About the Chiss issue{this is actually a new one}

[FTeik]

15% of the galaxy = UR?

In that case they can´t be inside the galactic halo, since the volume of that is far larger than the entire disk.

And it can´t be the number of stars, too, since that would mean 60 billion stars, if the SW-galaxy has 400 billion of those according to Tales of the BountyHunters.

[Illuminatus Primus]

The fifteen per cent. of the immediate galactic halo can be territory that simply doesn't fall between the Republic and other interesting destinations like the Rishi Maze and globular clusters.

I really don't know what to make of that number. The best fix is that they're just talking about the Chiss' territory, which is what they had maps on and which is the approximate area of where Sekot was.

That gives you rough figures for the density of a single sector in the Unknown Regions though.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Not neccesary. The Zhou Empire maps of the steppes and territory further south was extremely vague due to the presence of frontier barbarians. The military, resource and technology advantage of the Zhou empire was sufficient to had overwhelm any individual nomadic tribe attempt to physically defend a set territory. Furthermore, any attempts to had conquer the nomadic plains and jungles south of China would had been a vast expenditure of resources, without any noticeable short-term gains as the terrain was unsuitable for chinese agriculture, no noticeable mineral wealth was present and too much strain would had been placed on internal China to supply these conquests. Furthermore, since it was impossible for China to had wiped out a nomadic tribe existence, the continued existence of an external threat would had meant continued stationing of military forces in the region, along with the increased costs of transporting grain, military equipment and maintaining roads and labour animals.

Wow, an entirely irrelevent comparison. On Earth, you experience variation in territory. The galactic disk is roughly homogeneous, and full of resources and important locales.

The bounds placed on Zhou expansion to not apply to spiral galaxies. Particularly when one race has all the aces in the deck.

Quite frankly, you're implicitly agreeing with me. The shitty, clumpy, often empty, and with-few-metals part of the galaxy is the halo.

individual sectors of the Galactic Disk may never had been well explored due to the presence of militant alien races, that were limited by their own resources, internal fighting and sheer distance from the centre of Republic civilisation. The Republic never devoted its attention to the Unknown Regions, facing more drastic internal problems like the Sith Wars and etc etc etc.

Except the ancient Republic was demonstrably expansionist, and was in contact with extragalactic systems (Dantooine), and very remote systems (Ziost, Korriban, etc.).

Furthermore, regions which were prohibitively remote, sparse, or uncivilized would be located in the edges of the spiral. They would not be clumped into one region of the disk, because there is no physical phenomenon to cause variation in that manner. Exploration would expand from Coruscant, outward in every direction.

While individual factions of the Republic, and certainly traders would had ventured into the UR, politicaly, the UR just didn't factor in on their radar. Attempts to have colonised in the region could also had been counter-productive, due to the lesser density of stars and the costs of maintaining those worlds.

I find that hard to believe when there are so many corporate consortiums itching to exploit worlds and already easily encompassing billions of mining colonies. And besides, I agree with you, but these regions will not be situated or as large as depicted in the NJO/Chronology map.

If we ignore some aspects of the NJO depiction of the Unknown Regions,

With the stupid "hyperspace wall" shit? Ignoring evidence is B-A-D, and that is easily excused as in-universe pseudoscience (for Christ's sake, they think that dark matter forms its own galaxies).

and simply accept that the Unknown Regions merely consist of space where mainstream civilisation infomation is extremely out of date, with little knowledge of whether any planet/star is colonised or the continued viability of that settlement, whether a supernova had destroyed a system and so on and forth, its certainly plausible.

I agree, but as said, those systems will be few-and-far-between, interspersed among the vast spiral as statistical outliers and just useless planets, or out floating in the halo and wispy fringes of the galaxy. They will not be clumped in a particular region of the disk. These's no reason for that kind of heterogeneous structure and development.

Note: I never said that there existed in the UR civilisations that can conquer the IR or the NR. To elaborate, I said that there existed in the UR, civilisations, that if they had the technological and logistical reach, could threaten the IR or NR. Threaten, as the nomadic tribes of Rome in republican days, the nomadic tribes of the northern steppes in China, mountain tribes in the Indian civilisation, pirates in various maritime civilisations threaten. They could cause vast destruction in a localised region, carry off large amounts of plunder and cause embarrasing military defeats, that the central authority cannot afford or adequately defend against. We do know that both the IR and NR were drastically short in equipment, men and cash.

False. The Empire of the Hand was toppled by a pirate assault; the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium by twelve Nebulon-B frigates (from the Rebel Alliance immediately after the costly battle at Endor, for fuck's sake) and some alien help--less than a single Imperial superiority fleet.

Agreed. The UR is probably located in the galactic halo, and as opposed to the Vector Prime map, more likely consist of localised regions of space that were just not politically up-to-date. However, combine sufficient numbers of localised regions of space together, especially if we remember that Outer Rim worlds were usually poorer and commanded less political authority than Core worlds, meaning that the radius of authority Outer Rim capitals could command is shorter than Core worlds, then the borders of Outer-Rim sectors may become a section of unconnected space that is relatively unexplored.

I don't think we're arguing then. Based on various economic and political factors, the extent of Republic influence may ebb and flow, and the overall encompassment of the galactic civilization may simply become more and more localized as it slowly stretches into the void.

Its certainly not without precedent. Just last year, or was it 2001, Indonesia conducted a vast maritime survey that discovered the existence of a further 100 islands in its territory. Considering the scale of the Republic and if we remember that Unknown basically refers to out of date, its plausible that a sufficient number of regions were lumped together to become the Unknown Regions. Absurd perhaps, but plausible.

Not the size on the NJO map. It is not plausible. The kind of islands you're talking about are not analogous to what the EU UR is. Furthermore, the Jedi do keep records on every star in the galaxy accurate to their gravitational influence (how Kamino was sighted despite deletion) and velocity (necessary for hyperjumps).

[Illuminatus Primus]

Of course, the fact that China had 3 mast sailing ships that they could have used to colonise the rest of the world with, 200 years before the European powers were ready to, is totally ignored.

Its always made me curious why people think they can make a random, however nebulous, historical analogy, and BANG! it makes sense.

The Republic is demonstrably expanionist. There was no incentive to head east. China was not a capitalist, expansionist, scientifically enlightened, modern republic. The Galactic Republic is not a medieval empire that viewed itself as the culmination of progress, On the contrary, when your civilization in a spiral galaxy has reached point X, the next planet ripe for colonization and mining is just as far as the last planet you reached. And moreover, you suddenly have all the resources of your recent colonies to finance and make the next leap. And better yet, most of these worlds are totally uninhabited, or so primitive as to not be an issue. Unlike China, they could view the full extent of waiting resources anywhere they shot a probe which could get there within a week, or just turn a telescope. Then their craft could get their at millions of times c.

We know that the outer rimworlds weren't part of the NR from TPM, why is it hard to assume that worlds that are even futher away or even more remote would generate little, to no interest from the Republic?

Well the Republic as of TPM is in decline. The ancient Republic comprehended more remote worlds (Dantooine is actually outside the galactic disk, in the halo). And the Jedi and the Supreme Chancellory keep records detailed to the gravitational influence of single systems ten thousand light-years beyond the galactic rim.

