Imperium vs. the United Federation of Planets

[Mike DiCenso]

Your average Federation citizen would probably faint at the thought of date rape, let alone what Slaansh followers follow.

I dunno, something must have happened to send Turkana IV into the shit hole.... If you can have rape gangs running around within a decade of a governmental collapse, you can get almost anything to happen.
-Mike

[Mith]

Hmmm, good point. I had forgotten about that. Still, it's not technically part of the Federation, so I can't imagine something like that happening within their domain. Something must have really gone bottom's up for that colony to sink like that.

[Mike DiCenso]

Technically speaking, yes... and no. The Turkana IV colony could be considered a protectorate of the Federation, even though it made a declaration to secede from the Federation, that declaration was not made by any legitimate governing body, only some wacked out faction. So while the Federation has not actively gone back there, except to rescue downed freighter crews, it probably could do something more, if the situation required it.

However, I doubt that other Federation citizens would care to put themselves through insanity like that. If they found a solution, it would probably be a technobabble one to disrupting the warp.
-Mike

[Mith]

Technically speaking, yes... and no. The Turkana IV colony could be considered a protectorate of the Federation, even though it made a declaration to secede from the Federation, that declaration was not made by any legitimate governing body, only some wacked out faction. So while the Federation has not actively gone back there, except to rescue downed freighter crews, it probably could do something more, if the situation required it.

However, I doubt that other Federation citizens would care to put themselves through insanity like that. If they found a solution, it would probably be a technobabble one to disrupting the warp.
-Mike

Well, it should be noted that ST doesn't have that many powerful psionics. And what they do have, they can probably shield from Chaos after realizing what's going on. The problem though, is when you get to races like Betazoids, whose entire species are gifted with such abilities.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Proxima Centauri is 4.2 LY away. Back then, their sublight propulsion sucked big donkey balls.
That would be centuries, at least 200 years so, to cross 3.97 e13 km. But with warp drives, the same distance could be covered in only a few hours. Say two or three.
So 20000~30000 hours to cover 42000 LY.
That's between 2.56 and 3.85 years. That's between 10910c and 16406.25c.
Now, unless I got things horribly wrong, humanity discovered warp travel well before the birth of Slaanesh.

The "normal" figures are 2000-12000 c, which would correspond to travelling at normal Warp speeds; that would correspond to 3-18 hours of travel, which fits perfectly with the description.

Three things to bear in mind, however, that allow it to fit very easily with Tau-like speeds:

First, it's quite possible that early Warp travel involved the use of beacons.
Second, "hours" may refer to the on-ship time, and we know that this is substantially dilated.
Third, WH40k is a "lost technology" franchise. While the ability to travel at full Warp speeds may have been what was originally discovered, the technology - or inclination - to do so without the aid of a navigational beacon may have existed and been lost or forgotten.
Fourth, it may well be that the way was known well enough, and was short enough, to render the need for a beacon moot.

Clearly, the first order of business for the Imperium would be to establish navigational beacons. I'm not buying the idea that the ST galaxy would have a free and clear Immaterium; if nothing else, the Imperium will bring Chaos with it unintentionally. Warp storms and Warp 'weather' seem to be perfectly natural phenomena.

In a worst case scenario, travelling through the Immaterium means passing through the lower dimensions of the Q Continuum. ST is not devoid of godlike higher dimensional beings who, in one sense, live "in" the galaxy.

[Jedi Master Spock]

*shrug* Well keep in mind that if the IoM is operating in the ST universe (which may as well be the IoM's past)

Small note here: If it is the IoM's past, then there's a younger living Emperor secretly helping preserve human civilization in the ST universe, which means the UFP. That might slightly alter the results of contact between the two civilizations.

Second small note - on another topic, the UFP knowing how to find Terra: Stars move. Over 40,000 years, it's quite possible the local cartography has changed just enough to require updating navigational charts, which we know from "Squire of Gothos" go all the way down to rogue planetoids in resolution. Our own system will have orbited - what, 28 LY relative to the galactic center? Yeah, something like that.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Your average Federation citizen would probably faint at the thought of date rape, let alone what Slaansh followers follow.

I dunno, something must have happened to send Turkana IV into the shit hole.... If you can have rape gangs running around within a decade of a governmental collapse, you can get almost anything to happen.
-Mike

That's one world left to itself and turned sour at some impossible speed. It's not going to wage a war against anyone. It's only capable of a civil war at best.

That's like saying that because there's a prison planet (TOS episode) then it means all the Federation can be corrupted. That's bull. It took a massive... no, an epic collapse of moral values of an entire civilization, and over hundreds of thousands of years if not more (Eldar civ is like one million years old or more, can't remember, but it was that old anyway) to go down, and when it finally blew up, it was when the Eldar had a large empire and that occurred tens of millennia in the future from now.

