King Arts
Well-known member
I mean we can look at battle fleet gothic games and see fleets that are under 20 ships.
So I’d say same number as Star Wars?
Imperium of Man vs Galactic Empire
- Thread starter Aldarion
- Start date
So I’d say same number as Star Wars?
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
As I said: even if you treat Lunar class as an exceptional outlier, you still cannot really go below 17 000 cruisers and 250 000 starships.
And it is not stated one way or another whether the Lunar class is "representative" or an "exceptional outlier". But so long as it is not stated or implied that it is an outlier, it is common sense to assume that it is a particularly numerous but not outlandishly so class of cruisers.
It has everything to do with it. It is rather unlikely that single cruiser class accounts for 90% of all cruisers in the Imperium, meaning that using Lunars is only really useful to provide a minimum estimate for number of cruisers and starships in general.
It is merely the most numerous class of cruisers, not the majority of cruisers. For all we know, Imperium may have nine hundred different cruiser classes, but Lunars provide 2% of all cruisers while no other class goes above 0,5%.
Nope, because it was talking about an actual situation on the ground. Reality, not an ideal. "Idealized goal" would have been several hundred ships per sector, but the Imperium is not capable of providing such numbers for all sectors.
And obviously some sectors would be far less fortified than that and some far more - you may have some sectors that have no Imperial Navy presence at all while others have thousands of ships defending them. But the 50 - 75 number is the closest we have for a typical sector.
That is exactly what I am assuming, in fact. And "75 ships" is not the "upper end of a sector fleet". Rather, it is explicitly an upper limit of a typical sector fleet:
But "normally consists of between 50 and 75 warships of varying sizes" doesn't exclude battlefleets that are below or above that range. For all we know, Battlefleet Solar may have 750, 7 500 or 75 000 starships - it still wouldn't exclude "normal" battlefleet from being 50 to 75 warships.
And 50 to 75 warships per sector, even assuming it is an actual average rather than just typical sector, would still lead to anything between half a million and seven million warships ("thousands" of sectors per Segmentum = 5 Segmentae with 2 000 to 19 000 sectors per Segmentum = 10 000 to 95 000 sectors = 500 000 to 7 125 000 warships). Of course, if we assume that the Imperium has a million worlds exactly (which is really the lower limit) and 50 to 100 worlds per sector, that limits number of sectors to 10 000 to 20 000, and thus the fleet to 500 000 to 1 500 000 starships.
But again, this is assuming that "typical sector" is an average and there are no massive outliers. We know there are outliers: Battlefleet Cadia has 12 battleships, 12 cruiser squadrons (48 - 96 cruisers) and 21 escort squadrons (84 - 168 escorts). Battlefleet Corona has 7 battleships, 13 cruiser squadrons and 17 escort squadrons. Battlefleet Scarus has 5 battleships, 9 cruiser squadrons and 13 escort squadrons. So all in all, we have 24 battleships, 34 cruiser squadrons and 51 escort squadrons in three battlefleets, for an average battlefleet strength 8 battleships, 11 cruiser squadrons and 17 escort squadrons with a total of 120 - 232 ships per sector. That is at minimum 60% above (160% of) the typical sector battlefleet strength, and at maximum 464% of the typical sector fleet. But as you said, ships for these fleets may have been pulled from elsewhere leaving some sectors understrength, which would still leave average at 50 to 75 warships.
You may also want to learn to read. Average of a hundred ships per sectors may leave many sectors badly understrength because most of these ships will be concentrated in relatively few critical sectors.
Let me give you an example: you have an area of a thousand sectors and 100 000 ships to defend it. That is 100 ships per sector - more than the 75 ships you believe you need. But a massive threat forces you to concentrate 60 000 ships in only 100 sectors. This leaves remaining 900 sectors with only 40 000 ships to defend them - an average of 44 ships per sector. As a result, you have 900 sectors that are badly understrength despite your fleet technically being far stronger than it needs to be.
Capisci?
There is nothing to draw there. As a matter of fact, "hundreds of Forge Worlds" is merely number of Forge Worlds producing Hydra. For all we know, and considering the politics of the Mechanicum, there may well be thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Forge Worlds in total.
This is from Armageddon Rulebook:
"Hundreds of Forge Worlds" is the lower limit. In fact, it implies the absolute lowest limit of 400 - 1 000 Forge Worlds.
The quote does not cap it at hundreds. Rather, hundreds is the lowest possible number of Forge Worlds in the Imperium. It is a lower limit, not an upper one.
Because Galactic Empire does not face, and never has faced, a peer power. Imperial Navy is an instrument of terror, not of security. The only time Star Wars galaxy saw a war between peer opponents in canon was the Separatist Crisis, and there was a Sith pulling the strings behind the scenes then.
We don't have actual production rate, just the time required to construct a single warship and number of ships that may be constructed by a single Forge World. Any overall production rate is an extrapolation, just as we don't have production rate for the Galactic Empire.
Crom's Black Blade
Well-known member
I'd disagree. If we're talking about the Lunar example, the minimum would be 600+ cruisers. An Imperium with just 700 cruisers would fit the one, solitary datapoint it provides, that there are 600 Lunars in one segment. Now I don't think that's the best estimate but that is the actual minimum even if it isn't one you'd like.
We don't know the makeup of the Imperium fleet as far as I know. It is quite possible one cruiser does make up 90% . Without evidence we can't say otherwise so any "minimum" has to be based on what evidence we have rather than speculation.
And of course, again, there's no justification to say that simply because there's X Lunar cruisers to Y other class in one segment that ratio will be copied in the others. That even if there are 200 random class cruisers in Obscurus there's the next segment could only be 20. And thus rather than focusing on ship classes to determine numbers, which are pretty much going to be controlled by other factors, to the extent the Lunar example should be used for is total numbers.
And I would take the opposite stance. The fact its number is mentioned means said number is exceptional not representative. The fact the 600 ships can be the mainstay for an entire segment heavily suggests it outlandishly outnumbers any sole class and is a notable fraction of all cruisers classes within the segment. That it noteworthyness works better if we assume other classes are in the double digits or very, very low 100's rather than your assumption of being at near parity with other individual ship classes and utterly dwarfed by the total composition.
In short, I'd argue, the burden of proof would be on you to show your interpretation is the preferable one rather than it being the default.
It gives a 50-75 number and then says said number can be plus or minus depending on other factors. Its a vague, broad general statement not a super accurate "this is what actually is there".
And I'm going to need to see the quote that says the Imperium's "Idealized goal" is several hundred. Otherwise that's just your opinion.
Which makes any multiplying by sectors merely an estimate. Not a minimum. Because we might have a hundred sectors that had their resources pulled to nothing to bolster an "important" sector and, due to losses, only a few hundred ship remain in action in that solitary sector.