I would have thought that the 'Unknown Regions' are just to sparse, distant, backwater dregs of the galaxy that no one cared about having diplomatic relations with, hence why they are 'unknown'. So I would readily agree with this.

Well, the whole point of my discussion isn't that the UR does not exist, because I can't argue that. I can argue that it isn't like the NJO map, where it is closer to Coruscant than Bilbringi or Ukio, and is a cohesive blob occupying a significant faction of the galactic disk.

I'll make my position clear: in line with Galaxy Guide 8 and other sources, the Unknown Regions comprehends simply those stars and territories and space generally ignored and where maps are not up-to-date, including a handful of worthless nothings interspersed in the disk and its fringes, and most of the void of the galactic halo, including some several billions of stars.

The extreme majority of the galactic disk is part of the mainstream galactic civilization, which also stretches to a few interesting sites outside the galaxy, such as Kamino, Rishi, Dantooine, and Koornacht (which seems to be a globular cluster located near the Galactic Core--galactic bulge, but just above and outside the plane of the spiral).

Therefore, I believe the NJO/Chronology map is greatly misleading in both the scale and extent of the Unknown Regions, as well as their location.

[PainRack]

Wow, an entirely irrelevent comparison. On Earth, you experience variation in territory. The galactic disk is roughly homogeneous, and full of resources and important locales.

The bounds placed on Zhou expansion to not apply to spiral galaxies. Particularly when one race has all the aces in the deck.

Quite frankly, you're implicitly agreeing with me. The shitty, clumpy, often empty, and with-few-metals part of the galaxy is the halo.

Whoa, get your arse together. I never said I disagreed with you on what the Unknown Regions are. As a matter of fact, you were the one who jumped in on my statement that the Unknown Regions probably housed several militant races, that were the "blood curdling threats" mentioned by the Chiss and that given the known military situation, could certainly be a threat to the NR and IR if they gain the logistical and technological reach.

And you also were the one who made a bloody red herring when you said

All resources, interesting locales, useful locations for colonization, etc. will have been explored and cataloged in twenty-five thousand years of technological stasis and hyperdrive flight. Moreover, those locales will be homogeneously spread through the galactic disk. Any patches of overlook or uninteresting destinations will be very local and similarly spread through the seams of the galaxy. The majority of overlooked settlements and regions should be in the galactic halo, where lower density means that, for good reason, it is avoided and ignored.

In response to

Regarding colonisation and exploration, that need not be true. The distribution of wealth and population pressure may dictate the general direction of colonisation, furthermore, settlements in the UR may not had been successful enough as to dictate the notice of the Old Republic. The Galactic Survey, noticed in the BFC trilogy certainly suggests that the Old Republic did not have current political authority or knowledge of every single settlement in the galaxy.

I said that your statement need not be true, you merely repeat your old statement back to me. Wow. Great tactics there.

If you mind shifting your artillery barrage away from the empty truck lots and back towards the trenches, you may want to address what I actually said?
I was addressing the statement that colonisation and exploration need be uniformly distributed.I pointed out why it may not.

You also took offence to the statement that militant races in the UR may not be the reason why they remain UR. We're still discusing that so at least, that's still on target.

So, mind shifting your statements back to what I'm talking about?

Except the ancient Republic was demonstrably expansionist, and was in contact with extragalactic systems (Dantooine), and very remote systems (Ziost, Korriban, etc.).

Furthermore, regions which were prohibitively remote, sparse, or uncivilized would be located in the edges of the spiral. They would not be clumped into one region of the disk, because there is no physical phenomenon to cause variation in that manner. Exploration would expand from Coruscant, outward in every direction.

And as I said, this need not be neccesary. The Wu state at the end of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms period had established trading and diplomatic relations with nations in Vietnam, India,Korea, Japan and trading ships had called as far as South Africia, yet, the island empires of the Polynesians were unknown to them.

The Han Wudi expansion was to the west of the Empire, not maritime, even though maritime expeditions to Japan were clearly possible. Indeed, it was during this period in time that trade and cultural influence of the Han on Japan began.

Similarly, Tang Taizong expansion of his dynasty was directed southwards and to the seas, with a limited attention paid towards the Xinjiang region and the Silk Road, as opposed to the recovery of territory to the north which had been the goal of previous dynasties like the Sui.

Expansion of a nation territory need not be evenly spread out, but is determined more by wealth and population pressures. Richer worlds with a higher population density would spread out, as opposed to poorer worlds with a relatively low population density. There is also no reason to believe why settlers would jump 3000 light years away from their hw in another direction, when an alternative exists only 100 ly away. Worlds which were colonised close to each other could also support each other easier, than worlds which are further away.


And of course, if as I said, militant races existed in the UR that were physically uncapable of striking out into mainstream civilisation, the Roman Empire with its borders being ringed in by nomadic tribes and the subsequent isolation of terrain outside the Mediterran basin and Western Europe serves as another analogy.

I also did not state that they were clumped together into one cohesive region of the disk. I state that the Unknown Regions, were probably portions of Republic sectors, that were so poor in resources and authority that they failed to do a periodic update on the systems in their territory, thus making the systems "unknown" in nature. Given the upheavel in the Galactic Republic, it is also of a certainty that several worlds have periodically broken away and rejoined, especially during the Sith Wars. Any of the Dark Jedi and Sith War upheavals could had created the lasting conditions that kept the Unknown Regions unknown.

We do know from the New Rebellion that there exist planets that are isolated from the attention of mainstream civilisation. Such isolated sectors would not have the ability to chart its region properly, especially if hostile pressure was present.

I find that hard to believe when there are so many corporate consortiums itching to exploit worlds and already easily encompassing billions of mining colonies. And besides, I agree with you, but these regions will not be situated or as large as depicted in the NJO/Chronology map.

And I never state that the Vector Prime map was accurate.

Corporate consortiums itching to exploit worlds may be put off by the potential security threats in the Unknown Regions, as well as being cut off from their usual markets and trade routes, which would increase costs.

We do know that the Unknown Regions were havens for pirates in the Empire region. There is no evidence to suggest that this was not the case during the Galactic Republic era.

We do know that the Unknown Regions consist of no major worlds and trading centres.

Without a well built starport facillities, along with the subsequent navigation, SAR, salvage, bunkerage etc etc etc in the region, along with the fact that there were probably rich mineral worlds, located closer to their markets as well as being within reach of good port facillities.It would had been cheaper and easier to set up shop there, as opposed to making new forays into the unknown. The Sith wars and so forth, would certainly had served as a damper towards making forays into the unknown.

And of course, if IIRC, WEG states that there are countless mining and agriculture settlements throughout the UR. Fuck, we already know from Admiral Ozzel in TESB that there are uncharted mining and human settlements in the territory of the Empire itself.

With the stupid "hyperspace wall" shit? Ignoring evidence is B-A-D, and that is easily excused as in-universe pseudoscience (for Christ's sake, they think that dark matter forms its own galaxies).

You and me are both ignoring the huge regional Unknown Region disc of the galaxy .
Pot-Kettle-Black.

False. The Empire of the Hand was toppled by a pirate assault; the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium by twelve Nebulon-B frigates (from the Rebel Alliance immediately after the costly battle at Endor, for fuck's sake) and some alien help--less than a single Imperial superiority fleet.

So? This is the same Republic where the response to the Correllian Crisis was to scrap together some light cruisers. Task Force A, were nothing more than a SAG.

