Inner Sphere Population in 3025

Turns out I accidentally hid Le Blanc when I pieced my map together, so I fixed that and did some other cleaning. Full size available here.

I don't think it's a secret that BattleTech's map is based on England's. Probably not a rectilinear projection like the one for 1974-1996 that I colorized below, though... I wish the "warp" tool in my old free version of photoshop would let me anchor points after I've stretched them. My .psd file is here if someone else wants to fool around with it.

House populations are based on those same English regions, too. Didn't find 1980s figures online so I'm using a 1988 World Book Encyclopedia.

Raw data here.

Looks like the House Steiner atlas should add up to about 100.08 billion people, Davion worlds should add up to about 96.45 billion, and all five atlases together should come to about 501.343 billion people.

Also, because of how Dieron, Atreus and Nanking line up with their House totals, I believe Steiner's most populous world would have about 5.515 billion people and Davion's would have about 5.477 billion.

House sub-regions don't match as cleanly, but they're still obviously using the English counties as a template.

The Star League sourcebook has an atlas too, with three entries per House: one with high population (an average of 3.214 billion people, and mostly copied from the House atlases), one with low population (an average of 23.81 million), and one with very low population (average of 52,333).

I count 156 major worlds in the five House atlases: 32 Kuritan, 28 Marik, 40 Liao (excluding the Chesterton worlds), 28 Davion (ignoring the 11 worlds too small to have governments, but including instead the Chesterton worlds from the Liao atlas), and 28 Steiner (pure supposition, but their atlas has the same total number of worlds as Marik's and Davion's, and I have nothing else to guess from). Dividing the England-based total estimate of 501.343 billion people by the 3.214 billion average from the Star League book confirms the count of 156 major worlds.

The encyclopedia mentions that 92% of England's population lived in urban areas. Maybe FASA did the simple dumb thing and concentrated 92% of the population on 8% of the planets, and spread 8% of the population over 92% of the planets?

• Kurita was the first House book. It has 412 stars on its map, 8% of which comes to 33, and it does indeed have 33 worlds (32 major + 1 formerly major) in its atlas. 
• I count about 1908 stars between all five Successor States. 8% of that comes to 153, which is a little short but still in the right neighborhood. 
• Adding Terra, Taurus, New Vandenberg and Canopus would bring the total to 160, which would be exactly 8% of a nominal 2000 worlds. 

If true, that would mean the remaining 1752 Successor State stars average around 22.9-24.9 million people (depending how you calculate it). That looks pretty on target for the Star League book's second-tier average of 23.81 million. There's confounding factors - some named stars aren't inhabited, some have multiple worlds, how do we count the Periphery - but it seems likely that this lower tier was meant to encompass all worlds not listed in the atlases.

I notice that Taurus, New Vandenberg and Canopus average 1339.33 billion people, almost exactly 5/12ths of the Inner Sphere average for highly populous worlds; and I notice that the remaining populations in the Periphery book average 9.79 million, again almost 5/12ths of the Inner Sphere average. So it would seem that the Periphery 1e listings (once you multiply them all by x2.4) are representative of how Inner Sphere populations are spread.

The Star League book's bottom tier of worlds average 52,333 people, and I notice that the five bandit worlds in P1e also average 52,300. Granted, some of those bandit populations consist 100% of bandits and the ex-Hegemony worlds might be some of the hardest-hit in the Inner Sphere, but the idea seems to be that you can find these rock-bottom populations anywhere.

The Unknown Periphery

The history in MW1e describes the colonization of over 2850 worlds. The "Vessel Location Table" in DS&JS (bottom of page 39 in the second half of the book) suggests one in six worlds have a second world in the same system, which could bring that figure down to 2443 colonized stars. If 1908 are in the Inner Sphere, that leaves 535 in the Periphery.

• For the 8-vs-92 thing from earlier: 8% of 535 is about 43, and P1e does indeed give populations for 43 worlds. (Across forty-four star systems, though. Three worlds are in a single system, and the populations for three other systems aren't given.)

The Periphery doesn't correspond to a region of England the way the Successor States do, but we could invent an English region with a population of zero. That would produce a corresponding BattleTech population of 10.86 billion. Subtracting Terra, Taurus, New Vandenberg and Canopus would leave 842.5 million, or about 7.7% of the total; spreading it across 532 stars makes for 1.58 million per star. The twelve independent systems listed in P1e also average 1.58 million per star.

We'd expect populations in the Taurian Concordat and the Magistracy of Canopus to be somewhat above average - more in line with Successor State populations - and populations everywhere else to be somewhat below average. If we figure the Concordat and Magistracy's 77 non-major stars at 5/12ths of the Inner Sphere average, that drops the rest of the Periphery to just 1 million per star. Averaging P1e's independents and bandits together also comes to just 1 million per star.

...these Periphery numbers and the Star League book averages seem pretty solid. I should probably use them to revisit my England-to-House estimates.

Speculation

The factional writeups in MW1e only acknowledge 450ish worlds of the Inner Sphere, ignoring 1460ish of the 1908 stars; if we go 1460/1908ths of the way up the Periphery 1e listings, from Gotterdammerung to Alpheratz (and remember to multiply x2.4), we get an average of 716,000 per world, with the 1 million average lying somewhere between Alpheratz and the next world up. So all these lesser Inner Sphere worlds might average 1 million apiece too.

If so, that would mean that, in addition to the worlds listed in the five House atlases, the Inner Sphere has about 294 more properly inhabited worlds averaging ~113 million apiece.