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EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: HouseofSebtin on 19 Jan 2011, 05:23
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Has there ever been an estimate or "actual" numbers released on how many people live in eve? I don't mean the Capsuleers but the average dudes and dudettes that live on the planets, work in the space stations and scrub the proverbial toilets on our spaceships?
I'm just wondering this because I imagine all the ships getting blown up all over the place must be a major drain on the general population. I think it was mentioned in a chronicle that around 6000 people were killed when an Amarrian battleship was destroyed thus I think it is reasonable to assume that millions of people must die every day in space.
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Not that I know of.
I hand-wave all population questions to "lots and LOTS", because I have found out that if you try to do the math you'll 1) go crazy, and 2) run into conflicts with people who also did the math, but differently.
6000 is about the whole crew of a battleship. PF confirms escape pods for crew, and also confirms that it is not a 100% sure get-away, so when a battleship dies, the casualties are somewhere between zero and thousands. So yes, a lot of people die in space daily.
Then again, we have lots and lots of inhabited planets with megacities on them, plus all the stations, and smaller colonies.
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Stations have habitants in the hundreds of thousands but no more than a million. There are also deadspace colonies too, the smallest PF reference (in the Burning Life) is in the thousands.
Lowsec planetary colonies have their population in the millions dispersed over the entire planet (hence no city lights). Differs for non-temperate worlds, for example, the Gallente are leaders at subterranean and underwater cities.
Highsec worlds have their population in the billions. Depending on how many "city lights" you can see on the darkside, could be anywhere from 1 to 30 billion, at a rough guess, maybe even more. Gallente and Amarr prefer vertical towers and spires in their megacities (Intaki are more low-rise) while the Caldari have "beehive" conglomerates.
The Amarr Empire has the largest population "in the trillions", followed by the Federation (may be between 4-6 trillion). The Minmatar are the most numerous, but they're not all in the Republic (a fifth reside in the Federation, forming one third total of their population). The Caldari are the smallest, likely to be in the hundreds of billions.
The "scale" of EVE is a lot bigger than 21st century Earth. The smallest settlement IRL would probably have inhabitants in the hundreds, while smallest settlement in EVE is in the thousands
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I've thought about this before, and the only necessary figure I can arrive at, would be in the 1-5 trillion range.
We have a number of hints that Luminaire and New Caldari are pretty densely packed, C-Prime as well. They're not quite ecumenopoli, but hell, I was writing stories about mile-high skyscrapers on New Cal in the beta era. We also have a pretty good picture that the Amarr throne worlds (five of them) are crammed to the gills with slaves and lower caste. I figure these capital worlds, together with Pator, easily sum up a trillion.
Then there's the diaspora. Look at Seyllin - a frontier mining planet, hardly a place you'd expect to find a lot of life, and yet there were hundreds of millions of colonists. How many more rocks like that are out there?
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Seri, do you have any references to your station and colony population numbers? As mentioned above, Seyllin (0.4) had a population in hundreds of millions, way above your estimates.
(It would be nice if you could separate between "I think that" and "PF says that" when you post factual statements like "low sec planets have populations in the millions". A lot of us care whether "truths" come from CCP or another player.)
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I don't exactly talk out my arse when making these decisive statements, Else :P
Example A - Ostingele temperate planet was "completely emptied" in a Sansha attack with 2 million inhabitants.
Example B - Skarkon incident (http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=2051&tid=4). Lowsec system, 10 million population at least.
And yeah, non-temperate worlds in lowsec may have "hundreds of millions", like with Seyllin. PF only indicates the Gallenteans having extensive and large colonies on these worlds though.
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I have seen some blog posts with back-of-the-napkin type calculations on this. Will try to find them today.
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Sorry, Seri, but sometimes people do say stuff that is actually not backed up by PF - sometimes even thinking that it is. See e.g. in my clone study case; a lot of stuff that people spoke of as "facts" turned out not to be. No personal insult meant.
Personally, I do not think that three planets, with populations two million, ten million, and hundreds of millions constitute proof that "Lowsec planetary colonies have their population in the millions dispersed over the entire planets [except for non-temperate planets]". I think what it constitutes proof of is "varies wildly, some having only a million inhabitants, some having hundreds of millions, probably billions".
