In the T5SS thread I wrote:
Hans
I don't usually bump posts, Don, but this is something that I'm wrestling with right now and I would really, really appreciate some TPTB guidance. In the hope that you just overlooked it the first time round, I'm posting it as a separate thread now.So I want to write a little blurb about the Regina Subsector which includes its population. In big round numbers, of course. I've summed up the figures from every UWP with a population level of 8, 9, or 10. I've used 26 billion instead of 30 billion for Rethe and added half a billion for each of the six population 9 figures (to account for the second digit of their populations). The result is 66.0 billion.
My question is this: if I write "the population of Regina subsector is 66.0 billion", am I accounting for the people living away from the mainworlds? Or am I ignoring a relatively small group of people who would "only" amount to another five or six billions? Or am I ignoring a group of people amounting to 100 billion? (The Spinward Marches claims that Regina Subsector has a population of 165.6 billion).
Or to put it differently, how do you establish the non-mainworld population of a system where the mainworld has a population of X?
This is a question with major world-building ramifications. Trade and tax bases are both affected. If the total population of a system averages 250% of its mainworld, Efate would have a population of 20 billion instead of 8 and Rethe 65 billion instead of 26. More than that, actually, since worlds like Menorb and Ruie probably have a lot less than the average number of off-mainworld population (tech levels of 7).
Hans