The same Empire at that time, was also being forced to liase with privateers to attack the Republic. That did not have sufficient production capability to manufacture starfighters.


The Galactic Republic of old did not have the ethos to conduct a military campaign of conquest. As for commiting its military to the defence of colonnised regions, logistical and the costs of maintaining an effective defence force would had hindered exploration.

I don't think we're arguing then. Based on various economic and political factors, the extent of Republic influence may ebb and flow, and the overall encompassment of the galactic civilization may simply become more and more localized as it slowly stretches into the void.

This was never part of the argument. You're seeing a totally different argument from what I am saying.

I repeat myself. I'm not interested in glorifying the Chiss. I'm more interested in why the Unknown Regions are unknown, and what they are. We agree on what they are. That was never in dispute. We disagree on why they still are unknown.

Not the size on the NJO map. It is not plausible. The kind of islands you're talking about are not analogous to what the EU UR is. Furthermore, the Jedi do keep records on every star in the galaxy accurate to their gravitational influence (how Kamino was sighted despite deletion) and velocity (necessary for hyperjumps).

And we do know that ships from the Empire/Republic can travel into the Unknown Regions at will.

IOW, they do know the whereabouts of a star, planets and so on and forth. Its the tiny little details they don't know about. Who live where. Whether a system is still inhabitated and whether a new settlement lives there. What race occupies the system. Has a supernova blew up in the system. To be be more accurate, the central authorities at Coruscant don't know about this.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Whoa, get your arse together. I never said I disagreed with you on what the Unknown Regions are.

Conceded.

As a matter of fact, you were the one who jumped in on my statement that the Unknown Regions probably housed several militant races, that were the "blood curdling threats" mentioned by the Chiss and that given the known military situation, could certainly be a threat to the NR and IR if they gain the logistical and technological reach.

That's just the point though; they cannot. Its not physically possible. The Chiss Sector contains 29 inhabited worlds and an upper limit of 1 million systems. Compare this to the Chommell Sector, which has 30,000 colonies and 36 members, and 300 million systems.

There's just not enough out there. All the information supports the fact that the "militant races" of the Unknown Regions are all-but-irrelevent.

Like I said, the Empire of the Hand, Thrawn's pet project in the Unknown Regions, likely ceased to be a functional entity by the invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong (this is actually suggested by Sue Rostini, the SW continuity editor, so it does have some weight), after a devestating attack by pirates in Red Sky, Blue Flame. The Ssi-ruuvi could have been totally squashed by a single Superiority Fleet of the Empire--the minimum force designated by the Navy as being adequate to suppress a single industrialised world in the Known Regions according to the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels. A single Dreadnought-class ship is considered a major advancement, and in fact, in Survivor's Quest, the six Dreadnought force belonging to the Outbound Flight Group was able to exercise considerable power over the locals, despite no real support apart from what they brought with them.

And you also were the one who made a bloody red herring when you said
[snip]
I said that your statement need not be true, you merely repeat your old statement back to me. Wow. Great tactics there.

Conceded. I apologize.

I was addressing the statement that colonisation and exploration need be uniformly distributed.I pointed out why it may not.

Except we know, canonically and through official that wealth and population is allotted more-or-less in correlation with stellar density. The galaxy's regions are allotted by concentric regions of progressively less dense and more empty areas of the galaxy. The annular regions closest to the galactic bulge are richest and most heavily populated. This is supported by most official descriptions of Unknown Region locales (the Ssi-ruuvi cluster beyond Bakura at the edge of the galaxy's "Outer Rim" and the Hand of Thrawn on the wispy edge between Outer Rim and beyond, the "concentric regions" described on the galactic holomap in The Last Command, etc.)

And the reason for "clumpy" formation of human industrial, economic, population, and administrative centers is due to uneven topography and resource allocation. The topography of the galactic disk is not analogous to Earth's geography and early human history. While the pressures on development you cite are relevent, the nature of the galaxy should cause them to develop along at a geometric rate, out from the source at the spoke of the galactic spiral to its fringes.

Beyond the edge of the disk, the denser regions are not evenly distributed as you go out, as they are clumped into local bodies like globular clusters or satellite galaxies. And here you are right, the pressures would cause exploitation of those specific regions, which little to no attention applied to much of the area in between.

You also took offence to the statement that militant races in the UR may not be the reason why they remain UR. We're still discusing that so at least, that's still on target.

I'd agree with you there; they're not the reason. They are too weak.

So, mind shifting your statements back to what I'm talking about?

Sure, I apologize.

And as I said, this need not be neccesary. The Wu state at the end of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms period had established trading and diplomatic relations with nations in Vietnam, India,Korea, Japan and trading ships had called as far as South Africia, yet, the island empires of the Polynesians were unknown to them.

The island empires of the Polynesians are likely analogous to the galactic halo, with its sparse stars and fewer, further apart destinations.

(snip ancient historical analogies)
Expansion of a nation territory need not be evenly spread out, but is determined more by wealth and population pressures. Richer worlds with a higher population density would spread out, as opposed to poorer worlds with a relatively low population density. There is also no reason to believe why settlers would jump 3000 light years away from their hw in another direction, when an alternative exists only 100 ly away.

Precisely. But then those colonies will develop themselves, and want to reach for their own resources. This is why colonization in something like a galaxy is a geometric process.

The fact that the rich/population factor correlates with stellar density supports my argument.

(Worlds which were colonised close to each other could also support each other easier, than worlds which are further away.

No arguments. I don't think all at once they colonized all the galaxy, but it was not a very long process, and it won't leave big clumps. Generally speaking, it will be arranged in correlation with galactic density, hence the regions of the galaxy as they exist in the movie era.

I also did not state that they were clumped together into one cohesive region of the disk. I state that the Unknown Regions, were probably portions of Republic sectors, that were so poor in resources and authority that they failed to do a periodic update on the systems in their territory, thus making the systems "unknown" in nature. Given the upheavel in the Galactic Republic, it is also of a certainty that several worlds have periodically broken away and rejoined, especially during the Sith Wars. Any of the Dark Jedi and Sith War upheavals could had created the lasting conditions that kept the Unknown Regions unknown.

Agreed. The number of "Unknown Regions" gradually increases and becomes progressively denser as you go further from the Core, poorer, more rural, and less important. Eventually, you get to the billions of stars in the halo and the metal-poor globular clusters, which while cataloged, are almost certainly nearly totally ignored as useless (the Yevetha were known to the Empire, but ignored to the point of developing until the Imperial era until the Empire decided to use it as a secret yard).

(We do know from the New Rebellion that there exist planets that are isolated from the attention of mainstream civilisation. Such isolated sectors would not have the ability to chart its region properly, especially if hostile pressure was present.

I agree. All I'm saying is this trend (it isn't black and white, but a spectrum of relative tendency to be ignored) correlates with the further you move out from the denser regions of the galactic spiral and closer to the void. Generally speaking, there will be very few to no Unknown Regions near the core within the galactic arms.

(Corporate consortiums itching to exploit worlds may be put off by the potential security threats in the Unknown Regions, as well as being cut off from their usual markets and trade routes, which would increase costs.

Actually and interestingly, apparently Corellian merchants had contact with the Chiss Ascendancy before the Empire.