But like I said. Every time I do the math, it results in a headache and conflicts with other people who do the math differently...
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PF can be pretty self-contradictory, too. There's a quote that shows up here from time to time about how the crew on a pod ship only perform really basic stuff like cleaning. This was taken (IIRC) from one of the novels. That doesn't really jibe that much with the massive crews that PF otherwise calls out - does my Deimos really have 600 people to clean the toilets and make sure the cargo bay is properly packed?
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I always had the impresion that space stations, the ones we use to dock ships in the game, have in the ballpark of 1million inhabitants.
That might seem a lot, but to me, it represents 35% of the actual people at any one time, since there should be quite a bit more of activity from transient population coming and going through.
Moons could have small settlements in the ballpark of 100k , just think in terms of mining towns.
Deadspace locations is harder to estimate, can't really say anything there.
And the big mistery, planets, Seyllin was like the huge mining heaven nearby the core worlds of the Federation, a mere 5 jumps from Luminaire, if it had 200mill it was because of 2 reasons, incredible rich and extended deposits of any valuable minerals, and "walking distance" to a more decent place. That meant people could do shift of 6-8 months and come back home for 1-2 as R&R.
I would not stretch said figure and apply to most worlds out there. Temperate planets sure would seem to provide the framework to sustain large populations, but remember that what can be considered temperate worlds could be planets in the process of terraforming, with their atmosphere partially completed.
Also you need to consider the following, Gallentean/Caldari diasporas were frenetic, they acquired half of what the Amarrian manged to accomplish in less than a quarter of time. So i bet that both core worlds were already saturated and overpopulated. Probably birth control already taking place.
A well established planet could probably house 600-900million, less developed, 200-300million, core worlds 8-9billion.
Just applying a bit of ideas and estimate though, nothing is backed by PF.
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"By the next day, Ishukone was able to confirm the deaths of Otro Gariushi and the entire Gallentean delegation. The estimated death toll stood at 421,000 with as many persons remaining unaccounted."
Source: Evelopedia.
It would depend a lot on the station type, but I'd assume one million would be pretty much the upper limit of station population.
For planets, the population would depend on the importance. Seyllin had a pretty large mining operation going, so assumedly it was very profitable. Other rocks might be considerably poorer. Very hard to throw any kind of estimates when the numbers may vary by two steps of magnitude from millions to hundreds of millions.
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I usually try not too worry about it too much.
Let's say I have 10 fitted battleships at a typical station. That's 60,000 crew right there. Add in other capsuleers, NPC vessels, and then all the people catering to these crew. You will be over a million pretty fast. What happens to a station when 20 Carriers dock and a large part of the crew goes to find some R&R?
I've heard people tell me that a packaged POS somehow contains hundreds of thousands of crew. How else to crew the battleships you build in a Wormhole POS?
Numbers don't make sense in a lot of ways. Planets have lots of people, stations have fewer people, spaceships have still fewer people. Maybe my Battleship has 60 crew, maybe 6000, better not think about it too much....
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Let's say I have 10 fitted battleships at a typical station. That's 60,000 crew right there. Add in other capsuleers, NPC vessels, and then all the people catering to these crew. You will be over a million pretty fast. What happens to a station when 20 Carriers dock and a large part of the crew goes to find some R&R?
I assume the crew stays aboard their ship, cause if their capsuleer tries to undock and they get a message (Sorry, we're just rounding up the last of the shore leave) he might decide to get a new crew.
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Let's say I have 10 fitted battleships at a typical station. That's 60,000 crew right there. Add in other capsuleers, NPC vessels, and then all the people catering to these crew. You will be over a million pretty fast. What happens to a station when 20 Carriers dock and a large part of the crew goes to find some R&R?
I assume the crew stays aboard their ship, cause if their capsuleer tries to undock and they get a message (Sorry, we're just rounding up the last of the shore leave) he might decide to get a new crew.
Naw. Most Eve players spend the majority of the day logged off. When the Captain's in bed, the crew hits the port of call.