More to the point, "sectors" are a geographical and administrative division. If the Imperium conquered a few new star systems and formed a new sector it doesn't gain new ships like a videogame. Rather their policy is to attempt to maintain 50-75 ships in that sector for the various anti-piracy, security duties ect but there's nothing to mandate that such a desire is carried out.
And we were discussing a "typical sector fleet". Specifically it being completely plausible there are many such fleets understrength to bolster more important sectors and thus many of them don't have 50-75 ships sitting around twiddling their thumbs and thus it isn't hard to drop the estimate to fit with Chambers' quote.
So calling a "typical" sector fleet understrength, in this context, seems unwarranted.
The issue, and the point of our argument, is whether or not the Imperium truly has enough ships for 50-75 per sector should they desire it.
In a nutshell you are looking at a "typical" sector and assuming that as a minimum for the Imperium with the only question being distribution. I'm saying the resource strapped Imperium likely has entire sectors were they never were built up to to the 50-75 level due a perceived lack of need, had them stripped away to replace battle losses in other sectors as well as to fortify them.
Well that's a difference of our analysis. I tend towards the conservative end of things. A statement of "hundreds of Forge Worlds" is an example of their being hundreds of Forge Worlds. While I wouldn't have issue reconciling it with an explicit, larger number given elsewhere I wouldn't view it as a mere minimum and that there could be "thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands" of them.
That's veering too far into fan speculation for my tastes. If GW wanted there to be hundreds of thousands of Forge Worlds they no doubt would have given that number instead of the "hundreds' they chose.
What does that have to do with industrial power?
Further I'm not sure the Imperium has ever faced a peer power either. Orks are fragmentary with the largest Ork Empire, one so large an Inquisitor resorted to using Tyranids to destroy it IIRC, was in the thousands of worlds range. Similarly the current Hive fleet is dispersed so every actual fight is only against a fraction of its strength. The Eldar are a remnant race and obviously the same applies but even harder for the Dark Eldar. Necrons, once they all wake up, might rival or exceed the Imperium but they also are Tomb Kings now so are also somewhat fragmented and no longer have "Kill all Humans" as their sole operating system. So its arguable the Imperium wins these engagements not by being better but because they can simply bludgeon their individually smaller opponent to death.
The Imperium has certainly fought more war than the Empire but the same could be said of Somalia vs the United States. If anything that likely means the Imperium has "eaten" more of its reserves just to sustain itself for these last ten thousand years while the GE, as you note, is basically untapped.
Well with the GE we do have the ISDs which give us an idea of what sort of production rate the Empire can maintain. There are of course known unknown, like the bottleneck on training personnel, but that's at least something. While the Imperium has too little data for us to even manage that.
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Sergeant Foley
Well-known member
AnimalNoodles
Well-known member
One question for the LoreMasters..how long did it take the CIS to build its fleet and its vast army? i would think the GE could surpass that production level by orders of magnitude.
And so it was after sixty five million cycles the Necrontyr reawakened... But they were deceived... Trapped in bodies of living metal... Shattered minds reborn into artificial madness...
Crom's Black Blade
Well-known member
I imagine they could in terms of pure industrial output but without replicating their use of droids I'm not sure on the bottleneck of training personnel. One of the reasons I'm cautious about leaning to hard on the Death Stars as evidence of the number of ISDs they could build.
Crom's Black Blade
Well-known member
Found the Battlefleet excerpt concerning the Lunar cruiser, taken from here:
Reinforcing how the 600 strong Lunar class manages to be a mainstay in Obscuras Segmentum with 20(!) ships engaged in the Gothic War. It also establishes the design can be built upon worlds that normally can't build any capital ship meaning it should be one of the more common classes in the Imperium navy.
Of course merely because a Forgeworld can do this doesn't mean every one is spitting out cruisers round the clock since, from the sounds of it, most of their industrial output would have to be taken up by this endeavor and the Imperium is critically short of everything.
Edit:
Found this in the Reddit comments, not 100% sure where it comes from and thus can't speak for its veracity but it was interesting and on topic so I thought I'd include it.
Not quite 500 built in 4 thousand years for what is stated to be another mainstay
Reinforcing how the 600 strong Lunar class manages to be a mainstay in Obscuras Segmentum with 20(!) ships engaged in the Gothic War. It also establishes the design can be built upon worlds that normally can't build any capital ship meaning it should be one of the more common classes in the Imperium navy.
Apparently only a forgeworld can put a new cruiser out "several times" a year and a single cruiser can take more than decade even for the best shipyards and that "many smaller shipyards" would take decades and the resources of an "entire world" to construct a single vessel.
Of course merely because a Forgeworld can do this doesn't mean every one is spitting out cruisers round the clock since, from the sounds of it, most of their industrial output would have to be taken up by this endeavor and the Imperium is critically short of everything.
Edit:
Found this in the Reddit comments, not 100% sure where it comes from and thus can't speak for its veracity but it was interesting and on topic so I thought I'd include it.
Not quite 500 built in 4 thousand years for what is stated to be another mainstay
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In "Two-space war",yes./Leo Frankowski/
Here:
Read when you have time,it is worth it.Pity,that author died,series would be never finished now.
Crom's Black Blade
Well-known member
Found this which appears to be the source of the "nearly 500" Murder class cruisers in 4 millennia which also had a couple of other ship number related examples I thought I'd post.
First it talks about Segmentum Tempestus
Nothing too major but I did think it was interesting that sectors can be "mostly a dark and empty void" with only scattered stars.
The Battlefleet Bakka is in relation to the naval headquarters for the Tempestus Segmentum and whom found the apparent build order of fifteen Despoilers class battleships a significant threat to their "Big-Gun" orthodoxy leading to a civil war.
Later, on discussing the First Tyrannic war and the defense of Macragge we find the Tempestus Segmentum sent the Battlefleet Bakka to defend the Ultramaraines and we're treated to this:
This number gets confirmed a little later again in the Emperor battleship Dominus Astra fluff text:
While the exact percentage of this battle fleet to the total number of ships under the Segmantum isn't known it is stated in the fluff text for the Vanquisher class battlesship that 4 of that class were brought out of mothballs due to increased pressure on Segmantum resources due to losing all but 12 ships from that fleet.
Incidentally the "over 200" battle fleet plus the Ultramaraine fleet, described as the lesser of the two, were only outnumbered "over 3 to 1" by the hive fleet and said fleet plus one more which subsequently arrived, described with a vanguard of "hundreds" apparently was the totality of Hivefleet Behemoth.
First it talks about Segmentum Tempestus
Nothing too major but I did think it was interesting that sectors can be "mostly a dark and empty void" with only scattered stars.
