Size of the Federation vs Galactic Empire's Size

[Youngla0450]

So your sources are a bunch of C-level and lower canon EU material versus movie and novelization G-canon?
-Mike

I am guessing you are one of those damned Trekkies, since you keep on trying to claim that the Empire is small and weak.

[Mike DiCenso]

I argue pro-Trek. So how does that change that I'm using highest G-level canon to your lowest canon EU? How can you reconcile that higher canon with the lower to make your case for a big, bad, all-powerful Galactic Empire?
-Mike

[Youngla0450]

Expanded Universe is widely considered a sort of cannon by the Star Wars community. Also, the Galactic Empire IS powerful, and your Federation is communist and weak.

[Roondar]

Expanded Universe is widely considered a sort of cannon by the Star Wars community. Also, the Galactic Empire IS powerful, and your Federation is communist and weak.

Motive confirmed :)

[Mike DiCenso]

Expanded Universe is widely considered a sort of cannon by the Star Wars community. Also, the Galactic Empire IS powerful, and your Federation is communist and weak.

You have failed to address my points. I therefore except your concession, my young apprentice.
-Mike

[sonofccn]

So your sources are a bunch of C-level and lower canon EU material versus movie and novelization G-canon?
-Mike

I am guessing you are one of those damned Trekkies, since you keep on trying to claim that the Empire is small and weak.

Actually, not that it matters but I want to get in on the fun, Mike DiCenso in no way stated the Empire was weak nor did he make any arguments that would make the Empire smaller than the federation or anything to that extent. What you have is an argument on just how big the Empire was with DiCenso pointing out the movie place logical limits to the Empire's reach.

[Trinoya]

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.

[The Dude]

So your sources are a bunch of C-level and lower canon EU material versus movie and novelization G-canon?
-Mike

I am guessing you are one of those damned Trekkies, since you keep on trying to claim that the Empire is small and weak.

*sigh* To bad sigs are disabled. There is much gold to be mined from this one.

[Mike DiCenso]

Actually, not that it matters but I want to get in on the fun, Mike DiCenso in no way stated the Empire was weak nor did he make any arguments that would make the Empire smaller than the federation or anything to that extent. What you have is an argument on just how big the Empire was with DiCenso pointing out the movie place logical limits to the Empire's reach.

Bingo! We have a winner!
-Mike

[Who is like God arbour]

There is already a thread about the size of The Star Wars Galaxy.

Another thread dealt with the page of SDN: Industrial Capacity and Territorial Holdings.

In another thread it was inter alia debated how insignificant the Death Star would have been, if the Star Wars Galaxy were as big as claimed (here, here, here, here and here).

And in the thread Relation between Industrial Capacity and Volume, there was a debate about the plausible size of the Imperial fleet. In that thread, the question what use one or two Death Stars would have in an Empire with million worlds and who knows how many "uncharted settlements".

I do not think that it is necessary to re-invent the wheel.

[Jedi Master Spock]

So your sources are a bunch of C-level and lower canon EU material versus movie and novelization G-canon?
-Mike

I am guessing you are one of those damned Trekkies, since you keep on trying to claim that the Empire is small and weak.

Be polite, please.

Now, shall we consider what actually goes on in Star Wars, in C continuity and in G canon? Present a nice argument, for a change.

First, empires don't really have members. A federation has members. The idea of member worlds as distinct from colonies is really the sort of distinction that matters in Star Trek, not Star Wars. This is because we have a United Federation of Planets that we are concerned with. There are roughly 150 members in that Federation as of DS9.

ENT: "These are the Voyages..." indicates canonically that there are four founding members; Earth, Tellar, Vulcan, and Andor. It is known that at least three of these claimed additional planets as possessions. Hence, resolving the number, kind, and size of colonies is a critical exercise in understanding the magnitude of the Federation.

We know that in TOS, Kirk tells Cochrane that they - presumably humans - have spread to a thousand worlds. Most of the colonies we see, however, seem fairly small. As of First Contact, we know that the Federation is spread out across 8,000 light years. We've seen a number of galactic maps, we've heard several percentages quoted for how much of the galaxy is explored, and we know specifically that certain stars, such as Rigel and Deneb, are within Federation territory.

As a result, we have a very good idea of where the Federation is and what its area of influence is, but very little of an idea of how much sheer volume the Federation occupies, and next to no idea how many worlds the Federation controls directly (probably more than a thousand, probably less than a hundred thousand), and a hazy notion of the Federation's total population (probably more than 1 trillion, but likely less than 10 trillion).

However, in Star Wars, we have a variety of contradictory pieces of evidence that fit poorly together. The highest level of canon alone provides a lot of information... and has a great deal of trouble being consistent. While in Star Trek, we have a paucity of information, in Star Wars, we have too much information, and it's contradictory:

ten thousand Jedi knights active on a hundred thousand worlds

It was a vast network of tens of thousands of systems, and even more species, each with a distinct perspective.

Tens of thousands of systems.

The interior of the building was no less vast and impressive, its gigantic rotunda encircled, row upon row, by the floating platforms of the many Senators of the Republic, representing the great majority of the galaxy's inhabitable worlds

The senators for these tens of thousands of systems represent the "great majority" of the galaxy's inhabitable - not merely inhabited, but inhabitable - worlds.

This is a picture of the Republic. A hundred thousand worlds that the Jedi Knights intervene on - tens of thousands of worlds, encompassing the great majority of systems.