[The Dude]

Well, it should be noted that ST doesn't have that many powerful psionics. And what they do have, they can probably shield from Chaos after realizing what's going on. The problem though, is when you get to races like Betazoids, whose entire species are gifted with such abilities.

They gonna vomit up another techno-BS field, I take it?

Small note here: If it is the IoM's past, then there's a younger living Emperor secretly helping preserve human civilization in the ST universe, which means the UFP. That might slightly alter the results of contact between the two civilizations.

Yes, though the extent of what he did in the IoM's past isn't very well explored. He may very well do nothing, he might decide to bitch slap the IoM's forces, he may do something in between.

[Mith]

The 900 billion figure is nothing firm because contextually it can easily be understood as the losses resulting from a continuous full scale war going on over five generations. This interpretation would mean 900 bn is a cap, not a minimum. That said, even with such a cap, the true population number would still rate in the several hundred billions, if only to allow for the projected casualties.

It's actually a barrel full of confusion. Still, going by estimating that the Federation has 150 worlds, each likely as populated as Earth and Vulcan (ST 11 put the 23rd century UFP Earth and Vulcan at about 6 billion people), we'd get 900 billion just from that. Kirk said that the Federation had a thousand worlds by the 23rd Century.

So, assuming that say, 25% of those are around the same population as Earth (we'll say 4 billion), we'd get about 1 trillion. Let's assume that for the purpose of this, that the other 75% are worth say, 25 million on average. That gives us another 18,750,000,000.

Let's put that together for 1,918,750,000,000. And that's assuming that the Federation hasn't expanded in the past 100 years since Kirk's claim--which we know isn't true, but I digress and it's not likely to go much higher. All around, we could say that the United Federation of Planets has about roughly 2 trillion people.

Well now, we can determine the Federation's military/navy force by what, 10% of its population? That's 200 billion. So yes, it would seem that my original idea of 900 billion is rather, shall we say, hard to swallow. Of course, we could go the other route and take 900 billion as strictly Federation losses--complete loss of all personal. It would give the UFP a probable population of about 9 trillion, which I honestly don't think is too far off.

Of course, assuming that maybe it was refering to all three powers, you could say about 3-4 trillions, which is closer to the figures given what we already know the Federation to reasonably have. Still, I like the rough estimation of about 200 billion well enough and we can either assume that the guys were talking about all three military powers and divy it up. I would assume that the 500 billion would come from the Klingons, who do seem to be very military oriented and warrior based.

Still rather laughable compared to the Imperium though, which would have to be in the trillions.

Simply put, without true large scale WMD, the UFP will only annoy the IoM, for it has just so much inertia.

Probably a more effective/friendly Tau Empire honestly.

The second scenario is a clear win for the UFP. There is one thing that maintains the Imperium, and it's Terra, its High Lords, the Astronomican and the God Emperor. Anyone foe who can jump in system right next to Terra, drop any silly super weapon, crack the planet or at the very least pulverize the Astronomican will destroy the entire Imperium from within.

The Imperium loses, but humanity wins.

I really should have double checked the Imperium's territory; it really doesn't have a defined edge. It would honestly be faster for the UFP to hold their own for a few decades to develop the technology to strike back at the Imperium--and at that point, they're Pre-Time War Daleks.=(

[Mr. Oragahn]

It's actually a barrel full of confusion. Still, going by estimating that the Federation has 150 worlds, each likely as populated as Earth and Vulcan (ST 11 put the 23rd century UFP Earth and Vulcan at about 6 billion people), we'd get 900 billion just from that. Kirk said that the Federation had a thousand worlds by the 23rd Century.

Is there any reason to believe each of these 150 worlds has such a high population? The Andorians, they live in underwater cities. The city we saw in ENT didn't seem that impressive, and yet it supposedly was a major one, right?

See, if humanity had no hit some metaphorical wall after the golden age of the hellenistic era, we'd be far more advanced but Earth would be far less populated, as the populations really bloomed in the late centuries. 1 bn circa 1800:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World ... 0-2100.png
Notice, by the way, the two breaks in the curve, corresponding to the two world wars.
Coridan has 3 bn people on it, with its capital surrounded by a shantytown which population equalled that of the city's area it surrounded.
Also se evidence that Vulcan had 6 bn people comes from nuTrek, which is kinda odd since we're yet to see any impressive population center.

Kirk's count is useless. It can count colonies. The Imperium has a million or more worlds, but going by the Gothic sector model (a well populated sector), less than 1% would be considered inhabited.

So, assuming that say, 25% of those are around the same population as Earth (we'll say 4 billion), we'd get about 1 trillion. Let's assume that for the purpose of this, that the other 75% are worth say, 25 million on average. That gives us another 18,750,000,000.

Let's put that together for 1,918,750,000,000. And that's assuming that the Federation hasn't expanded in the past 100 years since Kirk's claim--which we know isn't true, but I digress and it's not likely to go much higher. All around, we could say that the United Federation of Planets has about roughly 2 trillion people.