We do know that the Unknown Regions were havens for pirates in the Empire region. There is no evidence to suggest that this was not the case during the Galactic Republic era.

Agreed.

We do know that the Unknown Regions consist of no major worlds and trading centres.

Agreed.

Without a well built starport facillities, along with the subsequent navigation, SAR, salvage, bunkerage etc etc etc in the region, along with the fact that there were probably rich mineral worlds, located closer to their markets as well as being within reach of good port facillities.It would had been cheaper and easier to set up shop there, as opposed to making new forays into the unknown. The Sith wars and so forth, would certainly had served as a damper towards making forays into the unknown.

Agreed.

And of course, if IIRC, WEG states that there are countless mining and agriculture settlements throughout the UR. Fuck, we already know from Admiral Ozzel in TESB that there are uncharted mining and human settlements in the territory of the Empire itself.

Farms and mines can be abandoned and still be self-sustaining. In fact, these are the only kind of colonies I can imagine later being ignored and still lasting--because they have a means to produce and develop to sustain small pockets of civilization.

You and me are both ignoring the huge regional Unknown Region disc of the galaxy. Pot-Kettle-Black.

I'm well aware. I was simply saying it should be avoided where possible.

The fact that The Worlds of Episode I and The Worlds of Attack of the Clones both show continuous, unbroken annular bands representing the galactic regions all the way out to Kamino, entirely encircling the galaxy (without the offending interrupting clump of the UR in the stupid map), and are both canon helps. Considerably.

So? This is the same Republic where the response to the Correllian Crisis was to scrap together some light cruisers. Task Force A, were nothing more than a SAG.

Six Dreadnoughts with no support are a sizable and powerful military force in the Unknown Regions.

I would stress though that under the New Republic regionalism has probably become important again, like under the late-era old Republic, with individual systems and corporations forming their own sizable militaries (one of these would be the Tapani Navy and the numerous navies from Vision of the Future).

The same Empire at that time, was also being forced to liase with privateers to attack the Republic. That did not have sufficient production capability to manufacture starfighters.

Point taken.

The Galactic Republic of old did not have the ethos to conduct a military campaign of conquest. As for commiting its military to the defence of colonnised regions, logistical and the costs of maintaining an effective defence force would had hindered exploration.

Indeed.

This was never part of the argument. You're seeing a totally different argument from what I am saying.

I repeat myself. I'm not interested in glorifying the Chiss. I'm more interested in why the Unknown Regions are unknown, and what they are. We agree on what they are. That was never in dispute. We disagree on why they still are unknown.

I think they're Unknown by virtue of the fact they are either useless, out-of-the-way, or otherwise economically prohibitive, so social pressures over the history of the galactic civilisation suppressed colonization even though these worlds were cataloged.

And we do know that ships from the Empire/Republic can travel into the Unknown Regions at will.

We do.

IOW, they do know the whereabouts of a star, planets and so on and forth. Its the tiny little details they don't know about. Who live where. Whether a system is still inhabitated and whether a new settlement lives there. What race occupies the system. Has a supernova blew up in the system. To be be more accurate, the central authorities at Coruscant don't know about this.

Yes. However, some minor powers may (the Corellian merchants' example comes again).

[PainRack]

That's just the point though; they cannot. Its not physically possible. The Chiss Sector contains 29 inhabited worlds and an upper limit of 1 million systems. Compare this to the Chommell Sector, which has 30,000 colonies and 36 members, and 300 million systems.

There's just not enough out there. All the information supports the fact that the "militant races" of the Unknown Regions are all-but-irrelevent.

That ignores the fact that a few thousand cavalry was exactly what caused all the huge commotion in Rome. Attila the Hun army was less than 1/10 of the Roman army, and the Romans had a lot more reserves left to commit to the fight.

I'm not saying any of the pirate bands and hostiles in the Unknown Regions are able to conquer the Galactic Republic and the like. I'm saying that the presence of such hostiles would limit expansion into the various sectors, and prevent the kind of political control that would had made the Unknown Regions, known. Certainly, the civilian authorities as well as private concerns would had taken care to colonise worlds that were relatively more secure and safe than worlds that could be threatened by hostile forces. While it would had been relatively easy for the Republic to had dispatched military forces to subdue them, costs factors as well as the ethos of the Galactic Republic would certainly had acted as a factor against exerting more political control in such sectors.

All the blood curdling threats out there, is insignificant to the Galactic Empire of Palpatine, and the Galactic Republic. I'm not disagreeing with you on that, and as both of us agree,the only way Parck statement makes any form of sense is if he was referring to the current political situation. Although I must admit, the scales Parck statements are made in are absurd.

Except we know, canonically and through official that wealth and population is allotted more-or-less in correlation with stellar density. The galaxy's regions are allotted by concentric regions of progressively less dense and more empty areas of the galaxy. The annular regions closest to the galactic bulge are richest and most heavily populated. This is supported by most official descriptions of Unknown Region locales (the Ssi-ruuvi cluster beyond Bakura at the edge of the galaxy's "Outer Rim" and the Hand of Thrawn on the wispy edge between Outer Rim and beyond, the "concentric regions" described on the galactic holomap in The Last Command, etc.)

Agreed. Therefore, if the Unknown Regions are to be rationalised with current data, they cannot possibly be of the huge swath as depicted in the Vector Prime map. Its plausible that the Vector Prime map was a badly depicted 2D drawing of a 3D map, and the Unknown Regions close to Coruscant actually depicts stars out in the distant halo that were "north" of Coruscant but as we both know, even then, it still doesn't make sense.

And the reason for "clumpy" formation of human industrial, economic, population, and administrative centers is due to uneven topography and resource allocation. The topography of the galactic disk is not analogous to Earth's geography and early human history. While the pressures on development you cite are relevent, the nature of the galaxy should cause them to develop along at a geometric rate, out from the source at the spoke of the galactic spiral to its fringes.

I'm not disagreeing that the worlds of the galactic disk, and by extension, the map in Vector Prime should be known. The relative density of stars, as well as the known concentration of rich worlds, as well as political centres of authority and power made it impossible for the worlds surrounding the Core to be unknown. Unsettled perhaps, but definitely not unknown.

But as a sidenote, habitable worlds and the costs of colonising such worlds may act in the same limiting way as geography and resource allocation. Official data confirms that wealthy sectors would tend to be large in terms of worlds and stars under its control. However, even for relatively prosperous worlds like Naboo, the systems it control is significantly smaller than Core worlds. As such, poor sectors, primarily consisting of worlds like Tatooine and the like would tend to have exerted a smaller political influence territorily, and may not have been able to consistently update political data on systems that are nominally under its control. Indeed, the ebb and flow of the Republic wealth would certainly had led to many systems leaving the notice of the Republic poorer sectors, while population and other pressures set up new, small settlements.


What I personally believe is that the Map depicting the unknown worlds are actually systems north of Coruscant and in the spiral arm at least, if not the galactic halo, in a possible cloud like the Oort Cloud. And since the map is not shown to scale, the UR size and density had been exaggerated beyond belief.

We do know from the various comics that clouds of dust and so forth had hidden settlements before. Indeed, Han was forced to take such refuge from Boba Fett once. The costs of maintaining political authority in such a region may had been prohibitive.

Precisely. But then those colonies will develop themselves, and want to reach for their own resources. This is why colonization in something like a galaxy is a geometric process.

