Early SW Atlas info

[VT-16]

Might be interesting to show some of the thought behind issues in the book, courtesy of Dan Wallace:
Geekosity: Atlas Endnotes
Starwars.com blogs: Atlas Endnotes

[Darth Hoth]

I think it's more likely that it refers to those systems that aren't properly colonised (i.e. have a self-sustaining civilian population), but have mining outposts or similar.

I think it might be something like those "settled dependencies" that Naboo's "lightly populated" Chommell Sector had (as per the ICS). If you run the numbers it makes a certain kind of sense: Each Sector had (in WEG) some fifty planets (although they noted that Sectors had been growing larger over the last few centuries or so), and Tarkin identified the "million worlds" of the Empire in Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker. Now, that yields the original "51 million" claim for the Empire as representing its Sectors (basically, one million Sector capitals as full member states and their fifty-something million subordinates as protectorates/whatever) - admittedly, this is conjecture on my part, but the numbers seem to fit, so it might be worth considering.

Now, Chommell Sector has thirty-something worlds in addition to its capital, which makes it "smallish" by WEG standards if one only counts those. But then it also has some forty thousand even lesser states (the dependencies). If all Sectors have similarly small or underprivileged planets in roughly equivalent or somewhat lesser numbers, this makes each Sector bigger than a strict interpretation of WEG would allow for by three orders of magnitude; the apparent discrepancy is explained away by these dependencies being too small to feature in the census or some similar semantics. If so, one million Sectors would work out to one million capitals with representation, fifty million "medium" planets, and some tens of billions of small, sparsely settled colonies.

There are some problems with this interpretation (one I noted right away is that it would leave every Senator representing multiple Sectors, if we go by the film Senate, and most Sectors would also not hold nearly the same number of barren stars as Chommell's stated 300 million); I have not really put all that much thought into it, but it might be workable (perhaps with a little tweaking). What do the others think?

[Darth Hoth]

Checking the blog . . .

The Atlas isn't an academic paper, but I'll show my work. Start with 400 billion stars. Stick with the controversial but long-established EU fact that Known Space accounts for 25% of the galaxy (a point to be discussed further in a bit) and we have 100 billion stars. Baobab says there are 180 million systems (a number derived from Croswell's real-universe work about systems with multiple stars), so we have 45 billion systems in the Known Galaxy. Use the star-types chart as a guide to habitability and we get 7.1 billion habitable stars in the Known Galaxy, in 3.2 billion star systems. Take the Roleplaying Book figures as representing the Republic at its peak, and the Shatterpoint figures as a snapshot of it during its decline. I made an assumption that 25% of Republic territory was lost during its pre-Clone Wars decline and reclaimed by the Empire, giving us 1.65 million Imperial member worlds. Assume more-aggressive colonization adds another 5% (remember we're talking major worlds, not all worlds), and we get 1.73 million Imperial member worlds.

The Galactic Empire just became the Alpha Quadrantic Empire . . .

Where exactly was that established, Zahn's minimalist wankfest in the Hand of Thrawn duology? Even at its most obnoxious in the NJO map and onwards, the Unknown Regions never seemed to encompass three quarters of the galaxy.

[VT-16]

That would be throughout the galaxy, not the UR. We know planets keep being discovered and rediscovered even within the Empire. Maridun, for one thing.

[Illuminatus Primus]

A wizard The Celestials did it. Apparantly, during a conflict with the Rakata, something happened to disturb the hyperspace navigation of that area, relative to the rest of the galaxy. That's what I've gathered is the reason for the navigation difficulties, according to the book. It's retarded, but better than nothing. And having checked most known planets of the region on Wookieepedia, most of them are either more or less known to the rest of the galaxy (in a backwater sort of way) or belong to the Chiss (which themselves have had a loose connection to the Republic for millennia, but marked by their isolationism). So this is basically unknown in name only, probably dating from early Republic times.

Hyperspace has been degenerated so some ridiculous pseudoscientific cludge for inclusionism, like subspace in Trek circa Enterprise. Basically they mean its just magic metaphorical terrain, and it can be muddied somehow somewhere and easily mined. Which of course, is ridiculous.

[Pelranius]

Checking the blog . . .

