Robotic Services [Ultratech/Space]

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Thus, any galactic society worth the name has an unimaginable population.

To my mind, Earth has an unimaginable population.

[AlexanderHowl]

There is some truth to that. Humans evolved for communities of a few hundred people, anything beyond that makes it impossible to really know everyone. While technology can help, you can only directly interact with a couple thousand people before it becomes overwhelming. Beyond that, well, people may know you, depending on your fame, but you do not know them.

[Flyndaran]

People are people until they get to those numbers. Then they become more dots and points of information sans real emotional context, IMO. You know that they are real people, but they don't feel as real as those in your home city.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

There is some truth to that. Humans evolved for communities of a few hundred people, anything beyond that makes it impossible to really know everyone. While technology can help, you can only directly interact with a couple thousand people before it becomes overwhelming. Beyond that, well, people may know you, depending on your fame, but you do not know them.

A while ago, I read a paper in Anthropological Archaeology that talked about different human memory thresholds. Five hundred was the basic one, and the one you're thinking of, I believe. But the biggest one was around 50,000, described as the number of distinct cases a highly trained expert could learn to recognize with years of study and time to mull over the question. That might suggest that a gifted administrator could keep track of a settlement or organization of 50k people. Of course that still falls far short of the human population, and even of the population of nearly all nations and of large cities.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Most interstellar societies are going to have populations in the trillions, it not quadrillions, so their scale is often difficult to comprehend. When you look at a galactic society, well, it gets even worse. Let us explore it for a second:

1. The Milky Way possesses 400 billion stars
2. It possesses 200 billion stars outside of the Core.
3. The average star possesses one Asteroid Belt.
4: 1 billion Asteroid Belts are RVM+5 (0.5%), 3 billion are RVM+4 (1.5%), and 6 billion are RVM+3 (3%).
5: 10% are in systems claimed by the galactic society.
6: At TL10, +5 will have an optimal population of 32 billion, +4 16 billion, and +3 8 billion.
7: The richest Asteroid Belts in the galactic society have a combined optimal population of 12.8 quintillion sapients.
8: Even if they have 10% optimal population on average, that gives a minimum population for the galactic society of 1.28 quintillion.

Thus, any galactic society worth the name has an unimaginable population.

You assume that people are willing to live in asteroid belts. Of course, even if they are not, the number of worlds they can live on if earth-like worlds are actually liveable on (i.e. don't all have nasty stuff like allergens that make off-worlders die horribly) will likely be sufficient to support an unimaginable number of people.

[AlexanderHowl]

Asteroid belts have a number of advantages over planets, especially if you are advanced enough to build structures like Bishop Rings (which are actually possible). Hypothetically, an asteroid belt could probably support more people than suggested, but it is fine to go with a conservative measure.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't think you need any elaborate explanation. In Isaac Asimov's typology, SW is not social science fiction, but action/adventure science fiction. It's not in the business of examining assumptions and figuring out how things work. Think of it as, oh, Terry and the Pirates IN SPACE. Rather than having a religious doctrine, you have the equivalent of d'Artagnan saying, "I AM one man. That is a servant." Servants may have personalities and engage in witty banter with their masters, but they aren't treated as real people.

It rather seems to me that if you want to explore the implications of that, and look for an explanation such as "religion," the campaign you want to play in probably isn't SW.

I've explored those concepts just fine in Star Wars. I've also explored the horrors of war concept just fine in Star Wars despite that always being an abstract to the genre (pre-Rogue One anyway).

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

I've explored those concepts just fine in Star Wars. I've also explored the horrors of war concept just fine in Star Wars despite that always being an abstract to the genre (pre-Rogue One anyway).

Well, I'll stipulate that you can do it in the SW setting. But I'm not sure that's an SW campaign. It seems to have an entirely different fundamental tension.

I wouldn't necessarily say the same about "the horrors of war," but then the original SW gave us Leia being turned over to an interrogation droid, and later witnessing the annihilation of her entire planet by a WMD, and I think those will do pretty well for "horrors of war"; so I don't think that theme is essentially alien to SW.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Well, I'll stipulate that you can do it in the SW setting. But I'm not sure that's an SW campaign. It seems to have an entirely different fundamental tension.

I wouldn't necessarily say the same about "the horrors of war," but then the original SW gave us Leia being turned over to an interrogation droid, and later witnessing the annihilation of her entire planet by a WMD, and I think those will do pretty well for "horrors of war"; so I don't think that theme is essentially alien to SW.

They didn't spend much time on her feelings concerning it because ultimately she wasn't the protagonist.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

They didn't spend much time on her feelings concerning it because ultimately she wasn't the protagonist.

Well, we also see Luke reacting to the slaughter of his family by Imperial storm troopers, and Luke IS the protagonist.