There's lots of evidence that colonies are sparsely populated. If they reach the million bar, it's quite a miracle. We have examples of colonies count a few hundred or thousand people. Archer IV had several millions, something over a dozen I think, or perhaps less, and that was one of the closest and earliest populated worlds.

Colonial count is for all intents and purposes insignificant.

Well now, we can determine the Federation's military/navy force by what, 10% of its population? That's 200 billion. So yes, it would seem that my original idea of 900 billion is rather, shall we say, hard to swallow. Of course, we could go the other route and take 900 billion as strictly Federation losses--complete loss of all personal. It would give the UFP a probable population of about 9 trillion, which I honestly don't think is too far off.

Focusing on the military is wrong. The Dominion wasn't short of attacking an entire planet indiscriminately if needed, and we don't know how long the conflict would last. It could last a century or more. We already managed that on Earth.
The war would seem to be total in this case, with possible use of WMDs as one side would fail to get the upper hand, and special orders being okayed on both sides.

Still rather laughable compared to the Imperium though, which would have to be in the trillions.

At least. With 32380 hive worlds, all with a population on the average stuck between 100 and 500 bn (although some other books I think did provide examples of less populated hive worlds), we get 9,714,000 bn people, only for those worlds.

Simply put, without true large scale WMD, the UFP will only annoy the IoM, for it has just so much inertia.

Probably a more effective/friendly Tau Empire honestly.

It's in UFP's best interests to actually avoid the fight by all means unless they're allowed, by the scenario, to be mean against Terra.
I'm not even sure the IoM would allow the UFP to remain the way it is, although its sheer existence would deeply shake the tenets of the IoM and really question its nature and state.
If hope is allowed, then let's think about how they'd view the UFP: so many people, and yet they do not know about Chaos, filthy corruption and so on and so forth.
Some will see the UFP as heretics or something.
Some would realize that the UFP, although not a real ennemy, would endanger the IoM society merely by existing and giving false hopes to populations of the IoM, which in turn would lead to people thinking the IoM can be reorganized from within when it simply cannot.
Other would see the UFP as the promised land and, at the very least, attempt to get there, and at worst attempt to conquer that place, with all the irony of not realizing how it would destroy it.
There would be a branch that would not bother. Then, of course, they wouldn't bother as much as the UFP wouldn't attempt anything, but the OP has both sides being very agressive.

The second scenario is a clear win for the UFP. There is one thing that maintains the Imperium, and it's Terra, its High Lords, the Astronomican and the God Emperor. Anyone foe who can jump in system right next to Terra, drop any silly super weapon, crack the planet or at the very least pulverize the Astronomican will destroy the entire Imperium from within.

The Imperium loses, but humanity wins.

I really should have double checked the Imperium's territory; it really doesn't have a defined edge. It would honestly be faster for the UFP to hold their own for a few decades to develop the technology to strike back at the Imperium--and at that point, they're Pre-Time War Daleks.=(

In both scenarios, the IoM would force the UFP to fight. They wouldn't have time and ressources to spend on that, as they would focus on a greater industry, more standardized and robust designed.
Hell, do we even know how the UFP came to possess more fluidic time travel tech? Did they "invent" it, or did they rip it off of another civilization?

[Mith]

Is there any reason to believe each of these 150 worlds has such a high population? The Andorians, they live in underwater cities. The city we saw in ENT didn't seem that impressive, and yet it supposedly was a major one, right?

Vulcan, the desert planet, had 6 billion people in nTrek, which despite the 20 year difference, I can't see the populations being that different. Same as 23rd Century Earth from the same movie. And while yes, some can be much lower, I also suspect that some are also much higher. That's why I take average.

See, if humanity had no hit some metaphorical wall after the golden age of the hellenistic era, we'd be far more advanced but Earth would be far less populated, as the populations really bloomed in the late centuries. 1 bn circa 1800:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World ... 0-2100.png
Notice, by the way, the two breaks in the curve, corresponding to the two world wars.
Coridan has 3 bn people on it, with its capital surrounded by a shantytown which population equalled that of the city's area it surrounded.
Also se evidence that Vulcan had 6 bn people comes from nuTrek, which is kinda odd since we're yet to see any impressive population center.

While this is true, I would also point out that the Federation has plenty of space. In every century, they've had plenty of space for its culture. Even Earth, the paradise of the Federation, has only 6 billion people there, despite being the capital. It's actually almost unrealistic, but then again, I guess it's not hard to see if you're having trouble buying or obtaining estate, why you might want to instead just decide to move to a colony or to Mars.

Kirk's count is useless. It can count colonies. The Imperium has a million or more worlds, but going by the Gothic sector model (a well populated sector), less than 1% would be considered inhabited.

