Size of the Federation vs Galactic Empire's Size

[Trinoya]

Well, dang, we just can't argue with that logic...

[Mike DiCenso]

Congratulations, you have religion. There is nothing rational at all about what you just said. At most the SW galaxy is 120,000 ly in diameter according to the EU. The galaxy Star Trek takes place in is the Milky Way galaxy... the same one you and I are living in now. The Milky Way is approximately 100,000 ly wide. So at most the SW galaxy is 1.2 times wider.
-Mike

[sonofccn]

Well I believe the Star Wars galaxy is at least three times as large as the Star Trek galaxy, and that belief is final.

Then I believe the Star Wars galaxy is equal to or smaller than the Milkyway galaxy. If its merely belief two can play this game. :)

[Mr. Oragahn]

I smell a troll... I'm reasonablly sure that this fellow here believes us to be followers of the Great Satan (tm).

Not all of us subscribe to those same theories and not all of us think the federation would curbstomp the empire... but all of us try to follow the simple practice of providing proof and evidence for our claims.

...

Please do the same. Thank you.

Honestly, the entertainment value of this item appears limited.

[Youngla0450]

Everyone must realize that the Galactic Empire surpasses all the major Star Trek governments in size. The Empire, as previously stated, has at least one and a half million canonically recognized member/conquered worlds, as well up to fifty million colonies, protectorates, and puppet states scattered throughout the Star Wars galaxy, streching over 120,000 light years. Compare this to:

*The Federation, which has 150 member worlds and 1,000 colonies, protectorates, or semi-independent states, spread across only 8,000 light years, in one porition of a quadrant of a galaxy, which is no more then 100,000 light years in length.

*The Klingons or Romulans, who both have less then 1,100 worlds each, and at the most 3,000 colonies.

*The Cardassians, with around 170 major systems and production facilities.

*The Ferengi, who might have less then 200 worlds and states total, perhaps smaller then the Federation.

*The Borg, with, at the most, 20,000 systems and only six major shipyards, compared to a Empire of tens of millions of systems and over 1,000 major shipyards.

*The Krenim, who have no more then 5,000 worlds.

*The Dominion, with no more then 10,000 worlds and major facilities.

[Mike DiCenso]

Everyone must realize that the Galactic Empire surpasses all the major Star Trek governments in size. The Empire, as previously stated, has at least one and a half million canonically recognized member/conquered worlds, as well up to fifty million colonies, protectorates, and puppet states scattered throughout the Star Wars galaxy, streching over 120,000 light years. Compare this to:

*The Federation, which has 150 member worlds and 1,000 colonies, protectorates, or semi-independent states, spread across only 8,000 light years, in one porition of a quadrant of a galaxy, which is no more then 100,000 light years in length.

There are one million total worlds in the GE, as per the ANH novelization, and the TPM and AoTC novelization indicate considerably less than that, especially for the Galactic Republic, which, as per the AoTC movie and Palpatine can be split in two by the secession of a few thousand star systems plus 10 thousand, thus the early Empire would be really only 25-30,000 star systems strong.

Kirk in "Metamorphosis" states to Cochrane "We're on a thousand planets and spreading out". At minimum this the total extent of the Federation given the statement was made in the 2260's. On the other hand, if Kirk was only refering to Earth and humanity's territories, then the Federation, each of the more than 150 members, could be potentially have tens of planets. Further, according to ST: Insurrection, there is also associate member status, and how many of these types of members are not known, and any signficant number could drive up the Federation territorial holdings even more.

*The Klingons or Romulans, who both have less then 1,100 worlds each, and at the most 3,000 colonies.

Source?

*The Cardassians, with around 170 major systems and production facilities.

Source?

*The Ferengi, who might have less then 200 worlds and states total, perhaps smaller then the Federation.

*The Borg, with, at the most, 20,000 systems and only six major shipyards, compared to a Empire of tens of millions of systems and over 1,000 major shipyards.

Source?

*The Krenim, who have no more then 5,000 worlds.

Source?

*The Dominion, with no more then 10,000 worlds and major facilities.

