48 replies to this topic

[Koshirou]

Bravado, on 15 March 2013 - 12:52 PM, said:

Most Defense is carried out by small Milita Forces that consist of a few Mechs and a much larger Force of Infantry and Armored Troops. Larger Mech Forces are posted only on Key Worlds.

Yes, it would. The problem is that this much larger force of infantry and armor would in fact be so large that a few dozen Mechs would have no hope of defeating them, much less in the space of a few days.

We are talking about (by necessity) industrialized worlds with billions of inhabitants. If a world of three billion was militarized merely to the degree of a country such as Italy today, and we are counting one BTU regiment as the equivalent of an Italian brigade, this world would muster a total of 550 infantry and armor regiments, along with artillery and conventional aircraft. Even if they are all just ICE-driven light and medium tanks at best: Two Trinaries of Omnimechs ain't gonna cut it.

As I said, FASA's failure to grasp basic concepts of scale runs deep.

Edited by Koshirou, 15 March 2013 - 03:11 PM.

[Skylarr]

User:Revanche/Population Growth and BattleTech



Population and Population Densities

[Visyac Cephias]

Koshirou, on 15 March 2013 - 06:16 AM, said:

In the lore, ~30 BattleMechs land on a planet with billions of inhabitants, duke it out with similarly miniscule defending forces which are the only military forces said billions have and then the planet magically changes hands after less than a week.

Or in other words, the lore doesn't make a lick of sense, and as FASA fleshed out the universe, it made less and less. Basically, this and this. Bigtime.

+1 for TV Tropes reference, and let's just say that the clans use Space Magic during invasions to achieve victory.

Bravado, on 15 March 2013 - 12:52 PM, said:

• It's a Game set a 1,000 years in the Future with Giant Robots duking it out and Humans are artificially born in an "Iron Womb". I guess realism wasn`t that high on the Priority List.

Pretty much I guess.

So, having established that Clans use Space Voodoo to achieve dominance over a inordinately large population the size of earth which manage to survive.....somehow.(scienze I haz its!) I guess the fun question becomes what kind of Forces are you going to leave behind besides battle mechs? I know Kerensky left with some PHAT tech, and the clans did some building when they established their worlds.

How many warships are you going to leave behind, and what sort of active ground force?

Also a big question for me, Elementals.
In the games, they are ****-poor infantry that gets the snot blown out of them if so much as sneezed at. But on a planet WITHOUT OPPOSING MECHS, I can easily see their lethality lever skyrocketing.
Would It be a stretch to envision them being left behind as a occupying garrison, and if so, how dangerous of an asset are we talking.
Better than a tank? Better than a plane?

Edited by Visyac Cephias, 15 March 2013 - 08:52 PM.

[Bravado]

Koshirou, on 15 March 2013 - 03:04 PM, said:

Yes, it would. The problem is that this much larger force of infantry and armor would in fact be so large that a few dozen Mechs would have no hope of defeating them, much less in the space of a few days.

We are talking about (by necessity) industrialized worlds with billions of inhabitants. If a world of three billion was militarized merely to the degree of a country such as Italy today, and we are counting one BTU regiment as the equivalent of an Italian brigade, this world would muster a total of 550 infantry and armor regiments, along with artillery and conventional aircraft. Even if they are all just ICE-driven light and medium tanks at best: Two Trinaries of Omnimechs ain't gonna cut it.

As I said, FASA's failure to grasp basic concepts of scale runs deep.

Agreed. I suggest we ignore this to keep the original Discussion on track since this is a Flaw that many Science Fiction Settings suffer from.
I can actually understand why the Game Designers went for this unplausible route. The very first Battletech Game System was designed with i's Focus on single Battlemechs. Any Force larger than two Companies against each other would slow down the Game to a halt. A Flaw that was rectified to some extend with the introduction of BattleForce which handled Battle with the Lance as the smallest possible Unit.

Skylarr, on 15 March 2013 - 07:57 PM, said:

<strong> <a class="bbc_url" href="http://www.sarna.net/wiki/User:Revanche/Population_Growth_and_BattleTech" rel="nofollow external" title="External link">User:Revanche/Population Growth and BattleTech</a></strong>



<strong> <a class="bbc_url" href="http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,4356.msg98594.html#msg98594" rel="nofollow external" title="External link">Population and Population Densities</a></strong>

Thx for the Links. I was looking for similar references but with no luck.