The Battlefleet Bakka is in relation to the naval headquarters for the Tempestus Segmentum and whom found the apparent build order of fifteen Despoilers class battleships a significant threat to their "Big-Gun" orthodoxy leading to a civil war.
Later, on discussing the First Tyrannic war and the defense of Macragge we find the Tempestus Segmentum sent the Battlefleet Bakka to defend the Ultramaraines and we're treated to this:
This number gets confirmed a little later again in the Emperor battleship Dominus Astra fluff text:
While the exact percentage of this battle fleet to the total number of ships under the Segmantum isn't known it is stated in the fluff text for the Vanquisher class battlesship that 4 of that class were brought out of mothballs due to increased pressure on Segmantum resources due to losing all but 12 ships from that fleet.
Incidentally the "over 200" battle fleet plus the Ultramaraine fleet, described as the lesser of the two, were only outnumbered "over 3 to 1" by the hive fleet and said fleet plus one more which subsequently arrived, described with a vanguard of "hundreds" apparently was the totality of Hivefleet Behemoth.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
No, it wouldn't be. Not a reasonable (as in, "not deliberately trolling") minimum. We know there are 5 Segmentae in total. Imperial Navy has 29 different cruiser classes of all types that we know of (grand, battle, line, light). 600 Lunars in one Segmentum would require at at least half the number of other cruiser classes in other Segmentae. So minimum is 1800 cruisers (600 Lunars + 300 cruisers of other classes per each other Segmentum).
But that is still unreasonably low.
Battlefleet Gothic had "more than 20" Lunars in it, plus 4 battleships, 4 battlecruisers, 2 Dictator cruisers, single Dominator cruiser, 6 Dauntless light cruisers. Battleships have at least a pair of frigates with them, so at minimum we have eight frigates, and at maximum we have 34 (assuming all capital ships get escorts). That is 4 BB, 4 BC, 29 CA/CL, and 8 - 34 FF, for a total of 45 - 71 warships.
So the clinically insane minimum for Imperial Navy would be 600 Lunars / 20 = 30 battlefleets; 30 * 45 = 1 350 ships. Absolute reasonable minimum would assign at least 200 Lunars for each other segment, making calculus into 1 400 Lunars / 20 = 70 battlefleets, 70 * 45 = 3 150 ships.
And that is using only that one datapoint.
More reasonable minimum goes 1 million worlds / 200 worlds per sector = 5 000 sectors; 5 000 sectors * 45 warships = 225 000 warships.
By the way, we actually know strength of the Gothic fleet:
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- 2 Emperor class battleships
- 2* Retribution class battleships
- 1* Mars class battlecruiser
- 3* Overlord class battlecruisers (1 arrived as reinforcement during the war)
- >20* Lunar class cruisers (out of 600 in the Segmentum Obscurus)
- 4 Tyrant class cruisers
- 1* Dominator class cruiser
- 4 Gothic class cruisers
- 3 Dictator class cruisers (7 in service at the end of the war)
- 6 Dauntless class light cruisers
- 3 squadrons of Sword class frigates (squadron is 2 - 6 ships, so 6 - 18 frigates)
- 5* squadrons of Firestorm class frigates (so 10 - 30 ships); note that only 3 squadrons are named
So at absolute minimum, we have 4 battleships, 3 battlecruisers, 32+ cruisers, 6 light cruisers and 16 frigates, for a total of 61 warship. But if we assume that only 60% of all warships were named above, we get additional 2 Gothic cruisers, 2 Dictator cruisers, 4 Dauntless light cruisers and 2 Sword class frigate squadrons (4 - 12 frigates). This gives a reasonable maximum of 4 battleships, 3 battlecruisers, 36 cruisers, 10 light cruisers and 28 frigates, for a total of 81 warship.
Which is why we need to utilize multiple different data points instead of hyperfocusing on a single line. Arguments you have written here are good thought exercise for fun, but that is all they are, because you are considering a single data point in isolation.
And that again brings us to using multiple datapoints. Battlefleet Gothic very clearly states that typical sector battlefleet is 50 - 75 ships. Assuming 100 planets per sector, we get one million worlds = 10 000 sectors = 500 000 - 750 000 ships.
This is not a maximum figure for several reasons:
- 100 worlds is median figure. Some sectors may go up to 200 worlds, but 100 worlds is for the Gothic sector, and many sectors are much smaller.
- Typical sector may have 50 - 75 ships, but there are some extraordinary sectors.
- By the time of the 13th Black Crusade, Battlefleet Cadia consisted of 12 battleships, 12 cruiser squadrons and 21 escort squadrons. That means 12 battleships, 24 - 72 cruisers and 42 - 126 frigates, for a total of 78 - 210 warships.
- In general however, there appears to be approximately 1:1 planet-to-ship ratio. So 1 000 000 worlds ~= 1 000 000 warships.
- Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2 states that crews of Navy warships number "hundreds of billions". This gives a minimum of a million warships (search for section "Armada 2").
It is my opinion based on the fact that the navy is severely overstretched, and statement of 50 - 75 warships is factual, not theoretical:
Battlefleet normally consists.
Normally. Consists.
There is absolutely nothing in that statement that could be described as theoretical, normative, fanciful, or any other type of unsubstantial. It is a simple statement about reality "on the ground".
At the absolute of the absolute minimum, it means that 51% of battlefleets have 50 - 75 ships. Even assuming 100 worlds per sector and that other sectors are literally empty, we still get 255 000 warships as an absolute minimum. Assuming 50 worlds per sector, no empty sectors and 75 ships per sector, we get 1 500 000 warships.
And despite that, the Navy is severely overstretched.
And, again... multiple datapoints. And if Imperium conquered few new star systems, it is more likely that these would be added to existing sectors, unless there already are excess warships with which to defend them.
And everything we deal with here is merely an estimate. There are very few, if any at all, hard numbers in 40k, and for a good reason. Question is not if we can find any support for a given estimate, but:
- Which range of estimates has the most supporting evidence.
- Which range of estimates makes the most sense.
- Battlefleet Gothic rulebook = 50-75 warships per sector = 50 - 100 worlds per sector = 1 000 000 worlds = 10 000 - 20 000 sectors = 500 000 - 1 500 000 warships
- Battlefleet Koronus = 5 Segmentae = "thousands" of sectors per Segmentum = 2 000 to 19 000 sectors per Segmentum = 10 000 - 95 000 sectors total = 500 000 - 7 125 000 warships
- Merchant fleet info = "millions of ships" and "90% of starships in Imperium" = 2 000 000 - 19 000 000 merchantmen = 200 000 - 1 900 000 warships
- Armada 2 = hundreds of billions of sailors, 1500 - 2000 crew per damage point = 6 860 points for 72 ship fleet = 10 290 000 - 13 720 000 crew in 72 ships; 200 - 900 billion sailors = 14 577 - 87 463 fleets = 1 049 544 - 6 297 336 warships
As I have already explained, statement says that "battlefleet normally consists". Not "ideally consists", not "theoretically consists", but "normally consists".