The Atlas isn't an academic paper, but I'll show my work. Start with 400 billion stars. Stick with the controversial but long-established EU fact that Known Space accounts for 25% of the galaxy (a point to be discussed further in a bit) and we have 100 billion stars. Baobab says there are 180 million systems (a number derived from Croswell's real-universe work about systems with multiple stars), so we have 45 billion systems in the Known Galaxy. Use the star-types chart as a guide to habitability and we get 7.1 billion habitable stars in the Known Galaxy, in 3.2 billion star systems. Take the Roleplaying Book figures as representing the Republic at its peak, and the Shatterpoint figures as a snapshot of it during its decline. I made an assumption that 25% of Republic territory was lost during its pre-Clone Wars decline and reclaimed by the Empire, giving us 1.65 million Imperial member worlds. Assume more-aggressive colonization adds another 5% (remember we're talking major worlds, not all worlds), and we get 1.73 million Imperial member worlds.

The Galactic Empire just became the Alpha Quadrantic Empire . . .

Where exactly was that established, Zahn's minimalist wankfest in the Hand of Thrawn duology? Even at its most obnoxious in the NJO map and onwards, the Unknown Regions never seemed to encompass three quarters of the galaxy.

I took it that a lot of the stars in the Deep Core were inaccessible simply because there was no way one could navigate in such a densely packed nebula.

[Connor MacLeod]

Hyperspace has been degenerated so some ridiculous pseudoscientific cludge for inclusionism, like subspace in Trek circa Enterprise.

Pfft. Hardly. While its bad relative to SW itself, its hardly on the level of Trek. We still have far less actual technobabblespeak to deal with, for one thing, and continuity isn't even remotely of the same scale (not having to deal with time travel, for example.) I see no reason to exaggerate the situation.

Basically they mean its just magic metaphorical terrain, and it can be muddied somehow somewhere and easily mined. Which of course, is ridiculous.

Hello, welcome to sci fi analysis, where kludging an answer is par for the course the vast majority of the time, even when you deal with canon material. (Solar sails, anyone? The Death STar/Alderaan recoil issue? SPHA-Ts? Even hyperspace itself has been kludged up by Curtis simply going by canon material.)

[Connor MacLeod]

*snip blog*

The Galactic Empire just became the Alpha Quadrantic Empire . . .

Where exactly was that established, Zahn's minimalist wankfest in the Hand of Thrawn duology? Even at its most obnoxious in the NJO map and onwards, the Unknown Regions never seemed to encompass three quarters of the galaxy.

No, both numbers are from Tales from the Bounty hunters. Curtis made note of them here. Apparently there can be a distinction made between "stars and star systems" - i can't find my damn copy of the book so I am assuming thats how its depicted and not his interpretation.

There's stuff in Wallace's blog entry I take issue with, but not with that. I'm more irked in his "interpretation" of the Known Galaxy - since I distinctly remember the "Known Galaxy" bit simply representing "everything not in the unknown Regions". The most generous figures for the UR put them at merely 15% of the Galactic volume, and we know from the AOTC novelization that over 80% of the galaxy was known to be in the REpublic IIRC (other parts were obviously known, just removed as with Kamino) and other figures suggested smaller percentages (billions, millions, or hundreds of thousands, as opposed to 1/6th). Nevermind the "billions of worlds" the GE held directly.

There's other stuff I notice Wallace either made a mistake on or ignored, but that's the most egregious IMHO. The other problem is, I think, he's trying to comprehensively fix something tha won't stay fixed unless he keeps wirting updates.

At least two imply it, of which one is rather unambiguous:
*snip quotes*

This doesnt neccesarily conflict with the Atlas figures. "Billions of planets" doesnt neccesariyl mean any of them are settled or even inhabited. That figure could easily include lifeless worlds as inhabited. As a rule the inhabited figures are much smaller (tens of millions in the Empire, typically.)

I'll also note the "millionw orld/50 million protectorate and its later revision to millions/countless never gave an actual timeframe as to when that applied, and fluctuations in scope and size almost invariably occur at least on some degree.

Ah, that might be another matter (depending on how you count the planets/habitats and whatnots). I will wait and see what it works out to in the end, then. Depending on how they list it, it might square pretty well with the old WEG "quadrillions" of citizens, which is not too bad.

Matter of perspective. I've heard the Galaxy should have quintillions of people not quadrillions. The WEG figure was 100 quadrillion IIRC. Of course, Census figures are hardly accurate, so they probably sould be taken as order of magntidue estimates at best (same with planetary populations.) rather than precise, absolute figures.

I think it might be something like those "settled dependencies" that Naboo's "lightly populated" Chommell Sector had (as per the ICS).

Or, as I said, they include uninhabited/lifeless worlds. The Empire needs to grab resources from somewhere. I'll also add that just because the Empire claims territory does not mean it neccesarily occupies all the worlds it owns (or occupies heavily.) AFter all, there's abandoned worlds for the Rebels, smugglers, and other "independent operators" to hide out.