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Let's say I have 10 fitted battleships at a typical station. That's 60,000 crew right there. Add in other capsuleers, NPC vessels, and then all the people catering to these crew. You will be over a million pretty fast. What happens to a station when 20 Carriers dock and a large part of the crew goes to find some R&R?
I assume the crew stays aboard their ship, cause if their capsuleer tries to undock and they get a message (Sorry, we're just rounding up the last of the shore leave) he might decide to get a new crew.
Naw. Most Eve players spend the majority of the day logged off. When the Captain's in bed, the crew hits the port of call.
I suspect that stations would only have a small permanent population (somewhere in the thousands) and a massive transient population that is in station for business or R&R. Think Quarks bar in DS9, a handful of Ferengi and Dabo girls servicing all the people about to go through the wormhole. This fits into my own backstory, hundred-thousand people living out of freighters moving from station to station for work.
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To go on a small tangent and address ships specifically I've always thought that the stated crew sizes are the maximums and vary depending on sp and possibly hardwiring implants. As the pilot's ability to interface with his ships and modules increases the crew needed would decrease. So a newbie would indeed have a (small) crew on a frigate while a more experienced capsuleer would fly it solo. Same with other hull types, though unlikely to reach zero crew.
Perhaps for some more advanced ships like T2, T3 designed during the capsuleer age the crew reqs would also be lower than the T1 hulls they're based on - systems optimised for pod interface from the ground up.
So the way I look at things a capsuleer new to battleships would need a crew of 600 while one with significant experience might manage with 200-300. A pilot with the equivalent of all V skills and 5% implants could maybe manage with 100-150 crew on a BS.
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Let's say I have 10 fitted battleships at a typical station. That's 60,000 crew right there. Add in other capsuleers, NPC vessels, and then all the people catering to these crew. You will be over a million pretty fast. What happens to a station when 20 Carriers dock and a large part of the crew goes to find some R&R?
I assume the crew stays aboard their ship, cause if their capsuleer tries to undock and they get a message (Sorry, we're just rounding up the last of the shore leave) he might decide to get a new crew.
Naw. Most Eve players spend the majority of the day logged off. When the Captain's in bed, the crew hits the port of call.
I suspect that stations would only have a small permanent population (somewhere in the thousands) and a massive transient population that is in station for business or R&R. Think Quarks bar in DS9, a handful of Ferengi and Dabo girls servicing all the people about to go through the wormhole. This fits into my own backstory, hundred-thousand people living out of freighters moving from station to station for work.
A typical Eve station is far, far bigger than DS9. I'd be surprised if they held less than a million people.
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A typical Eve station is far, far bigger than DS9. I'd be surprised if they held less than a million people.
The Malkalen catastrophe killed something like 150,000 people -- considering the extent of the damage, I would be surprised if that was not a significant portion of the station's crew. Considering this was the headquarters of one of the largest corporations in Eve, it seems unlikely that there are a great many stations with more people living on them; I suspect your numbers are a little high.
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Where do you get the 150k, and them being majority? EVElopedia says "The estimated death toll stood at 421,000 with as many persons remaining unaccounted", plus talks of a relief effort (for the living and accounted for). This puts the count to at least to 850k. I'd give the total a very good chance of being above million.
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Year_YC110#The_Malkalen_Incident
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There are a lot of unmarked inhabited places.
Solar collector, astrofarm, habitation module, and you have a spacevillage.
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Well, the way I see it, there is over 50,000 active capsuleers. Calculate the average of ships each one owns from Super Caps, Capitals and sub capitals. You don't even need to do math to know that there are more people living in our fitted ships sitting in hangers ready to fight and die then there are living on the planets throughout all of new eden.
Which now begs the question. How is that possible?
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Well, the way I see it, there is over 50,000 active capsuleers. Calculate the average of ships each one owns from Super Caps, Capitals and sub capitals. You don't even need to do math to know that there are more people living in our fitted ships sitting in hangers ready to fight and die then there are living on the planets throughout all of new eden.
Which now begs the question. How is that possible?
Capsuleer generally pilots one ship at a time. The ones in left in hangars are docked with the crew on leave, or dismissed altogether?