Do you know what "normal" means? If you do, you will understand why I took the 50 - 75 ships as an average. And "understrength" was in the sense that said fleet is being stretched thin, not that it is weaker than the norm. If Imperium needs an average of 100 ships per sector to fulfill all commitments but has only 50 - 75 ships on average, then the Imperial Navy is indeed understrength.
And a much weaker fleet makes no sense. If you had 5 000 sectors with 50-75 ships on average, and then 15 000 sectors with 1-2 warships apiece, then typical sector fleet would have 1-2 warships and 50-75 warships will have been extraordinary.
Sure, Imperium will have sectors that were never built up to the 50 - 75 level. It will also have sectors that are way above the 50 - 75 level. Therefore, using 50 - 75 sectors as average is the best way to get us to the most likely number.
And as I have also explained, it is far from the only piece of evidence pointing to a large Imperial Navy.
I tend towards the conservative end of things - conservative as in "lowest number that fits majority of available top-canon evidence". You tend towards dismissing most of the canon evidence in favor of few outlying statements that fit whatever the idea it is that you prefer.
What you are doing is equivalent of taking a statement of "hundreds of Forge Worlds" and then arguing that there are, in fact, only a few dozen of Forge Worlds.
"Conservative" means "arguing within the available evidence". You are not being conservative, you are actively lowballing things to the point of contradicting most of the available evidence.
It has to do with utilization of said industrial power. Take a look at the difficulties both sides in Ukraine are having with logistics - or even only with ammunition. We are well past the days when you could have hundreds of truck and car factories repurposed to producing tanks in short order. And even there the Imperium has the advantage - most of its stuff, especially low-level things such as lasguns, is designed specifically to be easy to produce, easy to maintain, easy to fix and easy to supply. Lasgun powerpacks can be recharged by baking them on a campfire.
Current Tyranid fleet is "dispersed" because Imperium defeated it. Specifically, Imperium has faced three major Hive Fleets and 30-odd minor Hive Fleets. Three major Hive Fleets were:
- Hive Fleet Behemoth - destroyed at the Battle of Macragge, 745M41
- Hive Fleet Kraken - splintered following defeats at Ichar IV and Iyanden
- Hive Fleet Leviathan - still active, but suffered massive causalties during the Blackness and formation of the Great Rift
Somalia has never fought a war on a global scale. The only enemy the Galactic Empire has ever fought was the Rebellion - and the Empire lost. As in, actually collapsed, not just "decided not to bother anymore".
Imperium by contrast has fought:
- Orks, who outnumber humanity in the galaxy. And while Orks are by no means a unified faction, there were several major Waagh!s that were indeed a peer opponent for the Imperium (Ullanor Empire in M30, Beast Waagh! in M32, Armageddon Waagh! in 998M41). In fact, Armageddon Waagh is sometimes referred to as the biggest ever. I don't know if that is true, but if it is and considering the scale of the Beast Waagh!, then it is massive indeed.
- Tyranids, who as explained got three major Hive Fleets into the galaxy so far. Imperium defeated two of them. And sure, there will be more Tyranids coming... but they are so far beyond anything the Star Wars galaxy had faced in recent history, even in the EU, that it isn't at all funny.
- Necrons, who are by far the most advanced species in 40k, and far beyond anything in Star Wars.
- Eldar, who are still one of the most advanced races in the galaxy... especially the Dark Eldar.
We don't even have ISD numbers for the Empire, since we don't really know how many there are. EU puts them at 25 000, which I do believe may be OK number to use consider what we have seen from the Empire, but there are no hard numbers in canon.
25 000 ISDs in 20 years is about 1 250 Star Destroyers per year... which if 40 million tons figure is correct would mean yearly output of 50 billion tons of warships.
Which is precisely what I used:
How Large is the Imperial Navy in Warhammer 40k
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- 5% of worlds run by Mechanicum
- if we assume 5% of those are Forge Worlds, then 1 000 000 * 0,05 * 0,05 = 2 500
- Forge World may produce 1 or more cruisers per year = 2 500 or more cruisers per year
- A shipyard may take several years to construct a Cobra class destroyer, a decade for a cruiser or a battlecruiser and a century for a battleship.
- A single Forge World may produce one or more cruisers per year as there will always be several in various stages of construction.
- Smaller worlds may take years to produce an escort, decades to produce a single cruiser or centuries for a battleship.
- Number of worlds:
- 2 500 - 40 000 forge worlds
- few years for a destroyer - assume 5, 10 years for a cruiser, 100 years for a battleship
- each world builds 10 cruisers concurrently, so 2 500 - 40 000 cruisers per year
- escorts - 10 concurrently - 5 000 - 80 000 per year
- battleships - 1 concurrently - 25 - 400 per year
- 70 000 - 170 000 civilized worlds
- assume 10 years for a destroyer, 50 years for a cruiser, 500 years for a battleship
- assume 1 ship per world at 1:1:1 ratio (23 000 - 57 000 per type)
- production rate
- escorts: 2 300 - 5 700 per year
- cruisers: 460 - 1 140 per year
- battleships: 46 - 114 per year
- SUM:
- escorts: 7 300 - 85 700 per year
- cruisers: 2 960 - 41 140 per year
- battleships: 71 - 514 per year
- TOTAL: 10 331 - 127 354 warships per year
- 2 500 - 40 000 forge worlds
By contrast, Galactic Empire's previously calculated 50 billion tons per year is 7,23% of Imperium's minimum tonnage output and 6,3% of Imperium's average tonnage output estimate. And this is with Imperium's industrial capacity minimized. Even if we double Empire's output to account for non-ISD warships such as SSDs and escorts, it still doesn't reach even a fifth of Imperium's absolute industrial minimum.
And Imperium is not, in fact, using even close to its maximum industrial output... Imperium only really went onto total war footing following the appearance of the Great Rift and Guilliman's return. How long it can be maintained is anybody's guess.
Which is both quite obvious and quite irrelevant... million worlds may sound a lot, but consider that galaxy has 400 billion stars and density of said stars is not everywhere equal. Any "million world" empire will be few scattered islands in an endless ocean of stars.
Battlefleet Bakka with 200 ships would in fact be far more numerous than your average sector battlefleet. But consider that Imperium has 10 000 sectors at an absolute minimum.