Visyac Cephias, on 15 March 2013 - 08:52 PM, said:

+1 for TV Tropes reference, and let's just say that <span style="font-size: 14px;">the clans use Space Magic during invasions to achieve victory.</span>





<span style="font-size: 14px;">Pretty much I guess.</span>

So, having established that Clans use Space Voodoo to achieve dominance over a inordinately large population the size of earth which manage to survive.....somehow.(scienze I haz its!) I guess the fun question becomes w<span style="font-size: 14px;">hat kind of Forces are you going to leave behind besides battle mechs? I know Kerensky left with some PHAT tech, and the clans did some building when they established their worlds. </span>

<span style="font-size: 14px;">How many warships are you going to leave behind, and what sort of active </span>ground force<span style="font-size: 14px;">? </span>

<span style="font-size: 14px;">Also a big question for me, Elementals.</span>
<span style="font-size: 14px;">In the games, they are ****-poor infantry that gets the snot blown out of them if so much as sneezed at. But on a planet WITHOUT OPPOSING MECHS, I can easily see their </span>lethality<span style="font-size: 14px;"> lever </span><em>skyrocketing. </em>
<span style="font-size: 14px;">Would It be a stretch to envision them being left behind as a </span>occupying<span style="font-size: 14px;"> garrison, and if so, how dangerous of an asset are we talking.</span>
Better than a tank? Better than a plane?

A typical Clan Garrison consisted of Second-Line Mechs (either leftover Antics from the Star League Area that hadn't been scrapped by now or upgraded Inner Sphere Models) and regular Infantry. Omni-Mechs and Elemental Infantry are Front-Line Unit exclusive. Most Garrison Forces fall are the Size of a Cluster with no exact Size or Composition given. In Fact Second-Line Troops are much more organized along the Lines of IS-Troops (Lance, Company, Battallion, Regiment, etc.)
Most Clans, with the Exception of Clan Hell Horses, don't have much use for Armored Vehicles.

My Guess is as good as any but i can think of two Reasons for that why those Forces hasn't been described in more Detail.
<ol>
<li>The less Detail a Clan Garrison had the more Freedom was given to Players of the Tabletop-Game to create a Game that was balanced for both parties.</li>
<li>The Source Material that was published by FASA at the Time of the Clan Invasion was actually pretty bad. Two give you an Example: The Scenario Book for Twycross listed the full TO&amp;E of the Jade Falcon Guard Cluster. To play a Scenario the Players had to go through the Clan Bidding to find out who is playing the Clan Side against a given IS-Force. The Problem was that the Description of the IS-Forces would give you only a List of which Mechs were used but no Details on the Variants. This led to endless Debates if you can use the Tech described in TRO 3050 or in it's 3025 version.</li>
</ol>

Edited by Bravado, 16 March 2013 - 01:13 AM.

[Skylarr]

<h5 id="subject_553996"></h5>

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The stylized nature of Clan Trials just means that when second line units are involved, they will have less Toad support. Not all second line formations are created equal, either, as some will have not trivial numbers of OmniMechs. However...I like the Nova as a second line Omni. Not caring about numbers in universe or users, the Crossbow, Battle Cobra, and Stooping Hawk all work well for the role. I see the Omnis assigned to a second line Cluster as being old, even more repaired than typical, or unlucky/lemon machines.

Second line mechs for second line elementals

[Maurdakar]

Stormwolf, on 11 March 2013 - 11:37 AM, said:

The BT universe works with Fasanomics, it only takes a small force to conquer a entire planet. It only took 4 mechs to conquer Trellwan in Decision at Thunder Rift.



Depends on the situation.



The Clans announce that they will invade the planet by declaring a trial of possesion.
Amongst the Clans they usually discuss what forces will be used and where they will fight for the planet.

The Inner Sphere powers are not familiar with Clan customs and will often foolishly insult the Clan commanders or "bid" all their forces in the fight. This often results in large Clan groups destroying every opponent in sight.



The occupied population gets adopted into the Clans and their caste system. They have less liberties then before, this could cause riots and such. Although some backwater planets like the ones in the periphery actually benefitted from being invaded and enjoying a higher quality of living then they did before.



There are garrison forces consisting of guys who aren't really frontline material (some of them are considered too old).