Colonies are inhabited. Worlds purely for that purpose are refered to as outposts. Ie, science outposts and the like, but even worlds focused on industry are populated to some extent.

There's lots of evidence that colonies are sparsely populated.

Um, is there? Honestly, it's really just the newer ones that we saw if my memory serves me well.

If they reach the million bar, it's quite a miracle. We have examples of colonies count a few hundred or thousand people. Archer IV had several millions, something over a dozen I think, or perhaps less, and that was one of the closest and earliest populated worlds.

And that was also 200 years ago. I honestly can't imagine that with abudence in room and technology and a desire to turn a untamed world into something great, that we wouldn't be seeing high millions or low billions 200 years later.

Colonial count is for all intents and purposes insignificant.

I prefer rough and hard to determine.

Focusing on the military is wrong. The Dominion wasn't short of attacking an entire planet indiscriminately if needed,

Um, actually it was. There's more than the Federation, Romulans, and Klingons in those quadrants. Many of which could have turned the side for either during the war. The Dominion had to keep a clean nose. They never bombarded any planet, save for Cardassia Prime, and that was when the shit had already hit the fan and the Founder was doing it out of spite.

and we don't know how long the conflict would last. It could last a century or more. We already managed that on Earth.

The way the war was going, there is no way it would have lasted a century. Even with all six powers in the war (and remember, the estimation actually came before the Romulans joined, though assumed it even if they did), it only lasted three years and both sides were left in ruin. The Federation fleet was worn down, the Klingons were spent, the Dominion forces were all but reduced to nothing, the Cardassians barely had anything left, and only the Romulans and Breen could probably have kept going--and the Breen were a rather small power like the Cardassians themselves.

It might have lasted a decade.

The war would seem to be total in this case, with possible use of WMDs as one side would fail to get the upper hand, and special orders being okayed on both sides.

I don't think so. The only massive bombardment that the Dominion actually ever planned was Earth because that's where they believed that a rebellion would start. It's actually pretty dark when you think about it, because those experts predicted that the rebellion would in fact, have started and Earth and have gained power. If Sisko and Starfleet had gone through with their suggestion, Weyoun would have had Earth's population eradicated.

At least. With 32380 hive worlds, all with a population on the average stuck between 100 and 500 bn (although some other books I think did provide examples of less populated hive worlds), we get 9,714,000 bn people, only for those worlds.

Oh yes.

It's in UFP's best interests to actually avoid the fight by all means unless they're allowed, by the scenario, to be mean against Terra.

I really made a mistake with the territory thing here. Because logically, they'd be tens of thousands of light years on the fringe of Imperium space. Even at a full scale war, it would take decades for many of their forces to get there and it all wouldn't be at the same time.

I'm not even sure the IoM would allow the UFP to remain the way it is, although its sheer existence would deeply shake the tenets of the IoM and really question its nature and state.
If hope is allowed, then let's think about how they'd view the UFP: so many people, and yet they do not know about Chaos, filthy corruption and so on and so forth.
Some will see the UFP as heretics or something.

Well, that would quickly change.

Some would realize that the UFP, although not a real ennemy, would endanger the IoM society merely by existing and giving false hopes to populations of the IoM, which in turn would lead to people thinking the IoM can be reorganized from within when it simply cannot.
Other would see the UFP as the promised land and, at the very least, attempt to get there, and at worst attempt to conquer that place, with all the irony of not realizing how it would destroy it.
There would be a branch that would not bother. Then, of course, they wouldn't bother as much as the UFP wouldn't attempt anything, but the OP has both sides being very agressive.

The problem is though, in order to destroy the Federation, they'd need to not only push them out of their space, but also take over the Federation. That could take centuries. And while that's not a problem for the Imperium in most cases, it's a bit different here due to the pace at which the UFP is going to advance.

In both scenarios, the IoM would force the UFP to fight.

True.

They wouldn't have time and ressources to spend on that, as they would focus on a greater industry, more standardized and robust designed.

Um...not entirely true. In fact, if anything, Starfleet has shown to come up with quick advancement in technology during times of war. Early TNG era was incredibly stagnant in terms of Ambassador to Galaxy, but the moment the Borg and Dominion hit, they really started to advance.

Hell, do we even know how the UFP came to possess more fluidic time travel tech? Did they "invent" it, or did they rip it off of another civilization?

More fluidic? Curious wording. Really, aside from more convinient methods of obtaining time warp or its variant, their ability to move through time hasn't really changed. The first instance of time travel seemed to have been discovered by accident when Kirk's ship was sucked into a black hole (called a black star then because in RL they hadn't been officially named) and hurled from 2267 to 1969. Later in the episode, they recreated the accident using Sol sun to not only go back far enough to return the 'abducted' pilot back to his time, but also back to their time. That's 298 years, almost three hundred years worth of time travel.