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So a fitted ship sitting in a hanger has no crew ready to undock at the whim of the Capsuleer?
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Cross-training is a wonderful thing. Just move the crew over from your other ship.
As for the original query, I just go with 'trillions' and call it good.
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Simple scramble order from 'Scotty' would suffice. It doesn't make sense to think that each and every of my 53 ships has people on them 24/7 as I'd be paying more money a month than I earn for their wages.
Also - if you think about it - it'll take more than 30 seconds to disengage the capsule, drop out the vessel, move it then slide into another ship. Maybe 5 minutes would be a better estimate.
Station contents would be somewhere between 250,000 and 1,000,000 dependent on station size with a predominantly roaming population. You'd only need 50,000 crew to run the station's systems and other general sanitation stuff - with another 10,000 bodies to run stores for supplies, bars etc.
Including personnel, merchants and families... 75,000 permanent inhabitants for a small station, maybe?
But, that doesn't answer the planet-side inhabitants.
Terraformation would take around 500-2,000 people including the camp follower types (cooks, maintenance, sanitation etc.) with planetary populations anything from a few thousand to billions. There are a lot of planets in the New Eden cluster that can, do, and could possibly hold people.
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Where do you get the 150k, and them being majority? EVElopedia says "The estimated death toll stood at 421,000 with as many persons remaining unaccounted", plus talks of a relief effort (for the living and accounted for). This puts the count to at least to 850k. I'd give the total a very good chance of being above million.
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Year_YC110#The_Malkalen_Incident
Okay, evidently I badly misremembered that...I swear the number was way lower. If that's right, then I'm quite wrong (obviously).
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Simple scramble order from 'Scotty' would suffice. It doesn't make sense to think that each and every of my 53 ships has people on them 24/7 as I'd be paying more money a month than I earn for their wages.
Also - if you think about it - it'll take more than 30 seconds to disengage the capsule, drop out the vessel, move it then slide into another ship. Maybe 5 minutes would be a better estimate.
Common and very plausible scenerio: You get blow up. Make one jump over to the next system where you have ships stored(fitted). The aggressors follow you, your friends also arrive in that system for support. A battle ensues. You dock, jump into a battleship. Undock, fight, die, dock. rinse and repeat this about 10 times. Maybe more depending on where you are at.
Given the death rate you are suffering its most likely a 0.0 battle and the pilot total in local is in the 100's. You alone dying about 10 times in that fight along side your friends, whom many of them died and reshipped, would already indicate that the ships in station, and the pilots on them dwarf the person capacity of that station.
It would be more logical to assume that our vessels would contain living quarters for the pilots in order to house those numbers. Otherwise, thinking that your entire ship staff for all your vessels are gingerly chilling in the station is absurd. One capsuleer alone can have enough people under his crew to fill a stations capacity. Now multiply that but all your pod pilot buddies that have ships in that station and operate out of that area.
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Common and very plausible scenerio: You get blow up. Make one jump over to the next system where you have ships stored(fitted). The aggressors follow you, your friends also arrive in that system for support. A battle ensues. You dock, jump into a battleship. Undock, fight, die, dock. rinse and repeat this about 10 times. Maybe more depending on where you are at.
Given the death rate you are suffering its most likely a 0.0 battle and the pilot total in local is in the 100's. You alone dying about 10 times in that fight along side your friends, whom many of them died and reshipped, would already indicate that the ships in station, and the pilots on them dwarf the person capacity of that station.
It would be more logical to assume that our vessels would contain living quarters for the pilots in order to house those numbers. Otherwise, thinking that your entire ship staff for all your vessels are gingerly chilling in the station is absurd. One capsuleer alone can have enough people under his crew to fill a stations capacity. Now multiply that but all your pod pilot buddies that have ships in that station and operate out of that area.
That's not a very compelling argument when your and a hundred buddies' ships is already more volume than the entire station.
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in the Great War era, the ships of the British Royal Navy were larger than the ships of the German Imperial Navy.
This was because the RN ships were often on long transits to and from the distant possessions of the British Empire, and even when in port, the crews stayed aboard ship.
In contrast, the IN ships did not go on long cruises, and when in port, the bulk of the crews stayed ashore, not onboard. Long cruises were uncomfortable.