The fact that the rich/population factor correlates with stellar density supports my argument.

Agreed. The point I was making is that it would only be the worlds which became sufficient rich enough to continue such expansion that would do so.

No arguments. I don't think all at once they colonized all the galaxy, but it was not a very long process, and it won't leave big clumps. Generally speaking, it will be arranged in correlation with galactic density, hence the regions of the galaxy as they exist in the movie era.

Okay, here's where I choose to disagree with you. I find it plausible that in between the settled regions of space like Correlia, Coruscant, Kuat and etc etc etc, there may exist sectors which are relatively poorer to their rich cousins, especially if given the ravages of the Galactic Civil War.

In such sectors, especially if hyperspace routes are disrupted by the presence of a long-lasting supernova and the like, factors may had exerted to create "unknown" portions of the sector, that if occured relatively recent in Galactic history would had formed part of the Unknown Regions. Taken together on a badly drawn map, they may form a large blot of space as seen on the Vector Prime map. Certainly, the map as seen focused only on worlds where Yuzhan Vong action had taken place, as well as the canon locales. The Unknown Regions it depicts may had wiped out details on both the known member worlds of the Republic as well as the unknown. Alternatively, it depicted members of independent affiliation as unknown, as the Republic did not have the resources to know anything about them and political contact was limited. There should exist more independent nations like Hapes in the galaxy.
Furthermore, the New Republic is not the Galactic republic, relatively undeveloped sectors in between the richer Core worlds may had not been consolidated into the political authority of the New Republic. Navigational and political data, left undated for more than 20 years could had been the reason why the Unknown Regions of the Vector Prime map is so huge, as opposed to the Unknown Regions as depicted by WEG in the Galactic Empire era.

Actually and interestingly, apparently Corellian merchants had contact with the Chiss Ascendancy before the Empire.

This isn't unusual in the historical sense. However, its the big business, the MNCs equivalent in the GR and GE that would had hesitated to step into such a situation.

I think they're Unknown by virtue of the fact they are either useless, out-of-the-way, or otherwise economically prohibitive, so social pressures over the history of the galactic civilisation suppressed colonization even though these worlds were cataloged.

Would you care to elaborate? An exchange of ideas would be good.

[Illuminatus Primus]

That ignores the fact that a few thousand cavalry was exactly what caused all the huge commotion in Rome. Attila the Hun army was less than 1/10 of the Roman army, and the Romans had a lot more reserves left to commit to the fight.

You're talking about much larger orders of magnitude than that.

There are between two-to-three orders of magnitude between the Chiss Ascendancy and the Chommell Sector.

We're talking about a sector, a modest one, one of thousands, more than two-thirds the way to the end of the spiral from the galactic center. It's capital is an idyllic resort world with novelty exports at best and a few billion inhabitants.

This is like a small town's forces on the border of Gaul outnumbering the army of Attila the Hun several times over.

I'm not saying any of the pirate bands and hostiles in the Unknown Regions are able to conquer the Galactic Republic and the like.

The Sith Empire did not even limit expansion, and it was on the fringe of the Outer Rim. Enemies in the depths of the galactic spiral would have long been assimilated.

I'm saying that the presence of such hostiles would limit expansion into the various sectors, and prevent the kind of political control that would had made the Unknown Regions, known.

There are Known Regions which are not under the political auspices of Coruscant. The Unknown Regions are defined thusly:

Unknown Regions
The term "Unknown Region" is a general term for any sector of space which is officially unexplored. Covering literally billions of stars, most of these areas are thousands of light years from the Core Worlds, in the most distant areas of the galaxy. Most of these areas of space remain mysterious and unexplored, and are one of the prime subjects of Scout Service scrutiny. There are also several areas within the boundaries of New Republic and Imperial space which remain "unknown" as fas as the general public is concerned. Many of these regions have been explored, but for some reason remain restricted to civilian travel.
The Unknown Regions are the most dangerous because they are farthest from aid and least understood. ....

(Notice the reference to stars in the range of 1e9-1e10; the precise quantity of stars one would expect to find in the halo of a galaxy).

Unknown Regions
The Unknown Regions are the parts of the galaxy and beyond that remain unexplored. Certain regions within the borders of known space are also called Unknown due to the fact that they appear on no official astrogation charts. Some of these places are known to the Empire, the Rebellion, and even fringe society groups, but they remain hidden from the galaxy at large.

Sounds to me the primary reasons why the vast majority of the Unknown Regions are unknown is because they are distant and in very empty or undesirable reaches of space. Force Heretic II: Refugee suggests that those Unknown Regions inside the galaxy only total 1e5-1e6 stars (out of the 2e11 in the GFFA, and that's during the pathetic New Republic).

We both agree the VP map is unteniable. So dealing with original materials (the VP map is overriden by canon anyway) you have UR stars ranging from 1e9-1e10 total (much closer to the lower limit) with perhaps 1e5-1e6 (closer to the lower limit) lying inside the galactic spiral.

Your view at times, which in some ways I find akin to having top real estate between New Jersey and Manhattan that no one has maps of and no one bothers to build in. Quite incredible.

And by-and-large, the trend seems to be regions cut-off, or otherwise empty and useless. I've never seen much evidence for Unknown Regions interspersed among the Core Worlds. And besides, then the UR would contain tens of billions of stars.

Certainly, the civilian authorities as well as private concerns would had taken care to colonise worlds that were relatively more secure and safe than worlds that could be threatened by hostile forces. While it would had been relatively easy for the Republic to had dispatched military forces to subdue them, costs factors as well as the ethos of the Galactic Republic would certainly had acted as a factor against exerting more political control in such sectors.

Political control does not really matter. As long as the given regions are known and participant in the galactic community of economics, politics, etc., they belong to the Known Regions. Otherwise the Known Regions were vastly decrease during Dark Empire and other times when the central authority about Coruscant had greatly diminished.

All the blood curdling threats out there, is insignificant to the Galactic Empire of Palpatine, and the Galactic Republic. I'm not disagreeing with you on that, and as both of us agree,the only way Parck statement makes any form of sense is if he was referring to the current political situation. Although I must admit, the scales Parck statements are made in are absurd.

I think you're really pulling straws based on basically telling Mara "there's scary stuff out there." Especially when that was also combined with telling her she was safe behind a ring of starships. You really need to cite some examples and lay out how they keep people out if you want to prove your point.

All I've seen are raiders against the most distant fringes of the galaxy. These guys are the equivalent of indigeneous traders on the coast or deep in the rainforest in the modern world.

Agreed. Therefore, if the Unknown Regions are to be rationalised with current data, they cannot possibly be of the huge swath as depicted in the Vector Prime map. Its plausible that the Vector Prime map was a badly depicted 2D drawing of a 3D map, and the Unknown Regions close to Coruscant actually depicts stars out in the distant halo that were "north" of Coruscant but as we both know, even then, it still doesn't make sense.

Who cares? The Inside of the Worlds of... series overrides it.

Official data confirms that wealthy sectors would tend to be large in terms of worlds and stars under its control. However, even for relatively prosperous worlds like Naboo, the systems it control is significantly smaller than Core worlds.

Naboo is comparitively insignificant and tiny. Its described as modest. It is not that prosperous for a Republic sector.

