Building the BSDF into the Beowulf Space Navy

Jonathan_S wrote:

Relax wrote:Empires: Yesterday, Today, and future.

Someone made a map of all the worlds empires. From the capital of said empire they drew lines in terms of days of travel.

That seems to be overstating the historical case significantly (or at least understating how long further stretches' of empire were held).

Yes, I did overemphasize the distinction of core/extremities on purpose. More to kick the discussion off a bit. Or should I say, add this point into the discussion to uh, overemphasize that the BSDF and its unit composition will be a short term consideration. Of course what do we do with the Gregor/Andermani with the terminus literally in their empire. Language seems an obvious distinction as a limit for total interaction between the two. I keep thinking of Canada here, Quebec may as well be its own country inside another country and the only true reason they are part of Canada at all is because of the St. Lawrence Seaway and if the French speakers were in BC instead of Quebec, I think they would be their separate country and not part of Canada at all.

Another classic example of over 1-->2 weeks travel time is the Persian Empire(foot/horse) and its many iterations and expanded greatly with horse couriers which massively sped up communications. When the Core is so big and unified it tends to "extend" the periphery more than normal.

PS: The time quotient for the Roman Empire to the UK is a bit of a stretch as that was only in one direction and directions such as northern coast of Black Sea, much closer were not subjugated. Obviously natural resource reasons dominate as a massive factor. UK had Silver/Gold and a low population so holding it was not a massive problem. Honestly same reason the UK/Spain were able to invade/hold the Western Hemisphere. Low population. Honorverse does not seem to have any major systematic natural resource problem other than wormhole junctions... which the "good guys" have ruthlessly taken advantage of.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Ok, I was wrong on the population. I found textev.

Crown of Slaves, Chapter 4 wrote:"Even with San Martin added, your total population does not exceed six billion. There are five times that many people living in the Solar System aline—or Centauri, or Tau Delta, or Mithra, or any one of several dozen of the Solarian League's inner systems. The 'Old League,' as it's popularly known. The Solarian League as a whole has an official membership of 1,784 planets—that's not counting the hundreds more under Solarian rule in the Protectorates—which exist in a volume of galactic space measuring between three and four hundred light-years in diameter. [...] No one has any idea what the total population may be. The Old League alone has a registered population of almost three trillion people, according to the last census—and that census grossly undercounted the population. No serious analyst even tries to claim they know how many more trillions of people live in the so-called Shell Worlds or the Protectorates."

(Emphasis mine)

The text makes a distinction between Shell Worlds and Protectorates, so they can't be the same. The Shell Worlds are members, part of the 1784 total. The SL does have sufficient ships to station one or several in each system, if it wanted or needed to. But like the discussion on whether the RMN Home Fleet should divide itself to protect Sphinx, it doesn't make sense for the SLN to divide itself too thin. It invites defeat in detail.

The text doesn't say how many systems are in the Old League. If it is 200, that means an average population of 15 billion per system, which is less than the 30 billion said to live in Sol and a dozen other systems. So that's a reasonable number of Old League systems.

Which means that both Beowulf and Hypatia are seriously underpopulated compared to the average.

I believe that the "old league" is the ~700 original founding members who came together to fight the final war on Earth/rebuild. So 3Trillion/700 ~4 odd Billion per. The quote for that is??? maybe in SFtS? I think we had this discussion or something similar when that book came out. Hrmm. Actually seems more like More than Honor timeframe.

Relax wrote:I believe that the "old league" is the ~700 original founding members who came together to fight the final war on Earth/rebuild. So 3Trillion/700 ~4 odd Billion per. The quote for that is??? maybe in SFtS? I think we had this discussion or something similar when that book came out. Hrmm. Actually seems more like More than Honor timeframe.

The text I've just pasted says "several dozen of the Solarian League's inner systems. The 'Old League,' as it's popularly known."

Now, five dozen systems with a 3 trillion population would imply an average of 50 billion per system, which is not reasonable because the same speaker was giving examples of systems with 30 billion as large. The average can't be 50. So it's likely there were several dozen that were the inner systems with very large populations and the then another shell forming the Old League, with a population of 3 trillion.

So if the inner worlds are "several dozen," does it make sense that the Old League is 10-15x that?

Also, remember the League was founded before impeller drives or either of Adrienne Warshawski's inventions. That means hyperspace travel was hazardous.

The Wiki says "The inner systems, or Core worlds, were the first hundred or so colonies settled from Earth and many of them had populations larger than ten billion." The reference for that isn't clear. It seems to suggest it's Crown of Slaves, but I can't find any mention of that.

Storm from the Shadows says that "The authors of the Solarian League's Constitution had represented literally scores of already inhabited, thoroughly settled star systems."

Scores, not hundreds. So even if I grant you twice as many systems signed the Constitution after it was drafted or soon enough to be considered founding members, I'd be hard-pressed to find more than 160 founding members.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
The Wiki says "The inner systems, or Core worlds, were the first hundred or so colonies settled from Earth and many of them had populations larger than ten billion." The reference for that isn't clear. It seems to suggest it's Crown of Slaves, but I can't find any mention of that.

The wiki isn’t actively managed by anyone who would know this stuff as far as I know. Which is pretty much limited to about a dozen people.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Storm from the Shadows says that "The authors of the Solarian League's Constitution had represented literally scores of already inhabited, thoroughly settled star systems."

