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[HouseofSebtin]

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.

[Elsebeth Rhiannon]

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.

[Seriphyn]

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

[hellgremlin]

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?

[Elsebeth Rhiannon]

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.)

[Seriphyn]

I don't exactly talk out my arse when making these decisive statements, Else

Example A - Ostingele temperate planet was "completely emptied" in a Sansha attack with 2 million inhabitants.

Example B - Skarkon incident. 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.

[Casiella]

I have seen some blog posts with back-of-the-napkin type calculations on this. Will try to find them today.

[Elsebeth Rhiannon]

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...

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

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?

[Alain Colcer]

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.

[Mithfindel]

"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.

[Merdaneth]

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....

[Vendrin]

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.

[hellgremlin]

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.

[HouseofSebtin]

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.