We then have an intentional attempt at time travel in season 2 of TOS (season one had the accident). I'll assume that a year has passed, given that's how seasons work in Star Trek (the wiki gives no specific date, but I don't think a year or two really matters here...). Therefore, Kirk's Enterprise travels from 2268 to 1968...which is a fairly odd concidence, but it works out well. I suspect that Starfleet had been shocked that Kirk had managed to escape not only the black hole--possibly past the event horizon or near it--such a thing seems to interfere with warp drive that only a really powerful and fast ship can escape at full power. Given that Kirk's travel back in time was about 300 years, I suspect that Starfleet wanted Kirk to test out the possibility of time travel and sent him back as a way to test it, under the guise of "historical research".


This is actually a rather happy thing in that the next thing is also Voyage Home, where the same method is used to travel back in time to steal some whales...yeah, funny story why they're doing that. In any case, they used a beat up BoP that apparently lacked much in the way of sophisticated computers like the 1701 given that Spock had to do most of the calculations in his head. It worked and they traveled from 2286 to 1986--three hundred years. It's rather strange that this is exactly the same as the one above, but I think it might actually be a good thing. Since Spock was chief science officer during Operation: Earth, then no doubt he would have been a major part of not only making the calculations for that mission, but also in checking them and possibly memorizing most of the formula if something went wrong and he'd have to do it manually. In this case, he simply used the basis for the calculations for when the Enterprise 1701 did it and just adjusted for the difference in size, mass, and so on.

So really, the ability to travel through time by centuries is easily possible with a star, a good science officer, and a modern starship. So the basis for time travel has been around for some time. If anything though, I'd say that the biggest boost was probably from the Borg Sphere, if which you recall, the Enterprise was able to duplicate in order to get back to their own time.

Now, the way that Braxton's Aeon time ship had traveled was by creating an artificial temporal rift. I suspect this is how they perform most of their jumps in time, but we also know they can pull people out of time itself with the temporal transporters, though that can cause some damage if used too much.

Now, in 2404, which I will warn you, is an alternate timeline from Endgame, a Klingon scientist had developed a chrono deflector, which did this:

CHAKOTAY: What is it?
JANEWAY: Judging from the tachyon emissions, some sort of temporal rift.
SEVEN: How's it being generated?
JANEWAY: That's what we're trying to figure out

Temporal rift. It's also worth noting that there's also a jump in space as well as time. It should also be noted that this is a prototype and it would deal out a great deal of radiation. Janeway had to use some special doo-dad to keep it from killing her via radiation poisoning and it burned itself out after the first go.

That said, it's clearly the forerunner of what the 29th century UFP uses. Now, although it is an alternate future, I don't think that Voyager returning earlier or later would have really affected the future that much--we saw that even with Picard not being the captain he was that time itself wasn't utterly buttraped; he wasn't that important. Granted, he had the assurances of Q, but save for Kirk's unlucky break in the City on the Edge of Forever, a few people aren't going to make a major difference. It's also the first known prototype belonging to a Klingon.

So it would seem to me that the ability to time travel was developed in the early 25th century and perfected throughout it. By the time the late 26th century, historians can travel into the past, to the 22nd century:

PICARD: Would you join me on the bridge, please.
RIKER [OC]: Right away, sir.
PICARD: Are you certain, Mister Worf?
WORF: There was a space-time distortion, sir, and there is something back there. We passed within three hundred kilometres of it.
PICARD: It's too close to be a coincidence. Mister La Forge?
LAFORGE [OC]: Yes, Captain?
PICARD: Would a delay of one hour affect your plans?

Unfortunately, we don't get a very similar description, but then again, the Voyager's sensors are more advanced...or Worf was just being vague. This was before they really cemented the use of time travel drives. Another thing is that apparently the 22nd century guy can figure out how to use it when a 20th century man can't without destroying himself and an entire solar system. Although, it seems like the 22nd century inventor duped the historian, so he might have had time to get him to spill the beans...or maybe the damage done to the Aeon was severe enough that it required a manual adjustment where as the time-pod did not? Beats me.

So although the time line was distorted a bit, I don't think there were really that many changes to the point that we would see completely and utterly different realities. Certainly not vast technological leaps...if anything, it should happen sooner since Voyager brought back all of those goodies.

[Jedi Master Spock]

There's lots of evidence that colonies are sparsely populated. If they reach the million bar, it's quite a miracle. We have examples of colonies count a few hundred or thousand people. Archer IV had several millions, something over a dozen I think, or perhaps less, and that was one of the closest and earliest populated worlds.

Archer IV had seven hundred million in the 2260s. The planet was charted in 2151 and settled in the early 23rd century after a solution to its pollen problem was found. The sharp growth of the population implies a lot of early emigration from more crowded planets, presumably mainly Earth.