Mech types ranging from capture IS machines, to high end Star League models to second line Clan mechs. Though they do have regular infantry and such. Elementals are mostly frontline troops.



By Clan:
Clan Wolf: Nice at first, but turned strict after the Refusal War
Clan Ghost Bear: Neutral at first, but got along so well that they merged into one true nation
Clan Jade Falcon: Strict mixed with neutral
Clan Smoke Jaguar: Incredibly harsh
Clan Nova Cat: Varies from nice to neutral
Clan Steel Viper: Strict



There have never been any successful rebellions. The most extreme case was Turtlebay when Clan Smoke Jaguar destroyed a city from orbit .

Contrast this to Clan Jade Falcon, Aidan Pryde allowed himself to be captured to be by rebelling forces who were willing to blow up themselves and their children, just to try and reason with them. This didn't work out so his daughter went in to rescue him and the kids.

Okay you're giving the battle-tech novel writers way to much credit.

I find this is a delusion of many hardcore nerd fan-bases (Star Wars, Star Trek, World of Warcraft, Star Craft)
The people they hire to write the books may not be all that into the lore or care that much about the work they are doing.
Believe it or not even multi-million dollar productions involving thousands of very serious artists working on salaries can also be schlock and bad.

Much of Battle-Tech is schlock (most of any media is bad). I doubt many of the authors even remember working on the series, so taking their word as gospel, will leave you with a skewed vision. Now there is some Battle-Tech lore that is good, even great and worth reading, but none of it focuses on clan occupation.

How a minority of a drastically different culture managed to hold a very large very populated very traditional territories without resulting to mass murder of the global populaces makes no sense whatsoever. Especially when you consider the themes of the universe, which bring medieval houses to the forefront and the I.S. - Clan conflict which highlights dirty fighting and guerrilla tactics versus superior technology. It's to bad because a planet resisting the highly fascist doctrines of the clans (any clans) would make for a great story.

But I suppose billions of people accepting that they will be welded into an alien warrior culture which rejects family units, human reproduction and love in favor of robotic eugenics and also made second class citizens is explainable if, like you, you squint really hard and try to believe.

Also you mention a clanner's daughter saved him? How does he have a daughter he's a clanner.

TL;DR: Planet rebellion wasn't the focus of the writers goals and they hadn't thought of it.

[Stormwolf]

Maurdakar, on 17 March 2013 - 01:29 PM, said:

Okay you're giving the battle-tech novel writers way to much credit.

I find this is a delusion of many hardcore nerd fan-bases (Star Wars, Star Trek, World of Warcraft, Star Craft)
The people they hire to write the books may not be all that into the lore or care that much about the work they are doing.
Believe it or not even multi-million dollar productions involving thousands of very serious artists working on salaries can also be schlock and bad.

Believe me, they knew a lot about the setting and worked closely together with the people who created the sourcebooks.

Quote

Much of Battle-Tech is schlock (most of any media is bad). I doubt many of the authors even remember working on the series, so taking their word as gospel, will leave you with a skewed vision. Now there is some Battle-Tech lore that is good, even great and worth reading, but none of it focuses on clan occupation.

Sure there is, what makes you think that there are no sources?

Quote

How a minority of a drastically different culture managed to hold a very large very populated very traditional territories without resulting to mass murder of the global populaces makes no sense whatsoever. Especially when you consider the themes of the universe, which bring medieval houses to the forefront and the I.S. - Clan conflict which highlights dirty fighting and guerrilla tactics versus superior technology. It's to bad because a planet resisting the highly fascist doctrines of the clans (any clans) would make for a great story.

Nobody ever said that it was realistic.

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But I suppose billions of people accepting that they will be welded into an alien warrior culture which rejects family units, human reproduction and love in favor of robotic eugenics and also made second class citizens is explainable if, like you, you squint really hard and try to believe.

You are really in the dark about the Clans, they have a large number of natural born people along with their trueborns in the non-warrior castes. Freeborn kids are raised by their parents till they are old enought to be tested.

Quote

Also you mention a clanner's daughter saved him? How does he have a daughter he's a clanner.

Do I really need to tell you about the birds and the bees?

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TL;DR: Planet rebellion wasn't the focus of the writers goals and they hadn't thought of it

ROFL, read the first two books of the Gray Death Saga.