If you run the numbers it makes a certain kind of sense: Each Sector had (in WEG) some fifty planets (although they noted that Sectors had been growing larger over the last few centuries or so),and Tarkin identified the "million worlds" of the Empire in Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker.

It should be ignored. The Republic averaged hundreds of worlds if I remember the prequel dictionaries (mainly TPM) correctly, and those would be member worlds. Valorum had the high end with ~1000. The ISB makes mention of Moffs controlling "hundreds" of worlds as well.

Now, that yields the original "51 million" claim for the Empire as representing its Sectors (basically, one million Sector capitals as full member states and their fifty-something million subordinates as protectorates/whatever) - admittedly, this is conjecture on my part, but the numbers seem to fit, so it might be worth considering.

That was for the REpublic at an actual timeframe. We never actually got any real breakdown as to how that might (if at all) apply to the Empire. What I vaguely recall doesnt suggest it woudl be ta the decline of the Republic (or the rise of the Empire) era, howver. Nevermind that (IIRC at least - Publius and I discussed matters) Palpatine did gradual restructuring of the Senate to make it even more unwieldy.

Now, Chommell Sector has thirty-something worlds in addition to its capital, which makes it "smallish" by WEG standards if one only counts those. But then it also has some forty thousand even lesser states (the dependencies).

36 member worlds, and 40,000 some dependencies. The original figure was just 36 worlds as per (IIRC) TPM visual dictionary (where the "hundreds of worlds" average for Senators and Vaolurm's "1000 worlds" showed up.) The AOTC:ICs clarified that (and increased the number of worlds, although meshing in iwth other data obviously) by adding the settled dependencies.

If all Sectors have similarly small or underprivileged planets in roughly equivalent or somewhat lesser numbers, this makes each Sector bigger than a strict interpretation of WEG would allow for by three orders of magnitude; the apparent discrepancy is explained away by these dependencies being too small to feature in the census or some similar semantics.

Why would you assume that? It's quite possible that, as a Outer Rim world, the Naboo would NATURALLY have a greater "settled dependency" population - alot of those were probably miners and likewise (Naboo was big on mining IIRC) and they were scattered amidst that huge number of lifeless worlds they occupied. Moving more towards the Core, however, I would imagine that "settlements/protectorates" or any other form of colony become lesss common because we're entering much older and more-developed segements of the galaxy. We don't really know however, so its a moot point.

If so, one million Sectors would work out to one million capitals with representation, fifty million "medium" planets, and some tens of billions of small, sparsely settled colonies.

There are some problems with this interpretation (one I noted right away is that it would leave every Senator representing multiple Sectors, if we go by the film Senate, and most Sectors would also not hold nearly the same number of barren stars as Chommell's stated 300 million); I have not really put all that much thought into it, but it might be workable (perhaps with a little tweaking). What do the others think?

I'll say it does. There's at least 6,000 Senators as per ROTS ICS, but I don't see how you could extrapolate to a MILLION sectors from that, since it would mean each senator must represent many hundreds of sectors apiece, and you can't really inflate the number of Senators without making the whole "2,000 protestors" thing rather irrelevant. Nevermind we've heard at best "thousands' of sectors being thrown around) or implying there are trillions of stars in the galaxy either...

I should also add I'm ignoring the prequel novelization depictions that say that the Republic had merely 100,000/"tens of thousands" of worlds and the ROTS statement by Obi-Wan to that same effect (and thats still assuming we're only talking member worlds.)

[Pelranius]

There might be differing levels of importance for member worlds, so we could kludge the 'tens of thousands' of systems figures by interepting it to mean the most important 10000 or so worlds. Still rather clumsy.

Times like these make me wish even harder that Publius worked for LFL.

[VT-16]

For those still arguing about the UR, I finally got the book, and while it shows as substantial in some of the maps, the known parts of the galaxy wrap around almost completely, only slowly dissapating around one quarter of the galactic disk. It's actually less than any previous map I remember and most of the area is either dotted with known worlds or belong to the smaller governments like the Chiss or the Ssi-ruuvi.

The book is huge, gonna take some time to get through it all.

[Pelranius]

Speaking of guides, I'd rather that they split up the upcoming military guide (hopefully Saxton gets to write it) into at least a space and a ground component. It'd be even better if there were separate guides for infantry, round vehicles, starfighters and warships and battlestations respectively but that would probably be hard to market.

[VT-16]

Well, might as well add some interesting info as I remember it.

On Imperial special weapons-projects: Spoiler

The Patriim shipyards and Rothana Heavy Engineering built and activated the Eye of Palpatine in 18 BBY, per a Death Star-related map and blurb. The Tarkin started out as an Eclipse-class prototype that was turned into a functional battlestation at Patriim in a ruse to throw off Rebel espionage into the new Death Star (basically sounds like the Tarkin is now retconned away from a DS-level superlaser platform and down to Eclipse-class level).

