[General Battuta]

Quite so, and even if you assume a growth rate orders of magnitude better you still get a proportionally small bump over the available timeframe. Most of the colonial population needs to be in place right when the Great War ends.

[Luis Dias]

Well lets make numbers up. Lets imagine Capella has some 250 million people and that the majority of systems will be somewhere between a hundred million and a billion, totaling like 5 billion.

Let's imagine people spawning somewhat like post-WW2 but x2 or x3... let's imagine these people all having children, 5 per couple. To reach 5 billion in a single generation, you'd need to start with 1.4 billion people. If we say it's more like 1.5 generations, then it becomes something like almost a billion people. Those people must have come from Sol directly.

Alternatively, we can imagine a giant birthing policy. In vitro stuff, massive school systems, "parents" having each (couple) 30 kids. In this scenario, you'd "only" need ~300 million people (one generation), 60-100 million if we calculate with "more" than a generation.

But this program is unheard of, it's sheer speculation.

[karajorma]

It's worth remembering that the T-V war was mainly a war over which parts of the universe would end up belonging to which race. The point of the war wasn't genocide, it was to gain territory. Which could very easily mean that getting out there and staking a claim to an uninhabited world was not just a case of "seeking a better life" but also of "Doing your duty for the war effort"

[General Battuta]

Yup, and I think the FS1 techroom entries support that. The GTA isn't just a military power, it's an ideological complex that cares about 'unified expansionism' so much that it puts it front and center even when talking to its own pilots.

[Luis Dias]

I am just mesmerized at the speed of events in this particular situation. Kinda makes me wonder why are they taking so much time colonizing mars and jupiter in BP.

Spoiler:

SHOTS WERE FIRED

[General Battuta]

That's actually addressed in the BP fiction!

(their populations are still comparatively enormous compared to extra-solar colonies)

[Luis Dias]

This is why I need some kind of hardware inside my brain, I keep missing / forgetting this stuff.

However, is it me or is the bp fiction stuff improved quite a lot lately?

[Megawolf492]

Most of the colonial population needs to be in place right when the Great War ends.

"In place" meaning outside of Sol or at their "final" colony? I really don't understand how the colonial situation needs to be complete (for the most part) before the Great War ends. Sure, some colonies would have been well established by the end of the TV War. But the colonies beyond Laramis would need more than 2 months to settle.

[General Battuta]

The question here is whether colonists were moving outwards during the event of the 14 year war, right? And the answer is pretty incontrovertibly 'yes'. We know who emerged as regional powers in the IMMEDIATE aftermath of the Great War - the regional powers, the ones worth naming, the ones that persist for more than 20 years even after the GTVA is formed. Some of these powers are centered in systems that were either hotly conflicted or fell under Vasudan military control. This tells us that at least some of the primary centers of colonial power developed in contested regions, and that they were ALREADY centers of power as of the Isolation.

The exact distribution of colonial population isn't really important to the question. There may have been a concentration of population in Delta Serpentis, but it apparently wasn't an overwhelming one. What matters to answering our core question - were colonists at risk during the 14 year war? - is this:

The GTA stated its intent to continue expansion during the 14 year war, and made it a core policy.
The colonial powers that rose immediately after the Isolation were frequently positioned in conflicted regions.
Starvation and shortage apparently led to civilian casualties during the Great War.

The picture that arises is not one of a safe core and limited, conservative expansion that kept colonists safe. It is one of aggressive land-grabbing that armed frontier colonists with the population, infrastructure, and military might to become the centers of Terran power.

[Megawolf492]

The question here is whether colonists were moving outwards during the event of the 14 year war, right?

Not anymore, I don't think. At least not for me. I agree with pretty much everything you said. For me the question is whether they were moving outwards during the Great War. We know Luyten 726-8A wasn't explored until at least the beginning of the Great War, since Laramis wasn't explored then. So if the Luyten New Alliance was formed RIGHT after the Great War (as you say), then people must have been going there during the Great War. Same thing with Adhara and Regulus, but for different reasons why they weren't settled before the Great War. But traveling during an all out war against a Xenophobic enemy (vs. a semi-war against a slightly ticked off enemy) would be suicide most of the time. Sure, you could have the military escort civilians to these places, but we don't see any of that in FS1.

However, if some of these governments formed later (maybe a few months to a few years), that would give time for civilians to move in relative peace. Why the people chose to move there (and allow the governments to rise) is really unknown, but really is the only uncertainty.

[General Battuta]

I'm fairly confident at this point that civilian settlement of contested, dangerous systems was a regular T-V war practice and that attacks against these settlements would have been a primary political and military instrument for both sides during the T-V war.

What happens during the brief time of the Great War isn't something I've really thought about, since the thread analysis was focused on the 14 years prior.

[Luis Dias]

Well, the idea that Sol evacuated into colony space out of the way of the Lucifer is interesting. It could account for so many people residing in the colonies, or at least help. Vasuda Prime was leveled in March 1, and it only reached the Sol node in march 29. 28 days could be enough for Sol to realise the Lucifer was going to go after Earth and get everyone evacuated as soon as possible. Since the battle of Deneb everyone realised there was practically no hope for Earth anyway.

[Grizzly]

Hmm. I see people, ocasionally, drawing a few parallels towards the 20th century and the first and second world wars. Considering what has been explained in this thread already, for casualty figures one has to look to the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, where major colonial powers ocasionally clashed to take each other's colonies. Think Europa Universalis/Victoria, not Hearts of Iron. It only became the "Great War" when the shivans arrived/the axis powers consolidated, radically changing the balance of power.

[Droid803]

Vasuda Prime was leveled in March 1, and it only reached the Sol node in march 29. 28 days could be enough for Sol to realise the Lucifer was going to go after Earth and get everyone evacuated as soon as possible.

Was there really such a large time-gap between the Lucifer wrecking VasudaPrime and it going after Sol?
Feels off with regards to my recollection of the events of FS1, but that could very well just be me...

[karajorma]

Well, the idea that Sol evacuated into colony space out of the way of the Lucifer is interesting. It could account for so many people residing in the colonies, or at least help. Vasuda Prime was leveled in March 1, and it only reached the Sol node in march 29. 28 days could be enough for Sol to realise the Lucifer was going to go after Earth and get everyone evacuated as soon as possible. Since the battle of Deneb everyone realised there was practically no hope for Earth anyway.

That would also explain why border systems like Adhara and Luyten had so much power. If they were evacuating Sol, they'd want to move as far from it as they could in the hope that the Shivans wouldn't pay attention to that world for a while.