As such, poor sectors, primarily consisting of worlds like Tatooine and the like would tend to have exerted a smaller political influence territorily, and may not have been able to consistently update political data on systems that are nominally under its control. Indeed, the ebb and flow of the Republic wealth would certainly had led to many systems leaving the notice of the Republic poorer sectors, while population and other pressures set up new, small settlements.

Proof? I can see how this can happen, but I don't see any real reason to suggest it is happening a lot, and mostly, this won't happen much until you start heading into the Outer Rim, and inhabited colonies are rarely going to be abandoned. Technological stasis suggests that colonies are established at similar rates to colonial abandonment.

What I personally believe is that the Map depicting the unknown worlds are actually systems north of Coruscant and in the spiral arm at least, if not the galactic halo, in a possible cloud like the Oort Cloud. And since the map is not shown to scale, the UR size and density had been exaggerated beyond belief.

Maybe. That's a nice fix, and it does the job. I suggest browsing Saxton's page on the subject. Also check out Components of the Galaxy.

We do know from the various comics that clouds of dust and so forth had hidden settlements before. Indeed, Han was forced to take such refuge from Boba Fett once. The costs of maintaining political authority in such a region may had been prohibitive.

It is extraordinarily difficult to oppose hyperdrive travel entirely--it requires extreme localisation of masses like the Maw. And as I said, even if the colony is nominally independent and self-sustaining, as long as it is actively trading and has some economic relationship with local powers and sectors, it'll still be a Known Region. Keep in mind above, the nature and definition of the Unknown Regions includes the remoteness of the worlds in question.

Agreed. The point I was making is that it would only be the worlds which became sufficient rich enough to continue such expansion that would do so.

Wealth pours in from economic development by colonizing and developing said worlds. Colonizing and developing will be a net-gain process.

Okay, here's where I choose to disagree with you. I find it plausible that in between the settled regions of space like Correlia, Coruscant, Kuat and etc etc etc, there may exist sectors which are relatively poorer to their rich cousins, especially if given the ravages of the Galactic Civil War.

Post proof. I find it supremely unlikely because it is the very nature of the regions where the Core Worlds are located to be rich and favourable to expansion and colonisation. The most interesting and useful locales are closest together and most common there. They will most certainly develop the local best real estate before moving into the Outer Rim.

In such sectors, especially if hyperspace routes are disrupted by the presence of a long-lasting supernova and the like, factors may had exerted to create "unknown" portions of the sector, that if occured relatively recent in Galactic history would had formed part of the Unknown Regions.

You don't have enough catastrophies for that level of isolation. Inhabitable worlds would never have developed in the first place.

Not to mention a UR you're describing is not at all based on canon or official, and relies on assumption, proposals, and vague historical analogies rather than physical facts about the situation.

Taken together on a badly drawn map, they may form a large blot of space as seen on the Vector Prime map. Certainly, the map as seen focused only on worlds where Yuzhan Vong action had taken place, as well as the canon locales. The Unknown Regions it depicts may had wiped out details on both the known member worlds of the Republic as well as the unknown. Alternatively, it depicted members of independent affiliation as unknown, as the Republic did not have the resources to know anything about them and political contact was limited. There should exist more independent nations like Hapes in the galaxy.
Furthermore, the New Republic is not the Galactic republic, relatively undeveloped sectors in between the richer Core worlds may had not been consolidated into the political authority of the New Republic. Navigational and political data, left undated for more than 20 years could had been the reason why the Unknown Regions of the Vector Prime map is so huge, as opposed to the Unknown Regions as depicted by WEG in the Galactic Empire era.

The galactic geography and history makes it entirely illogical that these kind of phenomena would magically arrange in a discrete, assymmetric blob. What are you doing anyway? Is this just a vague theory trying to condone the VP map which is contradicted by canon and you said is ignored?

Mangling the definitions to this degree is not something I can agree with.

Would you care to elaborate? An exchange of ideas would be good.

I basically subscribe to Saxton's theory, with the idea that certain prohibited regions, abandoned, economically depressed areas, almost entirely in the Outer Rim's edges and few and far between may also belong to the Unknown Regions.

As you venture further from the bulge and plane of the disk's rotation, the density of stars and the abundance of post-helium elements decreases.

Therefore, as you move out, the liklihood of poor communications, worthless destinations, etc. increases, and the number of Unknown Regions increases.

Once you move into the halo, with very little post-helium elements, and spread out stars, nearly all regions would be Unknown.

[Crown]

Its always made me curious why people think they can make a random, however nebulous, historical analogy, and BANG! it makes sense.

It doesn't 'BANG! Make sense' it gives another frame of reference other than expansionist colonial powers, that we in the Western world especially have rose tinted glasses on when viewing.

The Republic is demonstrably expanionist.

Rubbish. The Republic is neither demonstrably expansionist nor benign. It is a form of government made up of volunatary members.

There was no incentive to head east. China was not a capitalist, expansionist, scientifically enlightened, modern republic.

I call bullshit. China was at least 200 years more advanced in its scientific and engineering abilities than Europe at that time. It was a prosperous and rich country, and had an industrial output of coal alone using man labour, that was not eclipsed until the later decades of the Industrial Revolution.

The Galactic Republic is not a medieval empire that viewed itself as the culmination of progress, On the contrary, when your civilization in a spiral galaxy has reached point X, the next planet ripe for colonization and mining is just as far as the last planet you reached. And moreover, you suddenly have all the resources of your recent colonies to finance and make the next leap. And better yet, most of these worlds are totally uninhabited, or so primitive as to not be an issue. Unlike China, they could view the full extent of waiting resources anywhere they shot a probe which could get there within a week, or just turn a telescope. Then their craft could get their at millions of times c.

Wonderfully argued, but lacking in any way attacking the difference between China and the GR. Both were central looking, both were technologically stagnate, for one.

The other point you totally miss is that there was no shortage of raw materials in the ready form of comets or asteroids that would require them to expand. Worlds to inhabit are all well and good, but from inspection it is evident that there isn't a shortage of them at all. Arguing they would go somewhere 'just because they could' in asinine. They need to be inticed to go further, there needs to be an economic benefit.

The European powers expanded because of the sheer wealth they could exploit from the rest of the world, and to gain an advantage over their competitors.

China did not need to because it already had all the resources it could ever want for. This is why the arguement holds thin for me. You and I both agree that the greatest resources would be located closer to the galatic halo not farther from. The human populations all appear to propergate outwards from the halo. It makes more and more sense that they would expand slowest here, since there is the greater wealth to exploit.

The UR (with the Chiss as a subspecies of humans) can be viewed as a past expedition, that lost steam because no valuable return on investment was apparant. It is ridiculous to assume that 'unknown' means 'un explored' (afterall China sailed as far to the African East coast before calling it quits), but rather somewhere where no contact between the locals and the galactic proper exists.

Well the Republic as of TPM is in decline. The ancient Republic comprehended more remote worlds (Dantooine is actually outside the galactic disk, in the halo). And the Jedi and the Supreme Chancellory keep records detailed to the gravitational influence of single systems ten thousand light-years beyond the galactic rim.

I am not arguing; Unkown = never explored! I am saying 'unknown' = too far and backwater for anyone to give a shit about.

Well, the whole point of my discussion isn't that the UR does not exist, because I can't argue that. I can argue that it isn't like the NJO map, where it is closer to Coruscant than Bilbringi or Ukio, and is a cohesive blob occupying a significant faction of the galactic disk.