And if you are going to use individual fleets out of context, then the largest Galactic Empire's fleet we see is 1 Super Star Destroyer and around 20 Star Destroyers. If we assume that was a sector fleet, then we have 1 000 sectors for 1 000 SSDs, 20 000 Star Destroyers, and maybe some 20 000 - 100 000 escorts.
Or we can just assume that that was the entirety of the Imperial Navy. That works too.
Yet hive fleets are frequently described as having millions of ships. In fact, it seems that a typical Hive Fleet has 1,5 Billion warships:
EDIT: Had to edit some values I had incorrectly calculated.
EDIT2:
Much if not most of it already existed for decades if not centuries by the time of the war. We see Trade Federation battleships in Siege of Naboo, some 10 years before the Clone Wars, and it is not considered a new thing IIRC. And other major corporations had their own armies for a long time as well.
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Crom's Black Blade
Well-known member
But that's what a minimum is. The lowest possible value you can push an example. Ie an example of one class of cruiser is an example of 1 ship. So 629+ would be a true minimum since we don't know what numbers the other ships are produced in.
No it doesn't "require" it. Indeed if we take the Gothic war list as anything resembling representative it outnumbers almost everything by five or ten times.
Further we have the issue of scale. Lunar class is a mainstay, Super easy to build and yet in a seeming major conflict only 20 ships served In it. That suggests small fleet numbers.
Battlefleet Gothic is also the sight of the Gothic war, it likely is more fortified than. A random sector in bumfuck nowhere. It's numbers would be maximums, not minimum, in this example.
No, what your suggesting will encourage bias in interpretation, intentional or otherwise, to try and make evidence fit.
We are far more likely to discern the writers intent by looking at each example in as much isolation as possible to try and see what it's trying to say with a clean slate as possible.
If you go in thinking the Lunar example has to fit with the sector quote you are going to force it too.
You have shown nothing of the kind. Further I am throwing nothing out. I am simply looking and doing my best to evaluate the evidence as it is presented.
I don't even disagree with your ship count in and of itself merely you labling it a minimum when it's clear your arguing for the most numerous fleet you feel you can get away with.
Which doesn't tell us much. Is 51% typical or 99%. Further we are explicitly told that your numbers will vary due to importance and threat. Up and down. So while it certainly means something I don't agree with your hyperfixiation on the word "typical/normally", I feel you are over stressing them at the expense of the rest of the example.
Further you kind of keep flipping on whether every sector has 75 ships or if they have been pulled to reinforce other, more important sectors. To put it simply if you are willing to accept the Imperium will have sectors below 50-75 for any reason you can't also demand every sector is at 50-75 to boost fleet numbers. You have opened the door on "typical sector" being malleable.
I feel like you missed my point here. Namely sectors don't magically spawn ships. It's an administrative division and that's it. More sectors would mean less ships because the Imperium has finite resources and can't meet its demand.
Hence the inherent liability of your count sectors and multiply methodology.
the issue is more your questionable methodology and selective interpretation of those datapoints.
I would say 1.) Should be most consistent evidence. In this case what numbers are most typically seen in each individual example. 2.) "Sense" is relative to the actual facts. Ie if the most consistent example was a segmenta of less than a thousand then it would make sense for an Imperium to have less than 6000 ships.
Which is is vague and open to interpretation dependent on your starting assumptions. It's a calculation, not a fleet number. We can go or lower depending on what variables we assume.
Another calculation, one that relies on the sector quote for figures if I'm not mistaken so its not even a separate datapoint.
I'd agree.
Going off a boastful statement from a character, not even establishing if he means just ships crews, entire naval personal or anyone who served in the last ten thousand years is hardly solid evidence of anything, let alone using a point system the author of that quote likely never even Considered.
It tells us very little about the Imperium, merely the assumptions of the person making that calculation.
Which may be good or bad but largely unattached to the numbers coming out on the other side of the equation.
That really depends on numerous factors such as current losses and the importance of the sector(s) under attack at the moment. As even you agree sectors can be built under or over depending on need or what have you. Taking the 50-75 as the average requires a consistency the Imperium doesn't really have.
It also assumes things will "even' out when the resource strapped Imperium is likely to have more sectors under than over since their hat is they are constantly short of everything.
I haven't dismissed any evidence. I took an example where the Imperium said one thing and then immediately in that same quote hedged it and treated it exactly for what it is. A vague, open ended statement that can almost anything you want.
The issue isn't that I'm discarding examples it's that I don't share your assumptions.
Then quote actual examples of utilization. Show me an example from Warhammer. I would love to see it because I have a feeling that's not going to turn out as you expect.
But beating you chest that the GE hasn't fought a peer power proves nothing. That's no indication of how the two sides compares.
I am not only aware of Imperium tech durability, I mentioned it earlier on this very subject. Now stop and think carefully. Everything the Imperium build lasts for centuries if not thousands of years unless it's blown up and what evidence we have says that isn't happening frequently and the Imperium is short manufactured supplies. In what universe does that suggest the Imperium has any industry worth speaking of?
Quote please because as I recall and the wiki supports, hive fleet leviathan change of tactics was because the Imperium defeated the previous, smaller, hive fleets who didn't disperse rather than itself coming in above the Galactic plane.
No, the Imperium isn't dispersed from the milky way galaxy. Which is the context of our discussion, namely a Galactic war. Which the Tyranids don't seem capable of so far from peer powers it seems the Imperium is used to fighting more regional ones. So the idea the Imperium only wins by amassing from a broader scope then its current foe is still a valid interpretation.
Yes, absolutely true. I didn't think that was a secret, the Empire lost at Endor and wasted tons of resources on white elephant projects that were the deathstars.
They aren't the most competent force in the universe but that loss had little to do with their ship fleet actions.
No. But it does show how the brain bug of being constantly at war makes magically makes you a top tier combatant is not based on reality.
Now if you want to focus on the Imperium's actual performance by all means.
Not being united kind of makes that outnumber humanity meaningless for our purposes. It isn't like they all will be fighting the Imperium at once after all.
Further a peer opponent would be someone roughly on par with the Imperium and the largest Ork empire is only in the thousands. If mere thousands of worlds can truly equal the entirely of the Imperium that suggests how weak the Imperium actually is.
None of which were capable of threatening the entire galaxy at once so not really comparable to the GE and again leaning into the Imperium winning by being larger in scale than stellar industry or great fighting prowess.
And, 40k wonky scaling aside, quite small in relation to the Imperium. Like I said.
And who, whatever their true number, aren't interested in fighting a peer, Galactic war. So not that relevant to our discussion or establishing how strong the Imperium is.
