[Luis Dias]

A million deaths per year is equal to 10 x 10 thousand?

Anyways I agree, the losses barring orbital bombardment should be pretty low, in the order of hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million (civilian ships and stations mostly), tops.

[InsaneBaron]

A million deaths per year is equal to 10 x 10 thousand?

Anyways I agree, the losses barring orbital bombardment should be pretty low, in the order of hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million (civilian ships and stations mostly), tops.

Excuse my early-morning math failure syndrome (EMMFS). I understated my own case  One Hundred destroyers lost per year makes Inferno look like a petty squabble.

[Black Wolf]

I was assuming most if those casualties would be from ground combat, and that casualties from ship to ship combat would represent a relatively small fraction of the total deaths.

[General Battuta]

Given the massive colonization push going on at the same time I suspect a large portion of the deaths would be civilians and colonists who fell victim to blockade or disruptions in supply, leading to ecosystem collapse or fluctuations in access to vital material.

[Mobius]

But honestly, did it even make sense for a Terran civilian to leave Sol during an intergalactic war between two different species (where the Geneva conventions did not apply and none of the sides could force the other not to shoot at civilians), and live in a place that was just one intersystem jump away from either a Vasudan controlled system or a disputed system?

Obviously, I'm not denying the colonization of all those systems beyond Sol which would have later become the Terran controlled systems of the GTVA, but I find this whole idea that a great many civilians were killed during the T-V War to be rather weird. Most civilians were probably away from the frontlines and lived in colonies where the risk of a serious attack was minimal. Also, I may be wrong, but I can't find any canonical references pointing out to massacres of civilians during the T-V War... that's something the FS Bible or the Tech descriptions would report, right?

[General Battuta]

The GTA's central ideology was canonically one of expansion and colonization, and the layout of the timeline means that most of this colonization must have happened during the T-V war.

[Mobius]

But surely not in a way that would have endangered civilians. I don't think the civilians used to move to the frontlines during the war; they likely preferred "safe" systems like Delta Serpentis, which later became the new capital of the GTA after the Sol jump node collapsed. That is hardly a coincidence and is probably tied to the Terran colonization of nearby systems: Delta Serpentis eventually the capital because it was safe during the T-V War and millions of Terrans were living there in 2335.

2335: Delta Serpentis becomes the new capital for the remainder of the Galactic Terran Alliance. Contact with Sol not re-established as of 2367.

[General Battuta]

Just by the position of the systems the GTA (and the Vasudans) end up colonizing, odds are that colonies will be in the line of military operations. History suggests neither side is likely to draw a sharp line between military targets and civilian shipping, and since the strategic and ideological objectives of both parties include land grabbing, colonists will probably be treated as fair game for raiding and anti-merchant work, if not necessarily full-scale nuclear attacks.

Most civilian casualties would come from disruptions in the colonization program caused by military events: starvation, ecosystem collapse, interruptions of supply, untreated epidemics. The colony program is quite rapid and the sheer number of human beings that need to be moved to achieve FS2 population numbers is colossal.

There's also the question of the species gap. Human psychology, at least, will make it fairly easy to sanction mass killings of Vasudan civilians.

[Mobius]

Judging from the canon information that we have, the most cruel battles of the Terran Vasudan War were fought in isolated, unimportant systems or planets we don't know anything about. They're not mentioned in FS2, they don't appear in Tech descriptions citing key planets and systems, etc. That leads me to believe the collateral damage of those battles was minimal.

We've got the Battle of Gulnara (Terran victory), the Battle of Talania (Vasudan victory), the Battle of Rexias 4 (probably a Terran defeat) and the Vega Engagement. Without considering the Vega Engagement, which refers to an entire system, all battles refer to places that are never cited as important (and therefore populated) in the FreeSpace continuity.

[General Battuta]

Exactly my point above. Most civilian casualties would come from disruptions in the colonization program caused by military events: starvation, ecosystem collapse, interruptions of supply, untreated epidemics. The colony program is quite rapid and the sheer number of human beings that need to be moved to achieve FS2 population numbers is colossal.

[Mobius]

I don't understand how civilians could experience any of those problems in systems that were far behind the frontlines. In Delta Serpentis, for example, it would have been nearly impossible to experience starvation or supply interruptions.

Also:

The colony program is quite rapid and the sheer number of human beings that need to be moved to achieve FS2 population numbers is colossal.

Since when the population of Terran systems in FS2 is believed to be high?

[General Battuta]

The systems they're moving to aren't going to be so much 'behind the frontlines' as 'literally the frontlines' in a lot of cases, and so are the lines of supply for those colonies. In order to reach the distribution and population density required for FS2 to work by the time FS1 ends, the colonization program has to be going on during the war and in the middle of it, spatially.

[MatthTheGeek]

Since when the population of Terran systems in FS2 is believed to be high?

Just look at the numbers from the evacuation of Capella. Even if you assume Capella was one of the largest ones, that still makes hundreds of millions of people.

[General Battuta]

Yep, you need to get '250 million' to be your 'densely populated' standard in roughly ~50 years, with 32 of those probably involving fairly limited population growth.

[Mongoose]

Either that or everyone screwed like rabbits.

[General Battuta]

I thought about that! But even if Capellan citizens reproduced as rapidly in 50 years as the entire nation of China in 100 years, it would still only triple its population, giving an initial seed population in the first year of the Terran-Vasudan War of 83 million. Given 10,000 crew aboard an Orion (the canonical figure from FS2), that's 8,300 Orion-loads deposited into Capella alone, plus necessary supporting infrastructure.

So just to get Capella to the necessary start population assuming you left it alone from year zero of the TVW onward requires a spectacular effort. Assuming you distribute that effort over every day of the 14 year war, you're still depositing nearly 2 Orions worth of people in Capella alone EVERY SINGLE DAY. And that's assuming they breed twice as fast as China in the 20th century!

[Dragon]

Perhaps it could also be that people live longer and can reproduce for longer in FS universe. It wasn't really established in game, and given the year, not really unlikely. Remember that not only birth rates, but also death rates matter, and I imagine the latter would be quite low. As long as you're not a redshirt pilot, the average life expectation could be around 300 years for all we know.
Also, while Orion has 10.000 people crew, it's a warship, not a colony ship. Dedicated colonization ships probably carry a lot more people.

[General Battuta]

Improved standard of living doesn't tend to push people towards a population expansion rate double 20th century China's, though. Usually the opposite. China's stats include all the mortality factors that would slow that expansion, and some of those factors might well be gone...but even if you assume Capella's seed population bred at 4x the rate of 20th century China (which, well, damn) you're still talking about a huge amount of lift arriving in Capella alone every day of the war.

[Mongoose]

Yeah that was meant as a very unlikely possibility.

[swashmebuckle]

Or the colony ships just bring along egg/sperm banks and can manufacture artificial wombs. Shake and bake!