I'll make my position clear: in line with Galaxy Guide 8 and other sources, the Unknown Regions comprehends simply those stars and territories and space generally ignored and where maps are not up-to-date, including a handful of worthless nothings interspersed in the disk and its fringes, and most of the void of the galactic halo, including some several billions of stars.

The extreme majority of the galactic disk is part of the mainstream galactic civilization, which also stretches to a few interesting sites outside the galaxy, such as Kamino, Rishi, Dantooine, and Koornacht (which seems to be a globular cluster located near the Galactic Core--galactic bulge, but just above and outside the plane of the spiral).

Therefore, I believe the NJO/Chronology map is greatly misleading in both the scale and extent of the Unknown Regions, as well as their location.

100% fully agree with you here ... so why are we arguing again?

[PainRack]

You're talking about much larger orders of magnitude than that.

There are between two-to-three orders of magnitude between the Chiss Ascendancy and the Chommell Sector.

We're talking about a sector, a modest one, one of thousands, more than two-thirds the way to the end of the spiral from the galactic center. It's capital is an idyllic resort world with novelty exports at best and a few billion inhabitants.

This is like a small town's forces on the border of Gaul outnumbering the army of Attila the Hun several times over.

Granted. Then I submit that it was the costs of stationing a military force in such regions, as opposed to the threat that may serve to limit Galactic Republic expansion in such areas.

The Sith Empire did not even limit expansion, and it was on the fringe of the Outer Rim. Enemies in the depths of the galactic spiral would have long been assimilated.

From what I understand, the Sith Empire engaged in a war of conquest with the Republic and was ultimately defeated. Furthermore, the Jedi sourcebook also stated that the Sith Wars was an extremely traumatic era for the Galactic Republic.

Ultimately, the expansion of the Republic was at the cost of the Sith Empire, which chose to engage in a war of conquest with the Republic. At other times, the ethos of the Republic would had served to hinder military expansion.

There are Known Regions which are not under the political auspices of Coruscant. The Unknown Regions are defined thusly:

Unknown Regions
The term "Unknown Region" is a general term for any sector of space which is officially unexplored. Covering literally billions of stars, most of these areas are thousands of light years from the Core Worlds, in the most distant areas of the galaxy. Most of these areas of space remain mysterious and unexplored, and are one of the prime subjects of Scout Service scrutiny. There are also several areas within the boundaries of New Republic and Imperial space which remain "unknown" as fas as the general public is concerned. Many of these regions have been explored, but for some reason remain restricted to civilian travel.
The Unknown Regions are the most dangerous because they are farthest from aid and least understood. ....

(Notice the reference to stars in the range of 1e9-1e10; the precise quantity of stars one would expect to find in the halo of a galaxy).

Unknown Regions
The Unknown Regions are the parts of the galaxy and beyond that remain unexplored. Certain regions within the borders of known space are also called Unknown due to the fact that they appear on no official astrogation charts. Some of these places are known to the Empire, the Rebellion, and even fringe society groups, but they remain hidden from the galaxy at large.

Sounds to me the primary reasons why the vast majority of the Unknown Regions are unknown is because they are distant and in very empty or undesirable reaches of space. Force Heretic II: Refugee suggests that those Unknown Regions inside the galaxy only total 1e5-1e6 stars (out of the 2e11 in the GFFA, and that's during the pathetic New Republic).

Looks good.

However, I still do not see why it must be prohibited for an Unknown Region to lie within the more dense areas of the spiral arms or even the disk itself. It's more than plausible that diffculties in navigation and hyperspace travel within a region of space may serve to create undesirable conditions that would make a region "known". Indeed, we do know that hyperspace routes in the Deep Core are relatively unknown, as a result of the Empire classification of hyperspace routes and the close stellar density of stars, that hinder hyperspace travel.

While there is no proof for their existence, there is also no conclusive proof against them.

We both agree the VP map is unteniable. So dealing with original materials (the VP map is overriden by canon anyway) you have UR stars ranging from 1e9-1e10 total (much closer to the lower limit) with perhaps 1e5-1e6 (closer to the lower limit) lying inside the galactic spiral.

Your view at times, which in some ways I find akin to having top real estate between New Jersey and Manhattan that no one has maps of and no one bothers to build in. Quite incredible.

IMO, my view would be akin to the underground tunnels in New York City and Boston. Once a vital cog of the city metropolis, they eventually subsided from the public minds, and even city enginners are not entirely sure of the location and directions of several of those tunnels.

IOW, there isn't any reason why there shouldn't be some undesirable region lying in the Core Worlds, where no one will bother to keep updated with navigation beacons, probes, satellites to scan for hyperspace traffic and Holonet/subspace communications relays. They will be extremely small, and it would be possible for any tom dick and harry to go there and set up camp. However, there wouldn't be a sustainable reason to do so.

Political control does not really matter. As long as the given regions are known and participant in the galactic community of economics, politics, etc., they belong to the Known Regions. Otherwise the Known Regions were vastly decrease during Dark Empire and other times when the central authority about Coruscant had greatly diminished.

That is true. However, my point was that rich worlds, corporations and the like that would be able to create a sustainable settlement which in turn would have the influence to reach out into the galactic community would more often than not choose not to set up settlements in regions where

I think you're really pulling straws based on basically telling Mara "there's scary stuff out there." Especially when that was also combined with telling her she was safe behind a ring of starships. You really need to cite some examples and lay out how they keep people out if you want to prove your point.

All I've seen are raiders against the most distant fringes of the galaxy. These guys are the equivalent of indigeneous traders on the coast or deep in the rainforest in the modern world.

.........

Conceded. At best, the militant threats in the Unknown Regions would be classified as pirate bands in the inner regions of the galactic community.

Who cares? The Inside of the Worlds of... series overrides it.

I like to be able to say why such evidence is depicted in such a manner and so forth. That's why I went to the trouble of researching photovaltic cells, radiators and automobile engines so as to state that the WEG TIE Solar Panels depiction is plausible, if one interpretes it as taking its radiation source not from the sun, but from the TIE powerplant itself.

Naboo is comparitively insignificant and tiny. Its described as modest. It is not that prosperous for a Republic sector.

Its certainly more prosperous than that sector which only controlled 2k systems in one of the EU novels of that time.

Its authority over inhabitated planets is also lesser than that of the relatively richer Corporate Sector, although the number of worlds Naboo exploit, if Inside the Worlds is accurate, is more than that dominated by the Corporate Sector.

Proof? I can see how this can happen, but I don't see any real reason to suggest it is happening a lot, and mostly, this won't happen much until you start heading into the Outer Rim, and inhabited colonies are rarely going to be abandoned. Technological stasis suggests that colonies are established at similar rates to colonial abandonment.

I was suggesting that this happen primarily out in the Outer Rim, and as for proof, the New Rebellion.

It is extraordinarily difficult to oppose hyperdrive travel entirely--it requires extreme localisation of masses like the Maw. And as I said, even if the colony is nominally independent and self-sustaining, as long as it is actively trading and has some economic relationship with local powers and sectors, it'll still be a Known Region. Keep in mind above, the nature and definition of the Unknown Regions includes the remoteness of the worlds in question.

Not oppose hyperspace travel. Hidden from the galactic community.

