BattleTech fan since the early '90s, game design enthusiast since forever.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Draconis Combine: Probable World Populations

[Edit, 2019 Feb 28: I have refined my opinions on this topic. I no longer believe the Combine has room for more worlds of 500 million or more people; I now believe Ningxia's 23 million is average for the Combine's 379 "typical" stars, and the lowest 312 of those average 1 million people apiece while the highest 67 average 113 (or maybe 77.8) million apiece. /Edit]

Total Population: 90 billion (75% concentrated on administrative worlds)
Average Population per World: 260 million (30-40 million for non-capitals)
Minimum Population per "Inhabited" World: 1 million

Supposing that a single Behemoth DropShip can satisfy one day's food and water needs for 12.5 million people, and that a round trip takes 1 month, then just 700 Behemoths could supply all the food and water needs for 1/3rd of the Combine's 350 inhabited worlds. (Essentially every world with 5 million or fewer people.)

Ningxia, with 23 million inhabitants, would be something like the 120th most populous world in the Combine. There's about 25 worlds ranging from 100 million to 600 million inhabitants, an industrial world somewhere around 750 million, and another around 1.1 billion.


How Do I Figure?

Sunday, September 20, 2015

360p Is The Only Choice

YouTube has apparently decided that I should only watch videos in 360p. Luckily, I've discovered that changing the URL from something like this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USkEzLuzmZ4
...to something like this...
https://www.youtube.com/v/USkEzLuzmZ4
...gives me all the old options back.

Edit September 23rd: Unless the video is a vevo music video, in which case I need to find my way around regional restrictions. /Edit