. Ahbat is correct when he says that Vasuda Prime had a bigger population than the entire Capella system.
Abaht is correct about Vasuda Prime being so habitable to support 10 billion Vasudans in spite of the fact that it is mostly desert. (Slightly off-topic: does anyone here know what the popualtion of Dune/Arrakis is, by any chance? I'm just curious.) We did see cities on Vasuda Prime in the FS1 cutscene of the Lucifer blasting VP. VP might have been a harsh desert planet but it was still habitable enough for the Vasudans to thrive there; if 10 billion isn't a thriving population, I don't know what is.
Even so, after VP got blasted, most everything of value would be gone. After all, the Lucifer blasted the planet for 13 hours straight, with most or all of the cities as primary targets. The surface of VP is probably mostly glass as a result of the bombardment (sand turns to glass under extreme heat, FYI). If most of the planet's surface s now glass, then it's easy to see why VP would be uninhabitable. If 10% of the surface is still habitable, then I guess, *maybe* the Vasudans could try to repopulate it, but if I were Khonsu II, it wouldn't be a high priority for me. With all of the cities blasted into ash and glass, the only remaining habitable surface would be empty desert. Reinvesting resources to making VP populated again might not be worth it, especially after the strain of the Second Great War.
I think Ace is correct about having installations in the system as well; those four jump nodes DO make VP a strategicly valuable system, so installations would be needed to control them.
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