I'll remind you, I cited all these factions myself in this thread, to you. You brought zero new information. Infact the only thing you added was your personal opinion of how awesome each faction is and how they are "beyond anything in Star Wars" while leaving out scale or any hard numbers.
I believe Star Wars Uprising makes the number canon for Disney as well.
Which ironically would be a lower limit on GE production rates since they presumably built other ships during the 20 odd years of their existence and they built two deathstars during the same time.
I am aware you drew upon this quote. I am quoting it for context and to highlight your selective interpretation of it and questionable assumptions you use to arrive at a production rate.
Assuming thousands of forge worlds when you only have evidence for hundreds ect. In short your calculations suffer from "garbage in, garbage out" making them of little use for our discussion
Not at all. It mentions this segmenta is mostly empty in contrast to others so its "thousands of sectors" are emptier than everyone else. So how much would you like to bet the majority of those sectors are indeed empty of ships as well since there is nothing to guard or fight over?
Actually my point was how 200 ships were a huge loss that put a great strain on the entire segment. That the numbers, at least in the BFG, are relatively tiny and all examples drawn from it should keep it in mind.
Edit: Actually does the Imperium have 10,000 sectors as minimum?
The quote says "Each is responsible for the Imperial Navy's fighting forces across the thousands of sectors in their allotted quadrant of the galaxy, or in the case of the Lord High-Admiral Solar, the substantial volumes around Holy Terra itself"
Implying a distinction between Segumenta Solar and the other four who have thousands of sectors allotted across their quadrant. So The Imperium is likely closer to 8,000 sectors plus however Segumenta Solar is organized in. And of course the Segumenta Tempestus's "thousands" sectors are almost certainly under strength compared to the galactic average due to the sheer scarcity of matter so they likely don't have 2,000 sectors in terms of their sector fleet
The SSD and five of the other ISDs were Death squadron ,Vader's personal fleet. So unlikely to be attached to any particular sector fleet.
As for the rest at Endor I don't think it said where they came from. Could be all or part of a sector fleet or anything.
We have no evidence it was and evidence that suggests it's unlikely such as the larger fleet seen in ROTS to the 25,000 ISD number.
You might notice Warhammer isn't consistant with numbers.
Now which Tyranid codex is this from. Because I've found some variations of this such as the number being 1.46 rather than 1.5 and stated to be "space born creatures" which opens the possibility of it including transports analogies but potentially the drop pod spores the Tyranids use as well.
And of course this is only one example equally canon to my humorous example of a hive fleet numbered in the low thousands.
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Crom's Black Blade
Well-known member
See my problem with this is you repeatedly claim there are no or few explicit numbers available then turn around make claims involving explicit numbers. We don't know every sector fleet has 45 ships in it or that the 600 Lunars are evenly broken down in the Obscurus segmentum. Maybe it is or maybe it isn't. We can't say for sure. So its one thing to say that's an estimate, even a conservative estimate, but its not really a minimum. Rather the only minimums are the explicit numbers given.
I do think its very obvious who ever plugged in 600 for the class number likely either wasn't thinking about the 50-75 per sector fleet or didn't have "thousands of sectors" in mind. Which is the problem with any of this deep analysis of fictional polities. Any example is more likely to be dictated by the needs of the plot or rule of cool than.
Hence why I tend to rely more on explicit numbers. the 10% of a "millions" strong merchant fleet or Chambers' fleet numbers or "hundreds" of Forgeworlds. Not to spite you or to try and whittle the Imperium down to "win" but rather, in my experience, IPs will at least pay lip service to official numbers far more so than they will to fan calculations and thus more representive of the "reality" of the IP.
This is merely a rehash/reboot of your same argument that suffice it to say I don't find anymore convincing than the first time.
What you are describing isn't a production rate. Rather you took the canon datapoint that a forgeworld can build "several" cruisers within a year due to sheer scale and building multiple ships at the same time and make not only the assumption they can do this year in, year out for perpetuity but every forge world/ civilized world in the Imperium is dedicated to shipbuilding and either aren't required to manufacture anything else or can meet their quota while fulfilling their ship construction.
At no point do you stop and consider why, if this is their production rate, the Imperium isn't drowning in cruisers considering they can and do last for millennia.
At no point in your analysis do you stop and actually address the Lunar quote that apparently Hive and "industrial worlds" frequently can't muster the expertise to construct any capitol ship but the Lunar class so its debatable how much they are contributing to ship production.
At no point do you address the only given number for forge worlds is apparently "hundreds" not thousands or tens of thousands.
And finally you keep linking back and citing yourself as supporting evidence for yourself. Like I would understand more if they had a ton of explicit or even implicit examples but it frequently seems less about presenting the evidence with minimal assumptions and more an exercise of what you can get away with assuming.
Edit:
I completely forgot, your calculation completely ignores the actual canon production rate we have for the Murder class cruiser, the previous "mainstay" of the Imperium fleet before the Lunar class, of a little over a hundred and twenty-five cruisers per thousand years.
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Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
No. When estimating things, you first attempt to get multiple data points. Then you make estimates based on said data points, and then you combine all the estimates to get a reasonable range.
So for example if we are seeking N:
- Datapoint 1 gives N as 500 - 10 000
- Datapoint 2 gives N as 250 - 8 000
- Datapoint 3 gives N as 4 500 - 90 000
- Datapoint 4 gives N as 3 000 - 9 000
- Datapoint 5 gives N as 45 000 - 450 000
What you are talking about is an absolute minimum. But "absolute minimum" and "reasonable minimum" are not the same.
That means literally nothing on its own, just like anything else taken alone means nothing. Just as an example, if we take the Singapore Squadron in 1941, it would be easy to conclude that half of the Royal Navy battleships are King George V class. At that point however there were only three KGVs in service, out of a total of 15 or so battleships (so 1/5).
Imperium is an empire of million worlds. A million warships would be "small fleet numbers" for them.
Except they aren't:
Battlefleet Gothic itself may have anywhere between 60 and 100 warships, so it indeed is "more fortified than a random sector in bumfuck nowhere". But difference isn't large.
Looking at as wide range of somewhat-reliable data is the only way to remove bias. If you decide to pick a single data point, how do you do it? Random chance? Lottery? Most people will simply pick what they like and discard everything else, which is the definition of bias.
And that is exactly what you are doing.
Not to mention, Warhammer 40k is broad enough that you can find support for literally everything if you look hard enough. Want Imperial Navy in the dozens? Sure, why not. Want it in the billions? You can find evidence to support that as well. May be a little bit more difficult to do... but by no means impossible.
For example: "Hundreds of billions of hands" serving in the Navy can go up to 900 billion. And if we take this list, crew numbers are about a quarter of what I had used for crew sizes in my own estimates. So we have 3,43 million crewmembers per batch of 72 ships (4 BB, 4 BC, 20 CA, 4 CL, 40 FF). 900 billion / 3,43 million = 262 390 batches; times 72 ships = 18 892 080 warships.