Sources, please!
-Mike

[Youngla0450]

Everyone must realize that the Galactic Empire surpasses all the major Star Trek governments in size. The Empire, as previously stated, has at least one and a half million canonically recognized member/conquered worlds, as well up to fifty million colonies, protectorates, and puppet states scattered throughout the Star Wars galaxy, streching over 120,000 light years. Compare this to:

*The Federation, which has 150 member worlds and 1,000 colonies, protectorates, or semi-independent states, spread across only 8,000 light years, in one porition of a quadrant of a galaxy, which is no more then 100,000 light years in length.

There are one million total worlds in the GE, as per the ANH novelization, and the TPM and AoTC novelization indicate considerably less than that, especially for the Galactic Republic, which, as per the AoTC movie and Palpatine can be split in two by the secession of a few thousand star systems plus 10 thousand, thus the early Empire would be really only 25-30,000 star systems strong.

Kirk in "Metamorphosis" states to Cochrane "We're on a thousand planets and spreading out". At minimum this the total extent of the Federation given the statement was made in the 2260's. On the other hand, if Kirk was only refering to Earth and humanity's territories, then the Federation, each of the more than 150 members, could be potentially have tens of planets. Further, according to ST: Insurrection, there is also associate member status, and how many of these types of members are not known, and any signficant number could drive up the Federation territorial holdings even more.

*The Klingons or Romulans, who both have less then 1,100 worlds each, and at the most 3,000 colonies.

Source?

*The Cardassians, with around 170 major systems and production facilities.

Source?

*The Ferengi, who might have less then 200 worlds and states total, perhaps smaller then the Federation.

*The Borg, with, at the most, 20,000 systems and only six major shipyards, compared to a Empire of tens of millions of systems and over 1,000 major shipyards.

Source?

*The Krenim, who have no more then 5,000 worlds.

Source?

*The Dominion, with no more then 10,000 worlds and major facilities.

Sources, please!
-Mike

Mike, the Galactic Empire had at least 51 million worlds, including all the colonies and protectorates with the 1 million member worlds. If you cannot believe it, then go fuck yourself.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Mike, the Galactic Empire had at least 51 million worlds, including all the colonies and protectorates with the 1 million member worlds. If you cannot believe it, then go fuck yourself.

Go read here. You are on thin ice at this point.

[Jedi Master Spock]

P.S.: To give credit where credit is due, it was SailorSaturn13 from which I have the information about the novel » Vector Prime « and its implications [O].

I think I missed noticing that before. That's actually quite clever. By the same reasoning, any map that separates Tatooine and Geonosis by any noticeable margin would also imply a small SW galaxy, incidentally.

Of course, one issue is that many of the maps are clearly unrealistic, in which case we shouldn't expect them to have an especially accurate scale.

[Mike DiCenso]

With Tatooine-Geonosis, it is a reasonable thing to exaggerate their relative distances. The Vector Prime map does not have that, of course, because the writer and artist did not know of the latter world's existances. But with the Endor-Sullust distnace, it is less reasonable to assume extreme distortion or exaggeration. Likely no one did proper research and found the hundreds of light years quote from the RoTJ novelization.
-Mike

[2046]

Just a quick note, I caught a couple of minutes of RotS today toward the end, and when Obi-Wan and Yoda are flying into Coruscant with Bail, Obi-Wan talks about Palpatine needing the Senate to keep control over "the thousands of star systems".

Short of assuming Imperial hyperexpansionism, I find it hard to keep the prequels even remotely consistent with the concept of a million-system Empire. Sounds more like a territorial claim in the frequently-noted thousands prequel era, rather than a description of populated and controlled regions.

[Who is like God arbour]

According to that map, the star Wars Galaxy has a diameter less than four times the distance between Endor and Sullust and fifty times the distance between Geonosis and Tatooine.

At least as far as the distance between Sullust and Endor is concerned, that map is compatible with the map of » Vector Prime «.

It seems that the Star Wars Galaxy is a very small Galaxy with a very high density of habitable planets.

[Khas]

And if we go by Padme's statement that "Geonosis is less than a parsec away from Tatooine", then the SW galaxy has suddenly shrunk to about the size of a large globular cluster.