On regions, regional sectors and subsectors: Spoiler

Palpatine lets regional governors (Moffs) run the regional sectors, supposedly working together with the local Senator (the thousands mentioned in PT-era).

Meanwhile, a new class of subsector Moffs (subsector governors) run the millions of subsectors found within these (they were originally bundled up into the thousands of larger sectors when the Republic expansion and sector bureaucracy became unruly).

The Grand Moffs (essentially governor-generals first used in conjunction with the GAR during the CW) run the new level of Oversectors (or Priority sectors), beyond the level of the other two types of Moffs and are freed from dealing with the local Senators.

Below all these three levels are the planetary governors, who take their orders from a Moff.

On Imperial representation: Spoiler

Only about 69 million star systems meet the population requirements for representation in the Empire, and only 1,75 million planets are full member worlds.

[VT-16]

Misc. stuff I remember: Spoiler

Kuat sector described as being filled with military trophies for any successful invader.

Humbarine started out as a Kuat colony world, is now the center of the sterile Humbarine Rule, which is dotted with factory worlds. Despite being depopulated in the CW, the Empire recolonizes the world, turning it into a fortress world.

Core Worlds like Kuat and Humbarine have robust planetary and sector defense forces (basically reiterating stuff from the AOTC:ICS), and overall Core Worlders think they're so well-protected, if war spills over from the Rim, it must be a dire situation.

The planet Terminus is apparantly frequently visited by transports and cargo vessels from unknown worlds and species and is a far-reaching trade hub.

Hutt Space is huge, regardless of era. Almost 1/20 of the entire disk, at least.

The Calamari world of Krinemonen was apparantly blown up by the Galaxy Gun.

[Darth Ruinus]

For those still arguing about the UR, I finally got the book, and while it shows as substantial in some of the maps, the known parts of the galaxy wrap around almost completely, only slowly dissapating around one quarter of the galactic disk. It's actually less than any previous map I remember and most of the area is either dotted with known worlds or belong to the smaller governments like the Chiss or the Ssi-ruuvi.

The book is huge, gonna take some time to get through it all.

VT-16, could you post a picture of this? I'm having a discussion about the size of the UR and the reason it hasn't been explored or colonized as much as the rest of the galaxy, and since I don't own any Star Wars books or material, I have to rely alot on this site or Wookieepedia, which is... frustrating to say the least. However, as you say, the book is huge and you probably have better things to do.

Could the UR comprimising pop. II stars account for some of it being out of contact with galactic civilization?

EDIT:
Reading the Wookieepedia entry on the UR, I came across this:
"Although huge, this volume is emptier than the Galactic disk, since the combined total of the Unknown Regions contains no more than one percent of the galaxy's stars."

It lists Galaxy Guide 8: Scouts p24; Tales of the Bounty Hunters p301. Have these two sources been replaced by newer information, or is it similar to everything else about the UR, vague, changing and messed up?

[Connor MacLeod]

I've actually grabbed the book and yes there is a ton of details in it... but Wallace in typical manner seems to have gone the "middle of the road" as far as contentious issues like the Unknown REgions are concerend.. there are qualifiers about the size which seem to suggest its not a settltled thing. It basically looks like alot of the information is basically set up "however you want ot interpret it" for a great deal of stuff.

Its also worth noting he's refrained from being all that explicit when it comes to stuff like Clone Wars numbers (although overall he seems to go with a "large scope" approach anyhow.)

[Havok]

Question: Why do the people that write the majority of these things seem to be such pussies with asserting the huge numbers and the like that a GALAXY should have?

[VT-16]

VT-16, could you post a picture of this? I'm having a discussion about the size of the UR and the reason it hasn't been explored or colonized as much as the rest of the galaxy, and since I don't own any Star Wars books or material, I have to rely alot on this site or Wookieepedia, which is... frustrating to say the least.

I'll try to get the scanner up today. It won't be the best quality, but I'll try to get as comprehensive a scan as I can.

On the UR note, there's several other planets mentioned besides Terminus that cater to ships coming in from Wild Space and the Unknown Regions. Wonder if they have "First Contact Discount" on sales-items.

[Connor MacLeod]

Question: Why do the people that write the majority of these things seem to be such pussies with asserting the huge numbers and the like that a GALAXY should have?

That depends entirely on the numbers you're talking about doesn't it?

[VT-16]

Some big scans:

Galactic populations

Overall galaxy map (I'm sure some parts were lost in the scanning process, this was a two-page map.)