Here's the Imperium Census.
this is the latest Administratum data we have fully compiled.
Now this is from the Official archives of the Adeptus Terra, it is not subject
to discussion, argument, or alteration.
It is fully researched, and will stand alone without scrutiny or revision.
While my tongue-in-cheek-humor detector is sounding off wildly, I'd say that your numbers are easily within an order of magnitude. Your spreadsheet demonstrates the significance of hive worlds. They are the vast concentration of humanity. I still adhere to the interpretation that the Imperium contains 1 million systems . Each of these inhabited system contains an habitable and inhabited world of some notable potential. All of the hive world systems are going to have people living on every rock in the system big enough to hold a mansion, and maybe even pay-toilet. There are way more than 1 million "worlds."
How many "worlds" would Sol system contain? I'm guessing that aside from the 4 rockballs planets, all of the gas giants' moons (save maybe Io) are colonized, as are Pluto, Charon, every asteroid currently "discovered" (well, maybe not the 20 ft. ones). I guess it boils down to the definition of a world. Worlds, then, is highly subjective. Of course, the sum population of all those worlds pales next to the sum of the main world, let alone Hives. There are always exceptions, of course.
I always figured that hive worlds have other planets in the same system that produce food. Hell, it isn't that hard to hollow out asteroids and turn the insides into near perfect farming territory - self contained, climate controlled sphere. Combine that with specifically bread plantlife to produce large amounts of calories, and you can sustain a loooooot of people without having to preform the dubious activity of shipping grain through the Warp.
It is totally a WAG.
but here's some of my assumptions:
Modern Day Earth-like planets are the baseline, 5-8 Billion people,
as Class M, that's the bulk of the Million Worlds.
Even some people live on a Cemetery world, or Forbidden World.
Maybe Death worlds could hold more people.
Maybe Penal Colonies should be lesser or smaller.
I played with it. Now its a Millions worlds, and still 11 Quadrillion People.
Edited by EgyptoidThe earliest number-related quote I remember is something like 'there is less than one space marine for each planet in the imperium, but that is still enough" . So 1000 chapters, 1000 marines per. Don't know which book I saw that in unfortunately.
As far as ships, since WH uses a age of sail model, I checked out 'Rating System of the Royal Navy' on Wikipedia. Translating into warhammer terms, the RN had about 10 to 20 Battleships (1st & 2nd rate), 100 Cruisers (3rd rate), and another 100 or so Frigates (4th & 5th rate). No good counterpart to Raiders. So for every BS, there are 5 cruisers & 5 frigates.
But, comparing that to Patrol Group Retaliator, it looks like the Imperium has about 3 or 6 frigates for every larger ship.
Assuming 5 battleships and 200-odd ships total:
5 Battleships
25 Cruisers
100 Light Cruisers or Frigates
75 Destroyers
I’ll pull one of my cargo transports out (the Imperial Providence ), since I think it’ll serve as a good stand-in for a generic hauler in the Imperium. She’s a Jericho-class Transport, with Gellar field, Void Shield, Warp Drive, Commerce Bridge, M-100 Augurs, 2x Thunderstrike Macrocannons, 1x Mars-pattern Macrocannon, and 2x Main Cargo Holds.
In a quieter part of the Imperium than the Koronus Expanse, I could see the shipyards only putting on a single Mars-pattern or Thunderstrike Macrocannon array, giving it one more Main Cargo Hold.
With 3 Main Cargo Holds, that brings the total cargo area to 78million m3 storage space.
Taking out 10% for things like load equipment, bracing, servitor storage, and giant statues of the God-Emperor, that leaves a ‘typical’ Jericho-class Transport with 71million m3 of storage space. How much is that?
Say, how do you arrive at the 78 million m³? I haven't yet found a way to calculate the storage space of a ship.
not all the inhabitants of Space Marine Homeworlds are Marines, they have servants, serfs, workers, adepts, etc.
How many "worlds" would Sol system contain? I'm guessing that aside from the 4 rockballs planets, all of the gas giants' moons (save maybe Io) are colonized, as are Pluto, Charon, every asteroid currently "discovered" (well, maybe not the 20 ft. ones). I guess it boils down to the definition of a world. Worlds, then, is highly subjective. Of course, the sum population of all those worlds pales next to the sum of the main world, let alone Hives. There are always exceptions, of course.
Apparently, you can probably exclude Ganymede (according to Grimm the Squat, there was/were accident(s) with early Warp Drive technology, which resulted in it getting "buggered up"). I'd probably exclude Mercury as well, as you'd have less than 30 days to set up something that can withstand the heat on the day side. Likely possible, but I'm not convinced. I suppose you could set up moving cities that kept pace with the planet's rotation...
I'd also be surprised if every possible asteroid was exploited (even if we ignore all the tiny ones- say, under 1km in mean diameter), simply thanks to how many there are out there (and how many are in useless orbits). Granted, if we assume 38 millennia of constant activity out there, then the majority should be built on or disassembled, but I would expect at least some left, even before we start looking beyond the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt to the Oort-Hills Cloud (and let's face it, once Warp travel becomes commercially viable, there's very little reason to head out past the Kuiper Belt, as even raw materials may well be cheaper when shipped in from another system than laboriously hauled in from beyond Neptune's orbit)
I think 40k science is up to shielding a colony from 800 degrees (F), and since Mercury is assumed to have an abundance of heavy metals, I'm assuming it's a mining world. IIRC, it has a rotational period of around 6 months and a circumference of about 3000 miles, so yeah, they could probably have some type of mobile mining equipment that could stay on the dark side if they couldn't handle the heat.
Didn't know about Ganymede. Thanks for that bit of info.
And while you're probably correct about outer reaches not being used commercially in most systems, there'd always be belt miners ekeing out a living there, and Earth's were probably all colonized before Warp was discovered.
I figure AdMech vessels can mount good enough shields that they can approach the corona of a star, and collect plasma for fuel-manufacture, on a somewhat fragile ship, mind you; it doesn't seem too hard to imagine something similar being mounted on a structure, and used to shield it from the comparably farther away rays of Sol, especially with Mercury being relatively safe; nothing attacks the Sol system, and they certainly aren't going to pass Terra, if they aren't supposed to. I doubt anyone "lives" on Mercury, but I am rather certain that, like everything else, anything on it that the Imperium COULD exploit, they probably are, or did, and it's all played out. During the Golden Age, they already had distant colonies, and so reaching Mercury, and mining it, was probably well underway before the Emperor even rose to power. It's not very big, so it might already be tapped out, as well, with only a small Inquisitorial base there, "in case Terra falls." Not like that's likely, but they hid Titan in the warp, so I won't say that the Inquisition doesn't try to have three backup plans for every eventuality.
Fascinating thread!
Looking back in my old Battlefleet Gothic books they (on page 86) state that the Battlefleet is the largest operational naval organisation in a sector, and is then subdivided into a number of battlegroups; each Battlefleet normally consists of between 50 and 75 warships (destroyers, frigates, cruisers and battleships) and this may be less or more depending on the importance of the sector. Just my 2 gelt.
DW