This meant the German ships could carry more guns, more armour, more engines for a given displacement than the RN ships.
So, the ships in EVE are probably more along the British model than the German one.
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Common and very plausible scenerio: You get blow up. Make one jump over to the next system where you have ships stored(fitted). The aggressors follow you, your friends also arrive in that system for support. A battle ensues. You dock, jump into a battleship. Undock, fight, die, dock. rinse and repeat this about 10 times. Maybe more depending on where you are at.
Given the death rate you are suffering its most likely a 0.0 battle and the pilot total in local is in the 100's. You alone dying about 10 times in that fight along side your friends, whom many of them died and reshipped, would already indicate that the ships in station, and the pilots on them dwarf the person capacity of that station.
It would be more logical to assume that our vessels would contain living quarters for the pilots in order to house those numbers. Otherwise, thinking that your entire ship staff for all your vessels are gingerly chilling in the station is absurd. One capsuleer alone can have enough people under his crew to fill a stations capacity. Now multiply that but all your pod pilot buddies that have ships in that station and operate out of that area.
That's not a very compelling argument when your and a hundred buddies' ships is already more volume than the entire station.
Exactly, I was only establishing a everyday occurance in EVE, and how absurd it is to think that so many normal citizens are at our disposal. The entire concept of having a crew on our ships is retarded. It would be apt to have our vessels supported by multiple AI programs with specific functions in communication with the pod pilot that is plugged in. Rather then a physical crew of people.
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350 billion people watched the 96 Mindclash Championship.
780 billion people watched the the first-ever Haysid Cup tournament in the Galactic Gravball League.
http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=1854&tid=7 (http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=1854&tid=7)
More relevantly:
Nearly 2.8 trillion citizens voted in the election, by far the highest turnout in the history of Gallentean democracy.
http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=1296&tid=4 (http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=1296&tid=4)
Ignoring non-voters and rounding to 2.8 trillion:
One third of the Federation is made up of 900 billion Minmatar immigrants
One fifth of Minmatar reside in the Federation making the total 4.6 trillion.
One quarter, 1.15 trillion, Minmatar are in the Republic.
Almost a third, just under 1.53 trillion are slaves within the Empire.
Leaving just over one trillion living as fremen, pirates, etc. (presumably including the Thukkers)
http://www.eveonline.com/races/minmatar.asp (http://www.eveonline.com/races/minmatar.asp)
There also less than 2.8 trillion Caldari, more than 2.8 trillion Amarr and assorted other factions.
That gives an extremely conservative minimum population, counting the Empire equal to the Federation, not counting any Matari twice, and ignoring unmentioned factions, unaffiliated populations/individuals, and the Caldari State, of 7.75 trillion.
Given that not everyone voted, that the Empire is likely to have a much larger population than the Federation, and that there are many ignored factions that likely have significant populations the number would likely be above 20 trillion. All assuming any of these values mean anything, hopefully the new direction the PF folks are taking will give us something more concrete.
Either way if asked I'd be comfortable replying tens of trillions and if pushed on the matter point out that no one knows how many people live beyond empire and that the census offices can't count everyone. It would be reasonable to expect that the Amarr Civil Service would have a hard time providing even a rough estimate of their empires population given the number of enslaved heads not counted through un-registered breeding and capture and that there are entire populated worlds they have all but forgotten about with many others likely paid similarly small amounts of bureaucratic attention.
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Kaito, digging that jewel is the most awesome number i've seen :D
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Awesome, Kaito. That was the first and only quality post on the population numbers I've ever seen.
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Indeed.
And remember 2.8 trillion doesn't just exclude those who chose not to vote, but those not eligible too. Including children of course. Possibly criminals? Not sure if that's the case in Gallente.
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Nice, Kaito.
The population numbers seem to vary a bit by who is doing the writing. (IE TonyG stories and storylines tend to have pretty low numbers. *ahem*.)
I've always been of the opinion that given an internal volume on the order of 10^3 cubic kilometers, and given the sort of traffic they support, a station population of less than millions seems low for most stations.
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Wow, that's a great analysis. I think it's the best bet.
