How much?

from Sins Forums

I don't know if this has been discussed before, and if it has, and there's a post, please link me :)

 

It's been ages since I've come to this site, and even in all this time one question has been making me ponder time and again.

 

How are ships and planet populations scaled?

 

Lets start with planets. For the sake of arguement, there are 322 people on a Terran planet. 322 people on a planet is silly and just couldn't be done, especially if you watch, you see all the ships and cities that occupy it. So, we make the next jump. 322,00. Still not very high, and not enough. 322 million. Now we're getting somewhere, and yet, we can hold 300+ million in the USA alone, so why would a large world and in a day and age with such technologies not be able to support more? More people = more tax = more ships = won war. So now we reach into the billions. Our Earth currently holds 6.5 billion people, give or take. Assuming the planet that we're occupying is even twice the size of Earth, it's natural resources would be drained incredibly fast with more than 10 billion people.

 

So, my logical guess would be 32.2 billion, but even that seems unreasonable.

 

Ships are a different story. How many people does it take to control a ship? How big are they in comparison to a human? To a building on a planet? It's impossible to tell without a frame of reference. Like the Advent colony ship. From viewing it, it looks like it has at least dozens of floors and could take hundreds of people to operate. But if that takes hundreds, then a Capital ship could take up to a million, which is rediculous!

 

Is there any explination for this?

17,677 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Well, this is a game after all, so planet and asteroid populations aren't necessairly to scale.

However, what I think is the best linear scale is in the neighbourhood of 1 population = 10 million. That way, Terran planets can support about 3 billion (highest possible is 3.64 billion on max upgraded TEC Terrans) and an asteroid can support 200 million (considering that that's about two-thirds of the population of the United States, it's not that far fetched).

Then again, the scale could be non-linear and that the growth per 1 population is exponential, curved either like a diminishing returns curve or the standard exponential function curve (either way, planets have far more population than asteroids).

Of course, either scale causes inconsistencies with the amount of colonists that capital colonizers or colony frigates hold.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting InfiniteVoid, reply 1
Well, this is a game after all, so planet and asteroid populations aren't necessairly to scale.

However, what I think is the best linear scale is in the neighbourhood of 1 population = 10 million. That way, Terran planets can support about 3 billion (highest possible is 3.64 billion on max upgraded TEC Terrans) and an asteroid can support 200 million (considering that that's about two-thirds of the population of the United States, it's not that far fetched).

Then again, the scale could be non-linear and that the growth per 1 population is exponential, curved either like a diminishing returns curve or the standard exponential function curve (either way, planets have far more population than asteroids).

Of course, either scale causes inconsistencies with the amount of colonists that capital colonizers or colony frigates hold.

 

I don't know, that seems unlikely to me because right now the earth has 6 billion people, you'd think in the future a terran could support even more. I always assumed the population count was in billions but that may not be any more realistic either.

 

Also, in the Sins game manual it gives the number of crew on each ship. The lowest was the TEC scout at 75 and the highest is the Vasari Evacuator at 15,000 (though some think this may be combat personel only). To me this suggests a high level of automation for all three races, but really its of limited use as we don't know for sure exactly how big these ships are.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

It's clear that there's some hand-waving with regards to scales.  Whether it's the relative sizes of ships, plants, and stars, the populations of planets, or the amount of time that passes, the game mechanics probably shouldn't be taken as a literal representation.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 2

Quoting InfiniteVoid, reply 1Well, this is a game after all, so planet and asteroid populations aren't necessairly to scale.

However, what I think is the best linear scale is in the neighbourhood of 1 population = 10 million. That way, Terran planets can support about 3 billion (highest possible is 3.64 billion on max upgraded TEC Terrans) and an asteroid can support 200 million (considering that that's about two-thirds of the population of the United States, it's not that far fetched).

Then again, the scale could be non-linear and that the growth per 1 population is exponential, curved either like a diminishing returns curve or the standard exponential function curve (either way, planets have far more population than asteroids).

Of course, either scale causes inconsistencies with the amount of colonists that capital colonizers or colony frigates hold.
 

I don't know, that seems unlikely to me because right now the earth has 6 billion people, you'd think in the future a terran could support even more. I always assumed the population count was in billions but that may not be any more realistic either.

 

Also, in the Sins game manual it gives the number of crew on each ship. The lowest was the TEC scout at 75 and the highest is the Vasari Evacuator at 15,000 (though some think this may be combat personel only). To me this suggests a high level of automation for all three races, but really its of limited use as we don't know for sure exactly how big these ships are.