Wealth pours in from economic development by colonizing and developing said worlds. Colonizing and developing will be a net-gain process.

Only if the colonised world was successful. Alderaan, a Core world, whoose expatriates are primarily merchantmen, and with the political backing of Princess Leia themselves balk at the cost of terraforming another world to settle. Similarly, the Bothans, a supposedly politically and economically influential entity had Han state that terraforming a world for Caamas, or reforming the orginal world would strain their finances, even withou Felya admission of their bankruptcy.

IRL, for every successful colony like the Americas and Australia, there are multides of failed or non-self sustaining colonies(finanicially). Indeed, the reason why the British had the East of Suez policy was that it no longer could afford to pay for non self sustaining colonies in its empire. Even prior to WW1, there were certainly more unsuccessful colonies the British held as compared to success stories like India, South Africia, Canada and Australia.

Post proof. I find it supremely unlikely because it is the very nature of the regions where the Core Worlds are located to be rich and favourable to expansion and colonisation. The most interesting and useful locales are closest together and most common there. They will most certainly develop the local best real estate before moving into the Outer Rim.

Except that there are bound to be regions where they are poor and the various systems are not mineral friendly, stars are weak, hyperspace travel is poor as opposed to elsewhere and so on and forth. The system where Obiwan and Anakin resolved the trade dispute, (Anitioch?) was a poor, undeveloped world in the Core.

You don't have enough catastrophies for that level of isolation. Inhabitable worlds would never have developed in the first place.

Not to mention a UR you're describing is not at all based on canon or official, and relies on assumption, proposals, and vague historical analogies rather than physical facts about the situation.

Conceded.

[Illuminatus Primus]

It doesn't 'BANG! Make sense' it gives another frame of reference other than expansionist colonial powers, that we in the Western world especially have rose tinted glasses on when viewing.

Are you claiming that the Empire of China is more comparable to the Republic than the European nation-states?

"A better perspective" doesn't really give us much. In fact, without drawing it as a better analogy than other states in our history, it is a logical fallacy. It is a false analogy.

Rubbish. The Republic is neither demonstrably expansionist nor benign. It is a form of government made up of volunatary members.

Declaring something rubbish and stating the political status of something does not prove anything.

The Great Hyperspace War depicts the Republic as expansionist.

ex·pan·sion·ism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (k-spnsh-nzm)
n.
A nation's practice or policy of territorial or economic expansion.

The European Union is a form of government composed of voluntary members, and is similarly demonstrably expansionist. Your arguments are red herrings.

I call bullshit. China was at least 200 years more advanced in its scientific and engineering abilities than Europe at that time. It was a prosperous and rich country, and had an industrial output of coal alone using man labour, that was not eclipsed until the later decades of the Industrial Revolution.

Call what you like. Ming China did not colonize where the ships of her Admirals, including those of the infamous Zheng He, traveled to and charted.

Not to mention the economic pressures to construct mighty fleets, sometimes nearly four thousand in number and encompassing vessels which displaced up more than 1,500 tons (Cook 94). Sometimes more than 30,000 workers mobilized to construct these vessels.

Quite frankly, these fleets never expressed any real attempt to colonize Chinese civilization in their long voyages, and with Mongol attacks from the north intensified, the Emperor began to withdraw funding. By the 1430s, the ministers and eunuchs suggested the resources would be best dedicated to agriculture within the Empire. This was collowed by more Mongol threats from the northwest, and finally, in 1436, a decree from the Sun of Heaven banned the construction of new soeagoing ships. By 1500, it became a capital offense for anyone to board a ship with more than two masts unless they had permission from the government (97).

And besides, we know from The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones that it is simple matter to probe nearly every system in the galaxy at will, and that every system has been charted.

Therefore, any attractive system in the galaxy would be exploited and colonized at will. Certainly they might skip shit in between, but those regions will be finely and uniformly distributed throughout the disk by virtue of the galactic structure. Therefore there would not be any particular avoided region.

Wonderfully argued, but lacking in any way attacking the difference between China and the GR. Both were central looking, both were technologically stagnate, for one.

The Galactic Republic was technologically stagnant because it had essentially reached a state of equilibrium with galactic expansion. If you read Saxton's site he goes in-depth on how economic and political equilibrium.

Quite frankly, if the Republic had been vastly smaller in the past, and since expanded greatly, the influx of new economic incentives, new resources, and vast expansion of population necessitates additional political, social, economic, and technological innovations to more efficiently conduct society.

The technological stasis is actually a proof of the early complete colonization of the galaxy.

As for Ming China, it actually technologically regressed. I don't recall the Republic banning ships of significant tonnage.

The other point you totally miss is that there was no shortage of raw materials in the ready form of comets or asteroids that would require them to expand. Worlds to inhabit are all well and good, but from inspection it is evident that there isn't a shortage of them at all. Arguing they would go somewhere 'just because they could' in asinine. They need to be inticed to go further, there needs to be an economic benefit.

The European powers expanded because of the sheer wealth they could exploit from the rest of the world, and to gain an advantage over their competitors.

China did not need to because it already had all the resources it could ever want for. This is why the arguement holds thin for me. You and I both agree that the greatest resources would be located closer to the galatic halo not farther from. The human populations all appear to propergate outwards from the halo. It makes more and more sense that they would expand slowest here, since there is the greater wealth to exploit.

Point taken.

The UR (with the Chiss as a subspecies of humans) can be viewed as a past expedition, that lost steam because no valuable return on investment was apparant. It is ridiculous to assume that 'unknown' means 'un explored' (afterall China sailed as far to the African East coast before calling it quits), but rather somewhere where no contact between the locals and the galactic proper exists.

Agreed.

I'm saying any regions ignored by the Republic should exist outside the disk, because until you head for the fringy edges (the Outer Rim Territories, incidently) because most of the disk is essentially no different from the highly developed Core Worlds to the Mid Rim. The idea that they would, after having fully charted every world specifically ignore a clump in there, is beyond logic.

I am not arguing; Unkown = never explored! I am saying 'unknown' = too far and backwater for anyone to give a shit about.

I agree.

100% fully agree with you here ... so why are we arguing again?

Dunno. I just feel Ming China isn't the best analogy to the Galactic Republic, though that's a minor point.

[PainRack]

Just like to clear up some points here.

Call what you like. Ming China did not colonize where the ships of her Admirals, including those of the infamous Zheng He, traveled to and charted.

Actually, that would be untrue. China claimed lordship over the various kingdoms of Malaya and even the Siam Empire. Unlike European colonisation, Chinese colonisation under "chinese" rule, as opposed to conquest dynasties, since the era of the "Three Emperors" period(assuming they existed) had been a series of tribute and cultural/demographic expansion.

As such, the Ming Dynasty oversea empire was defined by the regular submission of tribute and trade missions with her client states.

The proper argument would be that the Ming dynasty never set up a western style colonisation empire.

As for Ming China, it actually technologically regressed. I don't recall the Republic banning ships of significant tonnage.

Actually, the Ming dynasty banned private ownership of such vessels. Interestingly, we do know that regulations on private owned vessels the size of ISDs were present in the Empire era.

The Ming dynasty would later rely on such ocean-going ships to defend their claims to the throne against the Yuan dynasty. Oh, and one more thing, the Mongols no longer existed. They had been subsumed and scattered.