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I still maintain that that number is extremely nonsensical knowing what we know of the history of Eve. It does seem like a good bet based on what we're told, but it doesn't make much sense based on populations being planetbound until relatively recently, as well as population growth trends in developed nations. Then again, no one at CCP is a demographer as far as I know.
Note that the main reason for the increase in population on the Earth in the last 100 years (which has been very dramatic) was largely due to the Green Revolution, and is extremely uncharacteristic compared to the entirety of human history. Those sorts of things aren't likely to happen on a regular basis (especially since the long-term consequences of things like industrial farming are only now starting to come to roost).
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United States Census Bureau puts Earths population as 6,895,600,000
The CIA World Factbook puts the growth rate at 1.13% and the US population growth at 0.98%
Gallenteans began colonizing beyond their own system around 750 years before the capsuleer era.
Assuming a population equal to Earths then:
750 years at world growth = 31.5 trillion
750 years at US growth = 10.4 trillion
(Note: I'm not great at math. If these numbers, or any others, are way off please correct me.)
Of course Gallente Prime is not Earth, the Gallente had likely started expanding into their home system already, and growth rates go up when prosperity, space, and resources increase. Given the many unknown factors I wouldn't say 2.8 trillion voters is unreasonable. Even if the number was made up on the spot with little thought it's not necessarily a "bad" number.
Add in three more empires and a variety of bloodlines along with the period of great expansion for the Amarrians and a number of bloodlines being consumed by the Empire along the way during over 2000 years of colonization and I wouldn't call values in the tens of trillions extremely nonsensical.
In addition it's surprising to me that someone would call 2048 years, or even 750 years, relatively recently. Especially in relation to a compound growth rate.
Of course human history to this point is a poor measure of the nature of populations existing in an environment of inter-planetary colonization with vastly more powerful governments able to engage not only in colonization efforts but the terraforming of new worlds along with automated farming, nano-technology, underwater cities and non-planetary colonies, mass breeding of slaves, and perhaps most pertinent to this discussion improved medical science and lifetimes that can extend far beyond our own.
While the hazards of New Eden may keep the mortality rates high in certain areas I'd say these factors justify a guess that places the population between the exceptionally wide and forgiving goal posts of tens of trillions.
Ref:
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Timeline#Age_of_Expansion_.28AD_16262_-_YC_100.29 (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Timeline#Age_of_Expansion_.28AD_16262_-_YC_100.29)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate)
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When you're talking about decades at a minimum (probably closer to centuries) to terraform planets (not to mention the expense) and looking at industrialized societies where there is little social impetus to have big families, that kind of growth seems unsustainable. If you look at most industrialized nations today, most actually have dwindling populations because people are simply not having that many children anymore. Russia (http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/russiapop.htm) is probably the biggest example I can think of. The US is actually an anomaly because much of our population growth is from new immigrants entering the country or recent immigrants from developing countries (who still tend to have larger families).
Most of that population growth in our current world is in developing nations, where your "social safety net" is still having as many children as possible in the hopes that they will be able to take care of you when you're older. As societies industrialize and become more affluent -- as any society which can afford to spend the money on colonizing a solar system almost has to be (it's not a cheap endeavor) -- that kind of population growth just isn't likely, because children switch from being a safety net to being a burden. When a child can leave the house at 13 and get a job on a farm or in a mine to help the family make ends meet, that's one thing -- but when most of those jobs are gone, usually replaced by industrialized/automated methods that are far more efficient, it becomes much more expensive to raise children and provide for their education, either for the parents or for the society, if education/medical care/etc is socialized.
You're also assuming that population can keep growing at that rate indefinitely, and I don't think that is a valid assumption either. Populations are limited by food, living space, disease, etc. At some point, the population on Earth is going to have to stop growing because it's just not sustainable. Already, we're seeing environmental costs of overpopulation and growing industrialization -- overfishing, soil contamination due to industrial farming methods, anti-biotic resistant bacteria, to say nothing of resource constriction (less of an issue if you can get off the planet and you have fusion power) and industrial pollution (everything from CO2 in the atmosphere to heavy metals). The only reason everyone in the US can live like they do is because there's not that many of us compared to the rest of the world. If China, India, and sub-Saharan Africa were to industrialize to the same extent as the US, Europe, and Japan tomorrow, the whole system would collapse.