 

75 for that? Those ships must be massive compared to "everyday" objects.

 

EDIT: Ifinite holds a good point. How fast are these people reproducing? And why are alien races reporducing at the same speed of humans?

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting scp121, reply 4

Quoting GoaFan77, reply 2
Quoting InfiniteVoid, reply 1Well, this is a game after all, so planet and asteroid populations aren't necessairly to scale.

However, what I think is the best linear scale is in the neighbourhood of 1 population = 10 million. That way, Terran planets can support about 3 billion (highest possible is 3.64 billion on max upgraded TEC Terrans) and an asteroid can support 200 million (considering that that's about two-thirds of the population of the United States, it's not that far fetched).

Then again, the scale could be non-linear and that the growth per 1 population is exponential, curved either like a diminishing returns curve or the standard exponential function curve (either way, planets have far more population than asteroids).

Of course, either scale causes inconsistencies with the amount of colonists that capital colonizers or colony frigates hold.
 

I don't know, that seems unlikely to me because right now the earth has 6 billion people, you'd think in the future a terran could support even more. I always assumed the population count was in billions but that may not be any more realistic either.

 

Also, in the Sins game manual it gives the number of crew on each ship. The lowest was the TEC scout at 75 and the highest is the Vasari Evacuator at 15,000 (though some think this may be combat personel only). To me this suggests a high level of automation for all three races, but really its of limited use as we don't know for sure exactly how big these ships are.
 

75 for that? Those ships must be massive compared to "everyday" objects.

 

EDIT: Ifinite holds a good point. How fast are these people reproducing? And why are alien races reporducing at the same speed of humans?

 

Yeah I agree, 75 people to run a measly scout?  I would have guessed maybe 5-10.  You have a couple pilots, an engineer or two, and possibly a captain.

I could see a capital ship taking maybe a few thousand crew members, because of sheer size you would have to employ cooks, janitors, and other every day grunts, then you would probably have a team of tacticians, several pilots to control the ship, a captain leading everything up on the deck, and then you would have probably a hundred people or so simply manning the guns.

In reguards to the planets though, I think if you have a terran planet with 330 'units' of people, I think millions would be a good unit, or even hundreds of thousands.  You need to figure that when humans actually migrate to other planets, not everyone and their grandma are going to flock there.  I think saying you have a population of 330,000, 3,330,000, or 33,300,000 is a safe number.

But then you go and look at other planets, especially the asteroids, I doubt there would be 2,000,000 on that rock, and in that case I think it was safe to say there are 20,000 people living there.  And finally, one last thing, you would probably have to consider that the majority of the populations even though they are called 'civilians' they are more than likely military personnel.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Zulukas, reply 5

Yeah I agree, 75 people to run a measly scout?  I would have guessed maybe 5-10.  You have a couple pilots, an engineer or two, and possibly a captain.

I could see a capital ship taking maybe a few thousand crew members, because of sheer size you would have to employ cooks, janitors, and other every day grunts, then you would probably have a team of tacticians, several pilots to control the ship, a captain leading everything up on the deck, and then you would have probably a hundred people or so simply manning the guns.

In reguards to the planets though, I think if you have a terran planet with 330 'units' of people, I think millions would be a good unit, or even hundreds of thousands.  You need to figure that when humans actually migrate to other planets, not everyone and their grandma are going to flock there.  I think saying you have a population of 330,000, 3,330,000, or 33,300,000 is a safe number.

But then you go and look at other planets, especially the asteroids, I doubt there would be 2,000,000 on that rock, and in that case I think it was safe to say there are 20,000 people living there.  And finally, one last thing, you would probably have to consider that the majority of the populations even though they are called 'civilians' they are more than likely military personnel.

 

Yeah I agree 75 does seem to be a little high, but I'm just taking it from the game manual. I highly enjoy the Sins lore as it is and I'm sure they'll explain it someday.

 

I don't agree with your planet population analysis though. While at first the planet population might me mostly military, as you build those infrastructure upgrades a huge influx of civilians would arrive to develop its economy. Also 33 million sounds way to small for a fully upgraded terran, the U.S. on its own has more than that. Perhaps part of the problem is that you seem to be assuming that all of the planets in Sins are realitively new planets, I'm assuming that fully upgraded planets are housing the maximum number of people they can support. Considering that at our current technology earth's is about 18 billion, 333 billion doesn't sound that unreasonable for perhaps millenia in the future.