Colonies already established prior to Archer IV include Deneva (which had a population of "over a million" in the 2260s, i.e., not that much.) We tend, disproportionately, to see frontier colonies and failing colonies, to which an Enterprise has been called to go fix something.

Certainly we expect most colonies to have a very small population, but it takes only a few planets with a significant population to have a major impact on population figures.

This is true of the top end of the curve as well. It only takes a few very highly populated planets, more populous than Vulcan, to throw the population curve upward.

Focusing on the military is wrong. The Dominion wasn't short of attacking an entire planet indiscriminately if needed, and we don't know how long the conflict would last. It could last a century or more. We already managed that on Earth.
The war would seem to be total in this case, with possible use of WMDs as one side would fail to get the upper hand, and special orders being okayed on both sides.

I severely doubt that the casualties mentioned would be spread over more than a few years. The rates of losses of ships we saw in DS9 were not especially sustainable, and the Dominion was already starting to take over major member worlds, like Betazed.

We saw in the Klingon-Cardassian war just how quickly territory changes hands when one side gets an upper hand over the other. The projection of 900 billion seemed to involve the Federation folding like a wet paper bag, with a resistance movement rising up generations later.

At least. With 32380 hive worlds, all with a population on the average stuck between 100 and 500 bn (although some other books I think did provide examples of less populated hive worlds), we get 9,714,000 bn people, only for those worlds.

The Imperium does rule over more people. It's an open question how many more. Total Federation population should resolve to somewhere safely in the middle of the 1-10 trillion range. Imperium population, contrastingly, should resolve in a 100 trillion - 10 quadrillion range. A factor of several hundred would be expected.

It's in UFP's best interests to actually avoid the fight by all means unless they're allowed, by the scenario, to be mean against Terra.

Taking out Terra and the Astronomican without WMD is fairly tough. Possible - e.g., a deep strike with a cloaked ship screaming in-system on warp drive might be sufficient to blow up the beacon, which, even without the death of the High Lords of Terra, is enough to throw the IoM into chaos (lower case 'c' chaos).

I'm not even sure the IoM would allow the UFP to remain the way it is, although its sheer existence would deeply shake the tenets of the IoM and really question its nature and state.

I'm not sure that under the terms of the scenario, the IoM is going to be able to do much without the use of WMDs. The UFP has an incredible advantage in defensive mobility, by a factor of over 10:1, and the IoM will be unable to free enough ships from "routine" duties to be able to avoid frequent defeat in detail against UFP forces - which is certainly going to happen with firepower parity established by the OP.

Other would see the UFP as the promised land and, at the very least, attempt to get there, and at worst attempt to conquer that place, with all the irony of not realizing how it would destroy it.

Civil war is not an unlikely outcome of the IoM coming into contact with the UFP.

I really should have double checked the Imperium's territory; it really doesn't have a defined edge. It would honestly be faster for the UFP to hold their own for a few decades to develop the technology to strike back at the Imperium--and at that point, they're Pre-Time War Daleks.=(

There's not a really defined edge, but the closest point of the edge of the galaxy to Terra is around 1000 LY "vertical" - think three dimensions, our galaxy is quite disk-like. Which is to say the sort of distance travelled in single TOS episodes via normal means, and significantly less than Voyager covered each season during its limping way home.

However, there's the long-term problem for the IoM in the "gentlemen's duel" scenario. Without the use of WMDs, neither side is very likely to make quick conventional advance into their own territory. Or even meaningful conventional advance, given the IoM's depth of territory and the lack of an Astronomican in the ST galaxy.

The IoM, however, doesn't really do technological or social innovation and is coming apart at the seams on its own. They're not going to invent Warp beacon jamming, field stabilizers, self-replicating cloaked Space Marines, or anything else to "solve" the conflict.

This is also a general problem for the IoM, because the IoM doesn't think in terms of conflicts lasting less than a decade. The IoM is going to take quite some time just to get its tail in gear.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Vulcan, the desert planet, had 6 billion people in nTrek, which despite the 20 year difference, I can't see the populations being that different. Same as 23rd Century Earth from the same movie. And while yes, some can be much lower, I also suspect that some are also much higher. That's why I take average.

Much higher? We've only seen Gideon, and it was depicted as a problem-planet.

While this is true, I would also point out that the Federation has plenty of space. In every century, they've had plenty of space for its culture. Even Earth, the paradise of the Federation, has only 6 billion people there, despite being the capital. It's actually almost unrealistic, but then again, I guess it's not hard to see if you're having trouble buying or obtaining estate, why you might want to instead just decide to move to a colony or to Mars.

Yes but people moving will hardly explain why your capital world is lacking several billions, as there's simply not enough old colonies and people to get so many billions.
We'll see more later on.