[Koshirou]

Stormwolf, on 18 March 2013 - 05:30 AM, said:

Believe me,

Why?

Quote

Nobody ever said that it was realistic.

The problem is twofold: For one, "not realistic" is a huge understatement. In addition, Science Fiction writers and readers often suffer from the misconception that just because their setting includes elements which are clearly not found in reality, it means they can throw all features of realism out of the window at their leisure.

Speculative literature sets premises which are out of the bound of reality as we know it. In Science Fiction, these premises are usually of a scientific or technological nature. BattleTech has, for example:
- Interstellar travel is possible and feasible by means of the K-F drive.
- Interplanetary travel is feasible by means of efficient fusion drives.
- Walking tanks with single pilots are feasible by means of artificial "muscles", neurohelmets, small fusion plants etc.

As long as the setting adheres to its premises and all deviations from the audience's experience of reality are plausibly derived from these premises, it can in a certain sense be realistic. But when you simply throw in deviations with no connection to the aforementioned premises, the setting becomes a cartoony farce. And that's what the BattleTech setting is.
(Not to mention that the vast majority of BattleTech novels are excruciatingly bad as far as writing is concerned.)

[Stormwolf]

Koshirou, on 18 March 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

Why?

Why not?

Quote

The problem is twofold: For one, "not realistic" is a huge understatement. In addition, Science Fiction writers and readers often suffer from the misconception that just because their setting includes elements which are clearly not found in reality, it means they can throw all features of realism out of the window at their leisure.



Speculative literature sets premises which are out of the bound of reality as we know it. In Science Fiction, these premises are usually of a scientific or technological nature. BattleTech has, for example:
- Interstellar travel is possible and feasible by means of the K-F drive.
- Interplanetary travel is feasible by means of efficient fusion drives.
- Walking tanks with single pilots are feasible by means of artificial "muscles", neurohelmets, small fusion plants etc.

As long as the setting adheres to its premises and all deviations from the audience's experience of reality are plausibly derived from these premises, it can in a certain sense be realistic. But when you simply throw in deviations with no connection to the aforementioned premises, the setting becomes a cartoony farce. And that's what the BattleTech setting is.
(Not to mention that the vast majority of BattleTech novels are excruciatingly bad as far as writing is concerned.)

I think that a discussion about the entire premise would warrent its own thread.

[Koshirou]

Stormwolf, on 18 March 2013 - 06:18 AM, said:

Why not?

Because unless you worked for/with FASA yourself, I don't see why you should be better informed about their production process, especially if the often shoddy results speak a different language.

Quote

I think that a discussion about the entire premise would warrent its own thread.

I did not mean to discuss these premises. I made that post to illustrate how the way planetary invasions are supposed to work in the law cannot be explained from them, and cannot be reconciled with common perception of how reality works either, so it's a pretty clear cut case of a poorly developed plot/setting.

[Stormwolf]

Koshirou, on 18 March 2013 - 06:37 AM, said:

Because unless you worked for/with FASA yourself, I don't see why you should be better informed about their production process, especially if the often shoddy results speak a different language.

I've been talking to a number of those guys on the BT boards, you can ask any question you have here:

http://bg.battletech...board,41.0.html

Quote

I did not mean to discuss these premises. I made that post to illustrate how the way planetary invasions are supposed to work in the law cannot be explained from them, and cannot be reconciled with common perception of how reality works either, so it's a pretty clear cut case of a poorly developed plot/setting.

There have been plenty of discussions about this in the past. It usually boils down to most inhabitants being sheeple with occasional freedom fighters to supply the drama element. Though they mostly have the one thing common that the new "management" tends to go for the spaceports and food/water supplies.

[Koshirou]

Stormwolf, on 18 March 2013 - 06:47 AM, said:

Though they mostly have the one thing common that the new "management" tends to go for the spaceports and food/water supplies.

Sorry, but this sentence alone is testament to how deep the scale failures really run. What exactly do you think the "food/water supplies" of a world with three billion inhabitants are? I can tell you:
a) Agricultural land scattered all over the planet with a total area being about as large as that of the entire United States.
Rivers, lakes and other freshwater sources of the entire planet. Even if the entire world was barely scraping by on the equivalent of developing country status, yearly freshwater consumption would be 3 trillion cubic meters.
c) Plus the massive industries, across the entire planet again, needed to support this. Along with the transport infrastructure.