Unfortunately, in order to make this fit with Tarkin's million systems in ANH, we're going to have to assume that there's a lot outside the Old Republic that our narrating character is simply ignorant of. Far from stretching the other direction - as Wong might choose to in cherry-picking EU material from "Dark Empire" and other books, claiming a million important systems and many more subject systems - we have to conclude that most of those million systems are Outer Rim planets, backwaters like Tattooine and Dantooine, places that don't register as important enough to count in the Senate.

The population of the Empire then becomes another question. 100,000 Naboos is 60-450 trillion depending on which of the mutually contradictory EU sources you trust. I can easily believe anything from a hundred trillion to several quadrillion.

[Youngla0450]

I am disgusted at people saying the Empire is small. It is stated in Star Wars cannon that the Galactic Empire spans the entire Star Wars Galaxy, and that it is 120,000 light years wide, not 10-50,000 light years as claimed by some Federation liers.

[Who is like God arbour]

Stay polite.

To say that you are disgusted by people who are saying that the Empire is small is a little bit harsh.

Especially if your only argument is that it is stated in Star Wars cannon that the Galactic Empire spans the entire Star Wars Galaxy, and that it is 120,000 light-years wide.

As JediMaster Spock has just elaborated, canonical information are often times contradictory.

In such a case, higher ranking canonical information trumps lower ranking canonical information.

According to the novel » A New Hope « by George Lucas, the Star Wars Galaxy is only a modest sized galaxy. That is a canonical information that can only be trumped by an at least coequal canonical information.

Do you know any at least coequal canonical sources that are saying the Star Wars Galaxy is a large or even giant galaxy?

If not you simply will have to accept that the Star Wars Galaxy is only a modest sized galaxy.

Then there is the novel » Vector Prime « by R. A. Salvatore. The novel includes a map from the Star Wars galaxy.



Regrettably it has no scale. But it shows inter alia the distance between Endor and Sullust.

And from the novel » Return of the Jedi « it is known that the distance between Endor and Sullust is hundreds of light-years.

That means that the distance should be maximal a few thousand light years because otherwise not hundreds of light-years but thousands of light-years would have been used as a phrase.

Even if a distance of 10.000 light-years is assumed - and that's it very generous because that would be already 100 hundred light-years - the Star Wars galaxy would be far smaller than 50.000 light years in diameter.

That fits into what we would expect of a modest sized galaxy.

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].

[Mike DiCenso]

I am disgusted at people saying the Empire is small. It is stated in Star Wars cannon that the Galactic Empire spans the entire Star Wars Galaxy, and that it is 120,000 light years wide, not 10-50,000 light years as claimed by some Federation liers.

Chill, dude. You clearly need some edification on the Star Wars canon hierarchy:

G-canon is George Lucas Canon; the six Episodes and anything directly provided to Lucas Licensing by Lucas (including unpublished production notes from him or his production department that are never seen by the public). Elements originating with Lucas in the movie novelizations, reference books, and other sources are also G-canon, though anything created by the authors of those sources is C-canon. When the matter of changes between movie versions arises, the most recently released editions are deemed superior to older ones, as they correct mistakes, improve consistency between the two trilogies, and express Lucas's current vision of the Star Wars universe most closely. The deleted scenes included on the DVDs are also considered G-canon (when they're not in conflict with the movie).

T-canon, or Television Canon; refers to the canon level comprising the feature film Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the two television shows Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the Star Wars live-action TV series. It was devised recently in order to define a status above the C-Level canon, as confirmed by Chee.


C-canon is Continuity Canon; consisting of all recent works (and many older works) released under the name of Star Wars: books, comics, games, cartoons, non-theatrical films, and more. Games are a special case, as generally only the stories are C-canon, while things like stats and gameplay may not be; they also offer non-canonical options to the player, such as choosing female gender for a canonically male character. C-canon elements have been known to appear in the movies, thus making them G-canon; examples include the name "Coruscant," swoop bikes, Quinlan Vos, Aayla Secura, YT-2400 freighters and Action VI transports.

S-canon is Secondary Canon; the materials are available to be used or ignored as needed by current authors. This includes mostly older works, such as much of the Marvel Star Wars comics, that predate a consistent effort to maintain continuity; it also contains certain elements of a few otherwise N-canon stories, and other things that "may not fit just right." Many formerly S-canon elements have been elevated to C-canon through their inclusion in more recent works by continuity-minded authors, while many other older works (such as The Han Solo Adventures) were accounted for in continuity from the start despite their age, and thus were always C-canon.

N is Non-Canon. What-if stories (such as stories published under the Infinities label) and anything else directly and irreconcilably contradicted by higher canon ends up here. N is the only level that is not considered canon by Lucasfilm. Information cut from canon, deleted scenes, or from canceled Star Wars works falls into this category as well, unless another canonical work references it and it is declared canon.


Although George Lucas himself has said on occasion that the EU exists in a "parallel universe", and is totally seperate from his vision of Star Wars, we do account here on SFJN for the Lucasfilm licensing and publishing canon system and in it the canon that trumps all else is G-level canon. Which is what we are using over C and S-level canon sources, which is what you are using primarily to make your case for a giant SW Galaxy and all-galaxy spanning Galactic Empire. You can't have it both ways.
-Mike

[Youngla0450]

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