Colonies are inhabited. Worlds purely for that purpose are refered to as outposts. Ie, science outposts and the like, but even worlds focused on industry are populated to some extent.
...
Um, is there? Honestly, it's really just the newer ones that we saw if my memory serves me well.
...
And that was also 200 years ago. I honestly can't imagine that with abudence in room and technology and a desire to turn a untamed world into something great, that we wouldn't be seeing high millions or low billions 200 years later.

It doesn't really matter how old they are. Even a hundred or thousand people won't matter much even one full millennium later. You need a bigger exodus, but evidence of such population moves would be necessary. We have Archer IV, but that's pretty much all thus far.



That one is funny. It says: Population at the time of Jesus : 300 M.
And it took us 1980 years to multiply that by ten.

Um, actually it was. There's more than the Federation, Romulans, and Klingons in those quadrants. Many of which could have turned the side for either during the war. The Dominion had to keep a clean nose. They never bombarded any planet, save for Cardassia Prime, and that was when the shit had already hit the fan and the Founder was doing it out of spite.

The Dominion fleet located at Cardassia and engaged in other places was a large threat to the UFP, the Klingons and the Romulans. Aside from the Founders suffering from the virus thing, there was no glorious end coming.
Even with slow ass warp travel, it would take perhaps two generations for the entire Dominion forces, coming from the Gamma Quadrant, to threaten the AQ. They would push a colonial corridor from their original quadrant towards the AQ, creating colonies in order to sustain the fleet and using them as outposts, while the AQ Dominion fleet would keep the AQ forces at hand's reach and occupy them.
It would only get worse.
Besides, the Dominion did try to burst a star, one of strategical importance. See here.
All indicators show that it could only escalate.

The way the war was going, there is no way it would have lasted a century. Even with all six powers in the war (and remember, the estimation actually came before the Romulans joined, though assumed it even if they did), it only lasted three years and both sides were left in ruin. The Federation fleet was worn down, the Klingons were spent, the Dominion forces were all but reduced to nothing, the Cardassians barely had anything left, and only the Romulans and Breen could probably have kept going--and the Breen were a rather small power like the Cardassians themselves.

It might have lasted a decade.

It only means all of them had lost a large percentage of their powers. The battles would then be fought between less ships. But the outcome would be the same in terms of control, and with one ship having enough firepower to turn a planet into a smoking cinder, you have what it takes to wipe out close to billions per planet with one such ship. The moment one does it, the other side will have to do something of equal importance to avoid a defeat. Striking entire populations will be seen as necessary, simply because with reduced military numbers, destroying the population centers crushes morale and industry. It also avoid bothering managing prisoners. The Founders wouldn't bother, since they have their own slave races, one of them which they can mass produce.

And as pointed above, there's always the threat of the Dominion fleet getting reinforcements from the GQ.

Even if you say that the UFP, Klingons and Romulans totaled like 100,000 ships, with crews of 10,000 on the average, you only get 1 bn people in the fleet. You'll certainly NOT get much more from ground troops. Considering how ground troops are treated in Trek, it's almost unlikely that there would be more of them on the war front than there are people in ships engaged in combat.
So those 900 simply cannot be purely military casualties.

Most of this death toll is actually coming in the form of countless civilian death, either via collateral damage, which is unlikely, or via purposeful destruction of worlds, regardless of their relevance, military wise.

I also dispute the 10% you used earlier on. For example, taking the US forces, and when you consider that it's the most aggressive and powerful force on Earth as now, you still have less than 0.5% of its US population that is part of its armed forces, all five branches counted.

I don't think so. The only massive bombardment that the Dominion actually ever planned was Earth because that's where they believed that a rebellion would start. It's actually pretty dark when you think about it, because those experts predicted that the rebellion would in fact, have started and Earth and have gained power. If Sisko and Starfleet had gone through with their suggestion, Weyoun would have had Earth's population eradicated.

Earth was one of the most protected worlds. Clearly with all sides losing military power, they'd be forced to fight for frontier worlds before managing to pierce enemy lines. You'd literally get trench warfare in space, both sides solidifying their holdings.

I really made a mistake with the territory thing here. Because logically, they'd be tens of thousands of light years on the fringe of Imperium space. Even at a full scale war, it would take decades for many of their forces to get there and it all wouldn't be at the same time.

The same would apply to the IoM. The UFP has an advantage though, in the way people explain Voyager's trip duration to make it fit with other incidences of much faster travel.
You need, basically, a detailed chart, you caves full of goods, and that's all. That's how Voyager shaved off a handful of years. I don't think the IoM has any protocol to avoid an enemy acquiring data about the imperial starmap. Considering the silliness of IoM bureaucracy, they could never manage to pull that off.
So they key goal here is to obtain charts, charts and more charts. I'm not exactly sure how hard it would be. The IoM is more like Star Wars's galaxy, but with much more shit and violence in it, and with a FTL system that is subject to random phenomena.
There also are many civil commercial ships the UFP could try to capture. They'd be the easiest preys, and they'd contain large amounts of data on the IoM's spatial organization.
It wouldn't take more than a year imho for the UFP to get that data, even if they need to lose several ships doing so.