The other reason I find it hard to believe that the population numbers can be that high is simply because those political entities are actually able to hold everything together. China has a hard enough time resisting civil instability with a billion people, I think governing a nation of trillions, with the complications of lightyears of distance (though admittedly Eve largely handwaves this problem) would be almost impossible, especially if many or most of those worlds were self-sustaining.
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That was a wicked number crunch. Now, lets find out how many people die every day in new eden.
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I'm certainly not putting forward those numbers as sustained. Merely a hypothetical example that may represent average growth. Writing about numbers which are often believed to be lower (and such beliefs are just as valid as my own given the lack of data) I pushed towards a minimum value using the Gallente Federation, which I feel would have the lowest population growth amongst the empires. Your evidence for low growth there is compelling. Personally I feel that factors such as the availability of technology, resources, space to fill and likely heavy propaganda involving colonization efforts would produce a modest positive growth rate, or at least is likely to have done enough during the centuries to drive the population to high numbers.
On the other extreme are the Amarr. Their focus on bloodline and heredity seem much more likely to promote large families and the growth of the faithful (who believe in the destiny of faith ref: Book of Reclaiming 22:13). This along with their slave breeding programs, conquests of populated worlds, and impressive spread throughout 40% of known systems in New Eden would likely give us a higher population with a higher rate of growth.
The Minmatar, officially the most numerous of all the races, go almost everywhere and generally seem to breed like rabbits even outside of Amarrian breeding programs.
The Caldari on the other hand represent a much lower population with a very high rate of growth. Note here the tube child program and that if this was undertaken the Caldari no doubt turned their considerable propaganda machine towards increasing the population in competition with the Federation, leveraging the loyalty and sense of duty of the people
And again we have the other factions who are doing whatever it is such people do. :D
It's my opinion that the figure of 2.8 trillion voters and a cluster-wide population in the tens of trillions holds up against other PF references and makes sufficient realistic sense to be useful without breaking immersion. By no means am I insisting on the correctness of the numbers, they are simply my best guess and I hold enough confidence in them to feel comfortable role-playing with them until compelling contradictory sources are brought forward. The guess was made public as I hope others might find my thoughts on the subject useful in their RP or imagining of the setting and I welcome any other guesses or evidence that help advance the topic.
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The other thing you have to remember about those numbers is that the world population growth this century is completely abnormal in human history, largely due to the aforementioned Green Revolution and breakthroughs in medical science. In 1800, the world population was roughly a billion people. In 1920, 2 billion, then 4 billion by about 1970. That's a huge increase in the rate of growth. As I said, it seems unlikely that can be sustained, but then it's hard to predict the future.
As far as the death tolls...going by the roughly a bizillion people that are killed every day if you assume crews on all ships, the population of New Eden must not only be astronomical but he probably needs to have astronomical growth too. I tend to think that that has to be discarded in any sort of figuring of populations if you want anything to be at all realistic.
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Agreeing with Svetlana here, the death toll couldn't be accurately, or even roughly, calculated. On the one hand we have the many deaths that play out in game among ship and structure crews (despite escape pods) while on the other we have major news stories about handfuls of people at risk of dying, events few would care about in the next country or district let alone another world. This leaves few indicators of what a "significant" death toll for even a single event is.
In the name of content I'd mention that I doubt it's as high as many would think. Certainly there are areas of New Eden that are hellish places to live and there's all manner of nastiness occurring out there but the PF generally portrays your average citizen leading a relatively secure and mundane life. The majority of people probably never see another continent let alone travel through space and the many disasters and acts of destruction are absorbed somewhat by the large population of the cluster. With the tallest blade of grass usually getting cut first people need only keep their heads down to stay out of most trouble. Of course we don't hear a great many of these stories because they're not that interesting outside of infodumps. If the majority truly believed their lives could be snuffed out at any moment we'd see a much less varied and interesting setting. Such people tend to be more "people living under constant fear of death" than they are Minmatar, Caldari, or Sani Sabik. Pervasive fear is dark and grim and all that but it doesn't make for an interesting variety of cultures.