Scale is something that many people, SF writers included, apparently just cannot get into their heads. And that's why these discussions usually need to nowhere.

(This failure extended into other areas, such as the infamous styrofoam DropShips, but these issues are merely amusing and do not affect the plausibility of the entire universe so deeply.)

Edited by Koshirou, 18 March 2013 - 07:12 AM.

[Stormwolf]

Koshirou, on 18 March 2013 - 07:06 AM, said:

Sorry, but this sentence alone is testament to how deep the scale failures really run. What exactly do you think the "food/water supplies" of a world with three billion inhabitants are? I can tell you:
a) Agricultural land scattered all over the planet with a total area being about as large as that of the entire United States.
Rivers, lakes and other freshwater sources of the entire planet. Even if the entire world was barely scraping by on the equivalent of developing country status, yearly freshwater consumption would be 3 trillion cubic meters.
c) Plus the massive industries, across the entire planet again, needed to support this. Along with the transport infrastructure.

Scale is something that many people, SF writers included, apparently just cannot get into their heads. And that's why these discussions usually need to nowhere.

(This failure extended into other areas, such as the infamous styrofoam DropShips, but these issues are merely amusing and do not affect the plausibility of the entire universe so deeply.)

I think we are talking about two different things here, I was talking about border worlds which usually have 100,000 to 10,000,000 inhabitants on average. Core worlds with a few billion inhabitants are a different story altogether.

The best example here is Luthien, Clan Smoke Jaguar and Nova Cat assaulted Luthien and went after house Kurita itself. The result of this would have been that the DC would have splintered into several smaller factions incapable of mounting proper resistance.

The DC people would have submitted to their Clan overlords since their military would have gotten wiped out and the Clans have these big scary warships that can glass cities without too much trouble.

Edited by Stormwolf, 18 March 2013 - 07:23 AM.

[Maurdakar]

Realistic entails: Logic in the sense of the universe and setting.

And no I'm not reading more battle-tech I read actual literature, just finished The Great Gatsby.

Stormwolf clearly in charge of CIDF

Edited by Maurdakar, 18 March 2013 - 07:37 AM.

[Koshirou]

Stormwolf, on 18 March 2013 - 07:19 AM, said:

I think we are talking about two different things here, I was talking about border worlds which usually have 100,000 to 10,000,000 inhabitants on average.

We had this point already. TPTB have decreed that the average population of the Inner Sphere is ~ 3 billion people per planet. Even before the Dark Age-era publications set this in stone, several other sources spoke of "trillions" of Inner Sphere denizens, which works out to several billion per world.

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The best example here is Luthien, Clan Smoke Jaguar and Nova Cat assaulted Luthien and went after house Kurita itself. The result of this would have been that the DC would have splintered into several smaller factions incapable of mounting proper resistance.

The plausible result would have been that the Clans would have been met by thousands of conventional regiments on short notice. Again: Failure of scale and common sense.

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The DC people would have submitted to their Clan overlords since their military would have gotten whiped out and the Clans have these big scary warships that can glass cities without too much trouble.

There is no plausible way that a state with hundreds of worlds and a total population in excess of 700 billion would be crippled by the loss of less than 1% of each. Once more: Failure of scale and common sense.

Warships are just another element of the setting which does not make any sense. Why not? Because there are nuclear weapons in the BattleTech Universe and there's no technological premise to neutralize them (unlike, for example, the Traveller Universe, whose creators prudently introduced "nuclear dampers" along with capable point defense weapons,)
BattleTech has given us humungous WarShips (which, by the way, fall into the same amusing styrofoam category as the DropShips do) and nuclear weapons and delivery methods (NACs, NGauss, but also plain old missiles) which cannot reliably be stopped by defensive systems. So the plausible result would be that any WarShip out there would just get nuked, especially if the announced attention of its owner to use it as a weapon of mass destruction itself would handily obviate any reason to hold back for moral and/or political considerations.
Small, dispersed targets in an environment of limited war do make some sense even if the theoretical threat of nuclear weapons exists. Large, easy-to-hit targets which are intended to "glass" planets don't.
So here we go again: Failure of scale and common sense.

Maurdakar, on 18 March 2013 - 07:37 AM, said:

And no I'm not reading more battle-tech I read actual literature, just finished The Great Gatsby.

Good call. And good book.