But you can also interpret it as 200 billion, and use my own estimate of 13,72 million crewmembers per 72 ships, which results in 14 577 batches and 1 049 544 warships at the low end.
So which is it? Is it a million warships or 19 million warships? How do you know which number is more likely?
The only possible solution is to look at whatever other pieces of evidence there may be.
Imperium will have sectors below 50 - 75 for whatever reason. Imperium will also have sectors above 50 - 75 for whatever reason. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the outliers will nullify each other and thus the most likely range of estimates for the Imperial Navy
It is not perfectly reliable result, I agree - possibility always exists that say 51% of sectors have 50 - 75 ships, and 39% have zero ships. But then possibility always exists that 60% of sectors have 50 - 75 ships, 10% have less than that, and remaining 30% have 200 ships on average with a few percent of sectors going into thousands.*
But it is the most likely range. If we just ignore it, then there is no basis for calculating anything.
Just for fun and to ilustrate what I am talking about:
- Minimum:
- 200 worlds per sector
- "Million worlds" = 5 000 sectors
- 39% of sectors = 1 950 sectors
- 50 ships per sector = 97 500 warships
- TOTAL: 97 500 warships
- Maximum:
- 50 worlds per sector
- "Millions of worlds" = 19 million worlds = 380 000 sectors
- 60% of sectors = 228 000 sectors
- 70 ships average = 15 960 000 ships
- 30% of sectors = 114 000 sectors
- 200 ships average = 22 800 000 ships
- 5% of sectors = 19 000 sectors
- 2 000 ships average = 38 000 000 ships
- TOTAL: 76 760 000 warships
And the fact that it is an imperfect estimate is what then requires us to use as wide possible a data range, and arrive at conclusion through synthesis of outcomes. Is it a perfect solution? No, but it is the best solution possible.
If you reject that, you may as well conclude that there is no point in discussing fiction and go read books on statistics. Except even these don't really have hard data.
That has nothing to do with anything. We are told how many worlds Imperium has and how many ships it typically has per sector. Any newly formed sectors would be within the statistical anomaly range.
There is nothing much selective about it. I used multiple datapoints and included all interpretations that I felt didn't strain credulity. You might believe that I should have included absolutely unreasonable interpretations of the sort I discussed earlier in this post, but I don't see what good would be arrived at by doing that.
1) Individual example of what? For example, in Return of the Jedi, the Imperial fleet seen at Endor may well have been the entirety of the Imperial Navy concentrated in one place for all we know. Yet logic dictates that it must have been only a portion of the Navy.
2) Yet the most consistent example is not a segmenta of less than a thousand. We have that one single example against multiple mutually independent examples supporting much larger numbers.
Which is why we use all the data we have to arrive to some sort of internally consistent conclusion.
It actually is a separate datapoint, because calculation has multiple potential points of failure and this checks a different one.
Even if it is boastful, if he was wrong by an order of magnitude, boast would not really work because everybody could see through it.
And it is quite clear he is talking about ships' crews, just if you have any familiarity at all with naval terminology or with basic context. "Hands" quite explicity refers to personnel of the ship, that is, to sailors. Therefore, "hundreds of billions of hands" can only refer to ships' crews. And he is quite clearly talking in the present, so it cannot be "anyone who served in the last ten thousand years".
According to you, there is no point in discussing anything at any point. Because everything we do is based on assumptions.
Check the quote: it says that sector fleet normally has 50 - 75 warships. Normally, as in, typically, usually or on average. Some sectors may have fleets in thousands while others may be completely devoid of ships, but majority of sector fleets have somewhere between 50 and 75 warships.
And no, Imperium is not "likely to have" more sectors under than over. That is not how either statistics or the English language work. The quote of 50 - 75 ships does not tell us how many ships Imperium needs, or wants to have. It merely tells us how many ships the Imperium has in the average sector. And fact that the Imperium is resource strapped just means that 50 - 75 ships per sector fleet is not enough.
For all we know, Naumachia Imperialis calls for the Navy to provide each sector with a minimum of 500 warships, but 50 - 75 is the best they can manage. Or they may want fewer ships than that (unlikely) but are forced to have said number.
Yes, you are discarding examples and misrepresenting evidence. See for an example of latter just above.
You are desperately looking for vagueness beyond what there actually is.
More likely, it is not going to turn out the way you expect. Imperium has never had an issue with producing supplies (except maybe for warships); logistical issues it has faced have to do with supplies actually reaching the troops.
And even with warships, Lunar class cruiser can be produced over a feral world:
Feral world, a.k.a. prehistoric Earth, constructed a Lunar-class cruiser in 11 years.
And for the forge world:
The only question then becomes how many Forge Worlds are there. But since most sectors have at least one, and there are thousands of sectors in the Imperium, at minimum there are thousands of Forge Worlds. Absolute minimum (based solely on there being "thousands of sectors") would be 2 000 Forge Worlds, each putting a new cruiser to space "several times a year" (so 3 - 5 times a year), meaning production cap is at least 6 000 cruisers per year. Using the actual minimum of 10 000 sectors and thus 10 000 Forge Worlds, we get number closer to 30 000 to 50 000 cruisers per year.
Of course, sectors may have multiple Forge Worlds. Calixis Sector is above average as it has 14 Forge Worlds, but even assuming average of 3 Forge Worlds per sector, maximum of 20 000 sectors would mean 60 000 Forge Worlds and thus capacity to produce up to 300 000 cruisers per year.
And these are warships, which they canonically have trouble producing. Of course, much of the industrial capacity is likely spent on maintaining the existing fleet... but the same would be true for the Galactic Empire.
Universe in which they are constantly at war. I do not know what you think about how weapons operate, but war is hard on people and machines both. They get damaged, worn out and have to be maintained constantly. Even with modern ships, without problems with warp travel, you cannot deploy all of them.
And repairing and maintaining ships is going to take resources that could otherwise be used to build new ships. In order to maintain active warships, you need to do literally the same stuff you need to do to produce new ships. It is somewhat easier because you already have a ship to work with, but on large scale, it means that it eats into your theoretical production capability. Ships being repaired and maintained will take up resources and dock space both, thus reducing the number of ships that can be built.
Which is why your example of Galactic Empire building 25 000 Star Destroyers is ridiculous: they were retiring old assault cruisers ("Venators") and building new star destroyers. 1 for 1 replacement in de-facto peacetime is nothing special, and it does not imply the ability to replace the losses in wartime, much less to expand the fleet during the war.