I'd be unsurprised, though I make no claim, to find New Eden has a lower number of violent deaths per capita than Earth given the large swathes of space that live under the aegis of strong government and relative unimportance. Of course this could swing the other way depending on the level of negligence going on in the larger, less involved, areas. Certainly there are the "Big Bads" but organized crime tends not to make much mess and the outlaw factions probably have little tolerance for fuss being made around their operations. It's not beyond reason to expect an Angel Cartel affiliated gang to take down a serial killer or threateningly resolve a strike action to keep the eyes of the powers that be away from their little corner of the universe, nor for the Amarr to come crashing down like a ton of bricks upon an upstart warlord or rabble rouser which has likely kept them from regularly facing prolonged civil war and insurrection.
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Interplanetary and interstellar population pressures... hmm...
When you're talking about decades at a minimum (probably closer to centuries) to terraform planets (not to mention the expense) and looking at industrialized societies where there is little social impetus to have big families, that kind of growth seems unsustainable. If you look at most industrialized nations today, most actually have dwindling populations because people are simply not having that many children anymore. Russia is probably the biggest example I can think of. The US is actually an anomaly because much of our population growth is from new immigrants entering the country or recent immigrants from developing countries (who still tend to have larger families).
I do not think you can simply apply the trends seen in the developed world since the 1930s to various interstellar cultures and entities. And these population pressures are likely to vary based on community, continent, world, constellation, and region.
The other reason I find it hard to believe that the population numbers can be that high is simply because those political entities are actually able to hold everything together. China has a hard enough time resisting civil instability with a billion people, I think governing a nation of trillions, with the complications of lightyears of distance (though admittedly Eve largely handwaves this problem) would be almost impossible, especially if many or most of those worlds were self-sustaining.
There are multiple ways to approach the problem of governing many over vast distances. The most immediate in my mind is how centralized authority & responsibility are at each level of governance.
The degree of self-sustainment is also up for discussion. Are the core worlds of each empire truly self-sustaining? If they are not and the resource colonies are on the brink of reversion to an agrarian society, the core worlds have a vested interest in trade and shared governance with resource colonies.
The ability to trade between worlds, the ability to govern multiple worlds, is the very thing that allows some of those worlds to grow to high populations than they can self-sustain.
You're also assuming that population can keep growing at that rate indefinitely, and I don't think that is a valid assumption either. Populations are limited by food, living space, disease, etc. At some point, the population on Earth is going to have to stop growing because it's just not sustainable. ... nothing of resource constriction (less of an issue if you can get off the planet and you have fusion power)
Your caveat appears to invalidate this concern for New Eden for at least the past 1,000 years of its history.
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With the population explosion in recent centuries within empire space many people have found themselves without homes or jobs, and have been pushed into leaving their homeworld for greener pastures. Many of these settlers have wound up in neutral space, and some even in space historically controlled by the outlawed "pirate" organizations. These settlers often have to fight a very difficult battle to survive, against both the forces of nature and those of man.
Although the empires generally consider the areas outside of their own realm being lawless and do not recognize them as sovereign states, there actually are rules to be followed even in the most bloodthirsty and barbaric nations. Each of the pirate organizations has their own culture and history, but one thing most of them do have in common is their willingness to milk the settlements in "their" solar systems for tribute. Sometimes these settlements consist entirely of slaves which have been captured elsewhere, or free people who decided to take their chances and settle on a promising planet despite its hazardous location. Either way, these settlements are a great way for the pirate factions to recruit new members, find new slaves and extract tribute in the form of credits, foodstuffs or manufactured goods.
Normally, the pirate organizations ban all settlements in their territory from having any form of high-tech weaponry in their possession, diligently enforcing this rule. This prevents the suppressed peoples from fighting back most of the time ... but with all rules, there are exceptions.
Is from a mission "the Uprising", apparently.
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I'm impressed anyone is so concerned about this, I've worked under the general assumption of "Enough to not have to worry about accidentally causing the extinction of all Humanity by shooting everything flashing red."
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Very nice find Louella.