[Kane Starkiller]

In the Inside the worlds of Episode I (and also the publication for Episode II) an image of Star Wars galaxy is given along with the explicit diameter figure:

Regarding Sullust-Endor distance on the maps it is possible that there is more than one system named Sullust or Endor in the galaxy. After all the distance between Detroit and London is 160km if we are talking about London, Ontario rather than capital of UK. Combine the world map with 160km figure and you arrive at very interesting conclusion about the size of Earth.

Short of assuming Imperial hyperexpansionism, I find it hard to keep the prequels even remotely consistent with the concept of a million-system Empire. Sounds more like a territorial claim in the frequently-noted thousands prequel era, rather than a description of populated and controlled regions.

In the time of Qui-Gon Jinn, ten thousand Jedi Knights in service to the Republic carried on the struggle each day of their lives in a hundred thousand different worlds spread across a galaxy so vast it could barely be comprehended.

So Republic had at least 100,000 worlds a number which didn't include planets like Tatooine or others "controlled by the Hutts" etc.
Now for all we know those 100,000 worlds held 99% of the GDP of the Galaxy so it wouldn't be much of a problem for the Empire to expand its "system membership" by a factor of 10 or 100 while only adding 1% to its GDP or population.
After all in 2004 EU membership expanded from 15 to 25 members, a 67% expansion when measured simply by number of countries yet quite modest addition in terms of population not to mention GDP.

which, as per the AoTC movie and Palpatine can be split in two by the secession of a few thousand star systems plus 10 thousand, thus the early Empire would be really only 25-30,000 star systems strong.

I think we went over this several times but "split in two" doesn't imply split into two equal or remotely equal parts. Furthermore "split in two" doesn't imply that the Palpatine meant the separatists will be the other part. For example Pakistan was split in two when it seceded from India: to West Pakistan and East Pakistan which is todays Bangladesh. Size of British India prior to breakup didn't enter into it. Theoretically Separatist space could be a thin Chile-like strip of space with several thousand systems that would isolate two parts of Republic from each other. In any case there is nothing about Palpatine's statement that really contradicts the million starsystems figures for Empire.

Kirk in "Metamorphosis" states to Cochrane "We're on a thousand planets and spreading out". At minimum this the total extent of the Federation given the statement was made in the 2260's. On the other hand, if Kirk was only refering to Earth and humanity's territories, then the Federation, each of the more than 150 members, could be potentially have tens of planets. Further, according to ST: Insurrection, there is also associate member status, and how many of these types of members are not known, and any signficant number could drive up the Federation territorial holdings even more.

I'm not sure I like this whole each species has their own colonies idea. So Humans, Vulcans, Andorians, Betazoids all have their own colonies and are "spreading out". It seems to me they would be at each others throats long before Klingons or Romulans entered the picture. Besides when a Federation starship discovers or charts new suitable colony whose colony is it? The only way this can work is if they are all Federation colonies.
Furthermore, and I believe we also had a discussion on this, 1000 worlds in 2260 is not a minimum number for 2370 because there is no natural law that says number of colonies must always grow. It is entirely possible that a large number of colonies simply didn't pan out. After all most of the colonies we've seen are one village affair, it seems likely many of these were simply abandoned and people returned to Earth or emigrated to larger colonies which were more successful. I know that "has an orbital defense" would be the first on the list of things I'd check when moving to a new colony especially after crystalline entity attacks and similar incidents.
In any case when Picard, Sisko or Janeway state that Federation has 150 worlds there is no more justification for multiplying that number using various guesswork-derived factors than there is to multiply 100,000 world Republic or million world Empire.

[Youngla0450]

All of you state the Star Wars Galaxy is so small. According to Han Solo himself, there are at least 12 million systems out there in the Galaxy. Also, the Empire covers at least 1.5 million member worlds and 50 million colonies, spread across the entire galaxy. Also, Star Wars canon sources estimate the galaxy is 120,000 light years across. The distance between Tattoinne and Alderaan is at least 50-60,000 light years.