The IoM, on the other hand, looks pretty much capped on its FTL speeds no matter what, and there's like a very vague idea of what a Warp without Chaos and without the Astronomican would be like.
Some people assume that a calmer Warp would allow for faster travel, or at least something around low multiples of 1,000-10,000c, but considering that it's a fact that Astropaths use Warp currents to move around, a calm Warp would have little currents at all to exploit. It would be like being stuck on a calm sea with no wind, and needing to move around with sheer muscle force.
Considering the setting of WH40K, I wouldn't even be surprised if that was what they were going for... :)

The problem is though, in order to destroy the Federation, they'd need to not only push them out of their space, but also take over the Federation. That could take centuries. And while that's not a problem for the Imperium in most cases, it's a bit different here due to the pace at which the UFP is going to advance.

Interesting. Why do you think it would take centuries here while you thought the war against the Dominion would last a decade at best? The IoM has plenty of pros and cons that balance its capacity to strike outside of the IoM territories.

Um...not entirely true. In fact, if anything, Starfleet has shown to come up with quick advancement in technology during times of war. Early TNG era was incredibly stagnant in terms of Ambassador to Galaxy, but the moment the Borg and Dominion hit, they really started to advance.

Mm yes, but they won't have the time to put those changes into place at first. The ships they'll have to build, and crews to train, will be out of the "typical" mold, if only to gain efficiency and keep pace. New designs requires changing many things. It's possible but I don't see this coming as the priority.

As for time travel, I never understood why stars were so important. I liked Voyage Home, it was a nice movie with the whale probe and all that, very weird (just like TMP, special in its own way - actually Trek is at its finest when it does the big dumb obscure object).
That said, would they be allowed to travel back to time to give the UFP higher technology? If, from a certain point of view, it was allowed to travel back to time to pick some whales and put them in the ocean in order to save Earth, why wouldn't this be allowed here?
No super temporal power seemed to poke its head either when Nero wrecked havoc.
No one stopped the Borg either.

Oh, on the topic of First Contact, didn't the Enterprise fly through the temporal rift? Didn't they just reopen the one created by the sphere?

[sonofccn]

Yes but people moving will hardly explain why your capital world is lacking several billions, as there's simply not enough old colonies and people to get so many billions.
We'll see more later on.

Could you clarify more? We know humans, by the 23rd century, have a thousand, more or less, colonies. That is a lot of space to spread people across, assuming an average of ten million, which would barely be a dollap on said world, per planet for instances could "hide" I believe roughly ten billion and that isn't accounting for A) humans are not the only species in the Federation or B) the Federation hasn't stopped colonising.

It doesn't really matter how old they are. Even a hundred or thousand people won't matter much even one full millennium later. You need a bigger exodus, but evidence of such population moves would be necessary. We have Archer IV, but that's pretty much all thus far.

Citing Earth's population growth is at best only a helpful datapoint not a hard fast rule. Bear in mind that for much of our history life was short, painful and 9 out of ten kids didn't live to see adulthood. A federation colony will likely have access to far better nutrien, medical supplies, etc leading to longer lifespans and more children reaching child bearing age themselves. In essence expect a colony to mimic growth rates closer to the 20th century rather than expecting them to reproduce at dark age level.

Interesting. Why do you think it would take centuries here while you thought the war against the Dominion would last a decade at best? The IoM has plenty of pros and cons that balance its capacity to strike outside of the IoM territories.

Speed is not IoM strenght, both ship or strategic, nor is making precision strikes. The Imperium is most likely going to set up shop on the outer edge and slowly grind thier way towards Earth slowly conquring and converting planets over to thier use to spew out ever more hulls they'll need to replace their losses. This coupled with the fact it will take years simply to traverse across the federation strongly hints that the war will likely last decades as a lower limit and it could concieviably stretch in the centuries none of which would be considered overly odd by the Imperium.

Mm yes, but they won't have the time to put those changes into place at first. The ships they'll have to build, and crews to train, will be out of the "typical" mold, if only to gain efficiency and keep pace. New designs requires changing many things. It's possible but I don't see this coming as the priority

You'd be surprised how quickly things can change during war time, just look at what armies fielded in WWII at the start and what everyone had at the end for example. Than considering we are talking decades if not centuries of war as well as factoring that the IoM is as stagnet as they come and it isn't inconcievable that the Feds could began out teching them massively. How many decades is it post-Dominian war before the Federation Develops transphasic torpedoes and batmobile armor again?

[Mith]

I'd also like to note that most of Earth's population had been killed in the 21st century, yet despite this, Earth's population was about 6 billion in TOS era and that was including millions dying in the 22nd century and the rapid expansion of humanity to various planets.