[Skylarr]

In the links I post above it is estimated that the average population is about 3 billion per planet. Major planets having more and minor having less. Planets along the house borders having maybe 1Billion.

This does not mean that they have a million foot soldiers. Why would the House let the planets have that many foot soldiers? For every point as to why each planet should have a large planetary defense there is a counter point.

There is a thread for discussions like this.

Ridiculous Battletech Facts

In the above thread we can sit there for ever arguing our own points of view. Or, we can see it for what it is. The point of view of the writer, Accept it and enjoy it for what it is.

[Koshirou]

Skylarr, on 18 March 2013 - 09:11 AM, said:

This does not mean that they have a million foot soldiers.

Indeed. That would be a ridiculously low number.

Sense of scale, the old nemesis, rearing its ugly head again...

Quote

There is a thread for discussions like this.

Well, the question of the OP was "How do planetary invasions work in the BattleTech lore?" To which the most appropriate answer I can think of is: "Magic."

[Skylarr]

The idea is that there are not enough resources to do this? Why would any of the houses let a planet have a huge standing militia? They could rebel or get together with other planets and create there own little minor realm. The different faction make the planets be reliant on them for the most of their defenses. The Houses own the planets. They collect all of the money the planet makes.

[Stormwolf]

Maurdakar, on 18 March 2013 - 07:37 AM, said:

Realistic entails: Logic in the sense of the universe and setting.

And no I'm not reading more battle-tech I read actual literature, just finished The Great Gatsby.

I've actually read some of the greatest literature in the world, Battletech entertains me in the same way 80's action movies do.
Though I have to admit that I never read The Great Gatsby.

Quote

Stormwolf clearly in charge of CIDF

Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not in charge of the Chicago International Documentary Festival.

Koshirou, on 18 March 2013 - 07:43 AM, said:

We had this point already. TPTB have decreed that the average population of the Inner Sphere is ~ 3 billion people per planet. Even before the Dark Age-era publications set this in stone, several other sources spoke of "trillions" of Inner Sphere denizens, which works out to several billion per world.

Nope, here's some examples:

Mallory's World: 160,000,000
Luzerne: 207,640,000
Galtor: 33,000,000
Glengarry: 123,334,000
Misery: 8,000,000

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The plausible result would have been that the Clans would have been met by thousands of conventional regiments on short notice. Again: Failure of scale and common sense.




There is no plausible way that a state with hundreds of worlds and a total population in excess of 700 billion would be crippled by the loss of less than 1% of each. Once more: Failure of scale and common sense.

Warships are just another element of the setting which does not make any sense. Why not? Because there are nuclear weapons in the BattleTech Universe and there's no technological premise to neutralize them (unlike, for example, the Traveller Universe, whose creators prudently introduced "nuclear dampers" along with capable point defense weapons,)
BattleTech has given us humungous WarShips (which, by the way, fall into the same amusing styrofoam category as the DropShips do) and nuclear weapons and delivery methods (NACs, NGauss, but also plain old missiles) which cannot reliably be stopped by defensive systems. So the plausible result would be that any WarShip out there would just get nuked, especially if the announced attention of its owner to use it as a weapon of mass destruction itself would handily obviate any reason to hold back for moral and/or political considerations.
Small, dispersed targets in an environment of limited war do make some sense even if the theoretical threat of nuclear weapons exists. Large, easy-to-hit targets which are intended to "glass" planets don't.
So here we go again: Failure of scale and common sense.

This has actually been discussed quite a number of times on the BT boards, we have come to call it Fasanomics.

I personally think that the entire problem with the numbers stems from the fact that the earliest incarnation of BT was pretty much Mad Max with a couple of mechs that were passed down from generation to generation.

This got rather heavily retooled with the 4th Succession War and subsequent Clan Invasion. The only problem is that they never adjusted the number mechs accordingly.

Now earlier I mentioned warships, they are indeed a massive threat, but they have only been used for bigger events like the fall of the Star League and the Jih@d. The current developers want to stay away from warships since they pretty much make any mech army obsolete.

And yes, there is a failure of scale and perhaps to some degree common sense

[Koshirou]

Stormwolf, on 18 March 2013 - 11:24 AM, said:

Nope, here's some examples:

... of worlds with less than average population, obviously. (Or from a different angle, of FASA not having firmly committed themselves to the "trillions" route at the point these sources were written.)