And in terms of mass, even 25 000 Star Destroyers per year would be less than Imperium's minimum production capability.
Warhammer 40k 8th Edition Rulebook, pg 52 - 53:
And if you are going to use the wiki, Lexicanum is a far better source.
Uh, the hell are you talking about here? Tyranids are definitely capable of a galactic war, far more so than the Orks for example (though Orks get a massive Waagh from time to time). Most other threats are indeed regional, but also highly dispersed.
By comparison, we have seen no evidence of the Empire being capable of a galactic-scale war at all. It spent all its time chasing a band of rebels around the galaxy and scaring demilitarized systems into submission. Republic did fight a war, but even so numbers were ridiculously small compared to the Imperium (even using a "million" units as actual military units, this scene shows units as 9 x 10 clones + commander, so 1 100 000 units is 100 million and a change worth of clones). And implication is actually that "units" are actual clones, so you have 1 100 000 clones to wage an interstellar war.
Point is that the Galactic Empire is neither prepared nor has ever bothered to prepare for a galactic war.
Imperium had an equivalent to Endor when Horus invaded Terra... but unlike Palpatine, the Emperor actually had people who could take over management of the galaxy in his absence (surviving Primarchs, the Senatorum Imperialis). Palpatine by contrast centralized all decision making with himself, disbanding the Imperial Senate in ANH, and even his "right-hand man" Vader was little more than an enforcer. Empire's military exists solely to protect Palpatine's position as a ruler. They have no need to prepare to fight external enemies: there are no external enemies to fight. All the enemies are internal, and the military becomes a police force.
And this basic nature of the Galactic Empire's military has significant implications for its warmaking capability. Namely, that military is geared to prevent usurpation more than it is to win a war. Now where have we heard this before...
In that regard, Somalia and other African militaries are more similar to Galactic Empire than they are to the Imperium.
No, it doesn't. It just means that the Imperium has to spread out as well. And you are making shit up again (to be more polite than your statement here frankly warrants). Ork Empires and Ork Waaghs! are two completely different things. Ork Empires were never a major threat to the current-day Imperium. But Ork Waagh! is a migration-turned-military-campaign on a galactic scale, and its nature means that it quickly snowballs in size. Even the smallest of Waagh!s can likely deploy more forces than a largest Ork Empire... because if orks were numerous enough ta form a WAAAGH!!, dey wouldn't be wast'n time settl'n down 'n an empire, get it?
For example, Beast Waagh! deployed multiple Attack Moons (Death Star equivalents, basically a cross between Star Wars' Death Star and World Eaters), and even converted the world of Ullanor into a supersized Attack Moon (but never got to deploy it). It was a war on a truly galactic scale, something not seen since the Horus Heresy.
And what is your proof that Galactic Empire is "capable of threatening the entire galaxy at once"?
Like you said, but what you said is wrong. Dark Eldar aren't that small:
They are only small in relation to Imperium as a whole, but they may well be more numerous than e.g. Tau.
You cited all these factions and acted as if Imperium can fight each faction on their own.
You fail at comprehending even things you write.
OK.
Even if you assume that they built all the Star Destroyers in a single year, that would be 1 trillion tons in a single year. More likely is that construction was spread over a period of time, thus reducing the time needed.
Imperium's minimum is 7 300 escorts, 2 960 cruisers and 71 battleship per year, or 206 billion tons per year if we use absolute minimum numbers and tonnage. If we use their maximum production, you get 200 000 cruisers per year, so 400 000 escorts and 2 000 battleships, for a total of 77 trillion tons per year. Something of a median would be using 10 000 Forge Worlds figure, for a total of 10 000 cruisers and cca 20 000 escorts and 100 battleships per year, for a total of 3,35 trillion tons per year.
And as I noted previously, that is a fraction of actual industrial capacity as they need to maintain existing fleet.
As for the Death Stars:
Imperium has multiple of these, to the point they can afford do deploy three to protect a single Forge World:
They do not. You just have a highly selective approach to evidence, dismissing anything that doesn't fit your preconcieved notions.
Uh, reading comprehension much?
Sector consists of a certain number of settled systems. These may be concentrated in a single star cluster... or they may be spread over across the void. But how spread out planets are has absolutely no bearing on Imperial fleet numbers, as Imperium deploys a certain number of ships per sector.
Imperial sectors are like Byzantine themes. You have a certain amount of resources (planets) necessary to support an army (fleet), but different themes (sectors) will need different acreage (light years) to do so.
Look at this:
Armeniacs Theme has 15 000 troops, while the Thracesian Theme has 20 000 troops despite being a fraction of size.
So whether sector stretches over 5 or 50 light years is immaterial so long as it has a certain number of worlds.
90%+ of things I cite or base my estimates on come from the sourcebooks, including BFG.
And RE:Edit, you really are desperate to lowball the Imperium, aren't you?
Look at the map:
Segmentum Solar is about the same size as Segmentum Pacificus, and we know that it is the most densely settled human region in the galaxy. With sectors being determined by number of planets rather than volume of space, Segmentum Solar should have more sectors than Segmentum Pacificus at the very least, since their geographic size appears to be roughly similar.
My point is that said fleet is the largest gathering of Imperial warships we ever see in Star Wars movies.
My point exactly. So why are you using one set of standards for the Galactic Empire and entirely another for the Imperium?
Yeah, it isn't. Neither is Star Wars.
It is from 4th Edition Codex. And even if we assume that it includes spores, at very least Tyranid hive fleet has millions of actual spaceships ("Tyranids travel the galaxies and the voids between them in vast, drifting Hive fleets. These consist of millions of sentient craft.")
Your problem is that you are apparently unfamiliar with the concept of synthesis.
No, there are no hard numbers. And there are some contradictory numbers. That doesn't mean we cannot arrive at a reasonable range of estimates by combining multiple pieces of information.
Have you ever solved a puzzle? It looks a bit like that.
Same goes for the Galactic Empire. We don't really have any good numbers for it as well. And while SW fans tend to gauge Imperial industrial capacity by Death Stars, truth is that Death Star is basically a plot device, not a weapon. It is Lucas' equivalent to One Ring, and absolutely no thought was given to its implications.
So the only real minimum number for the Galactic Empire is literally the two-dozen or so ships we see in Return of the Jedi. But we do know that it most likely wasn't the entire Imperial Navy, and there are statements which give greater numbers. So people tend to use these, because the absolute minimum number makes no sense.
And you are completely ignoring realities of naval production and logistics. No navy is ever going to be able to produce ships at the theoretically possible maximum rate, because resources and docks will also be taken up by maintenance of the existing fleet. So assuming the unchanging industrial and docking capacity, increasing the number of ships already in the fleet will cause reduction in usable shipbuilding capability.