Scores, not hundreds. So even if I grant you twice as many systems signed the Constitution after it was drafted or soon enough to be considered founding members, I'd be hard-pressed to find more than 160 founding members.

Anytime RFC says vague numbers I have learned what he actually means is; I have a number in my HV Notes/Bible, but do not want to use it yet as it nails my feet down.

While that is true, IIRC in MoH, I do believe that they said the average voting system had 3 delegates and Beowulf had??? 9? 11? And I do believe population of Beowulf is stated to be 7Billion? Ut oh... Damn memory, was it 9 Billion?... Hrmm ergo rough old memory said that ~1 delegate =~ 1 Billion people. Hrmm combined with ART? Didn't Hypatia have 3 delegates? and ~ 3 Billion pop? Of course are there not something around 12,000 delegates from vote total in ART??? Does not add up. So, if 1B ~1 delegate would indicate 12Trillion, not 3 Trillion so... my memory and numbers are NOT aligning that is for sure, got me.

This has sort of been touched on. Since Beowulf has rid itself of its ball and chain, they will begin to prosper and grow. What will Beowulf's position be on expansion? Will they soak of some of the other colonies that fled the League? What kind of government will they form? Who will be the police force?

Beowulf is in a position to become very well off. They need to grow themselves a navy. They are no longer the damsel in distress being beat up by their previous master. They can't keep depending on the RMN to fight its wars.

Relax wrote:[

While that is true, IIRC in MoH, I do believe that they said the average voting system had 3 delegates and Beowulf had??? 9? 11? And I do believe population of Beowulf is stated to be 7Billion? Ut oh... Damn memory, was it 9 Billion?... Hrmm ergo rough old memory said that ~1 delegate =~ 1 Billion people. Hrmm combined with ART? Didn't Hypatia have 3 delegates? and ~ 3 Billion pop? Of course are there not something around 12,000 delegates from vote total in ART??? Does not add up. So, if 1B ~1 delegate would indicate 12Trillion, not 3 Trillion so... my memory and numbers are NOT aligning that is for sure, got me.

We did some analysis and (iirc) it showed that some systems had >30 billion, most had in the 3-9 billion range and some had from zero to a couple billion. I don't remember anyone coming up with a total population estimate.

kzt wrote:

Relax wrote:[

While that is true, IIRC in MoH, I do believe that they said the average voting system had 3 delegates and Beowulf had??? 9? 11? And I do believe population of Beowulf is stated to be 7Billion? Ut oh... Damn memory, was it 9 Billion?... Hrmm ergo rough old memory said that ~1 delegate =~ 1 Billion people. Hrmm combined with ART? Didn't Hypatia have 3 delegates? and ~ 3 Billion pop? Of course are there not something around 12,000 delegates from vote total in ART??? Does not add up. So, if 1B ~1 delegate would indicate 12Trillion, not 3 Trillion so... my memory and numbers are NOT aligning that is for sure, got me.

We did some analysis and (iirc) it showed that some systems had >30 billion, most had in the 3-9 billion range and some had from zero to a couple billion. I don't remember anyone coming up with a total population estimate.

The only way I could make these numbers work was to give the League a really weird population distribution and delegate apportionment.

1,784 planets, 11,615 votes = 6.5 delegates per planet

ART wrote:Every system was entitled to a minimum of one delegate; additional delegates were apportioned on the basis of population. The majority of delegations consisted of no more than two or possibly three members. Indeed, almost a third of all delegations boasted only a single member. More populous systems, obviously, had a greater representation, however, and the Beowulf Delegation consisted of nine members, headed by Felicia Hadley.

So, here goes...(again)

One-third of all delegations have only one member. They presumably represent the League's least populated member planets: ~600 members, 600 delegates.

Then a "majority of delegations," including the above one-third have no more than three members. Assume the gap to create that majority is one-fifth of the total and give them all three each: 300 members, 900 delegates.

Which leaves the remaining "minority" of members, 884 with a whopping 10,115 votes. The average for this tranche is ~11.5 per member, meaning Beowulf is slightly behind the average for the Core.

You can increase the "majority of delegations" beyond the ~50%(900 of 1784 delegations) I allocated, but it only makes distributing the biggest members' votes more difficult.

Subdivide the 884 and their 10,115 delegates however you can, it's a fascinating exercise in manipulating data.

In the end, you just have to make a few Californias and give a handful of members a comparatively gross number of delegates and the populations to justify them. We're talking about the 40 or 50 very heavily populated planets(less than 3% of the total!) in the League having 50 delegates - and probably about 50 billion people - each to skim 2,000 or 2,500 delegates off the 10k to get the remaining ~830's average down near to what Beowulf had.

Oh and I only recently realised that there is a second inhabited planet in Beowulf's system, called Cassandra. Not sure if it has its own delegation or is bundled up into the Republic of Beowulf's. Not sure if it's counted among the 1784 either - if it is, many of the assumptions above start breaking.

munroburton wrote:Oh and I only recently realised that there is a second inhabited planet in Beowulf's system, called Cassandra. Not sure if it has its own delegation or is bundled up into the Republic of Beowulf's. Not sure if it's counted among the 1784 either - if it is, many of the assumptions above start breaking.

IIRC, polities were admitted to the SL. These could be a single planet, a multi-planet system, or even a multi-system government. I don't think that multiple SL members in a single system has ever been mentioned.

I have a recollection there was some mention that the SL later decided they didn't want multi-system member states, but it's vague.