Writing a book. Human numbers and spread after half a billion years. Esitmates.

[LuciusTritus]

Please forgive me if this fell into the wrong forum. I thought this would be the right place to ask.

500 million years have past since humanity came in control of a device that could send ships at great speeds across the universe, from the edge of one galaxy to the edge of another in weeks, sometimes even days. (There is a slight randomness of a couple of days to the travel time)

What I need help with is the numbers, I want them to sound somewhat feasible, now the book is of course a work of fiction and imagination, so an estimate will more than suffice.
The book I'm writing isn't even anything too serious. I'm just turning, a universe I have been thinking of for several years, into paper.

In those 500 million years, I have estimated humanity to be in control of five main galaxies, with several other galaxies that are under colonization.

In the five main galaxies I estimate there is a number of 10 million inhabited star systems, each with a population at an approximate of 10 billion. (There will of course also be smaller systems with populations in the hundreds).

In the outer galaxies, there are of course less inhabited systems, and less population. Here I'm thinking more in terms of several 100 000 inhabited systems with a population around 1 million to several 100 million in each. (Again, with some systems in the hundreds and some systems with a lot more).

The main focus on the book will be war. The defense of the galaxies will be in form of large fleet groups.
One of these fleets will have a couple of 10 thousand ships and more than 1 billion in manpower spread out across that fleet, numbers may vary. Some of the ships are going to be pretty large.
I'm thinking that each main galaxy garrisons more than 1 thousand of these fleet groups.


Do my numbers sound alright for a work of fiction, or are they completely unrealistic?
I would love your opinion on this and any advice you can give. Thank you in advance!

Bonus question: Should Lucius quit his writing entirely?! :D

 

[fluidistic]

The more realistic number of living humans in half billion years is closer to 0 than to 1 in my opinion.

 

[Evo]

The more realistic number of living humans in half billion years is closer to 0 than to 1 in my opinion.

That was my first thought, but it's pretend. Look at Star Wars, and Star Trek shows, they aren't realistic. So based on his scenarios, what would the numbers be?

Heck I could do it, but I am on meds.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The average lifetime for a mammal is about two order's of magnitude smaller than your timeline here. Considering the huge leaps of plot you are making you might as well have any number you like though I'm curious as to how you intend to deal with biological, technological and cultural changes over half a billion years. Bear in mind that half a billion years ago was about the time of the Cambrian explosion and from that potentially billions of species have evolved and gone extinct. Also think of the huge technological and social change we have seen in the world in the last century, hell even in the last decade with the growth of the internet. Do you really think you could convincingly write a timeline that is six or seven orders of magnitude greater than that?

My advice would be to ditch the half a billion figure and go with a few centuries. If you're proposing cheap and quick FTL propulsion then interstellar and intergalactic colonisation becomes much easier (providing you can crack the problem of building habitable, stable environments/terraforming).

 

[LuciusTritus]

That was my first thought, but it's pretend. Look at Star Wars, and Star Trek shows, they aren't realistic. So based on his scenarios, what would the numbers be?

Heck I could do it, but I am on meds.

Don't really need to be a complex calculation. I just want to know if my numbers sound reasonable, or if I'm way off.



OFF-Topic

The more realistic number of living humans in half billion years is closer to 0 than to 1 in my opinion.

I just have to answer to this. I have seen so many people who seem to doubt that we will make it out into the universe or survive at all, I also had such thoughts, but that's back when I was a teen.
Why do people generally think we are doomed? Everyone got a personal crystal-ball in their living room that I have completely missed out on?
I know our society is suffering great turbulence right now, but our society has always suffered great turbulence.

I bet people in the middle ages also thought we were doomed, now look at us, almost every human in a western society has a better living standard than kings had in the medieval ages.

You are of course entitled to your own opinion, I must just say that I disagree. I do believe we will make it. We could argue and discuss this until the day we die, both of us can be as much right as we can be wrong. In the end, it's all about faith in the human spirit and in the human ingenuity.
That's all I had to say. :P

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Why do people generally think we are doomed? Everyone got a personal crystal-ball in their living room that I have completely missed out on?
I know our society is suffering great turbulence right now, but our society has always suffered great turbulence.

For my perspective see above. Even leaving aside man made or natural disasters standard biological evolution will ensure that Homo sapiens won't survive forever.

 

[LuciusTritus]

The average lifetime for a mammal is about two order's of magnitude smaller than your timeline here. Considering the huge leaps of plot you are making you might as well have any number you like though I'm curious as to how you intend to deal with biological, technological and cultural changes over half a billion years. Bear in mind that half a billion years ago was about the time of the Cambrian explosion and from that potentially billions of species have evolved and gone extinct. Also think of the huge technological and social change we have seen in the world in the last century, hell even in the last decade with the growth of the internet. Do you really think you could convincingly write a timeline that is six or seven orders of magnitude greater than that?

My advice would be to ditch the half a billion figure and go with a few centuries. If you're proposing cheap and quick FTL propulsion then interstellar and intergalactic colonisation becomes much easier (providing you can crack the problem of building habitable, stable environments/terraforming).

Good question, and I have thought of this a little. My idea is that policies have been put in place to hinder certain development and genetic advancement. Those policies has then been followed with strict methods, in my book there is even a civil war going on between those who want to keep these policies and those who want to freely go about advancing technology and genetics unhindered.
That is at least an undetailed idea, my concept is a bit more advanced, but I don't want to go into detail on it. Let's just say that I have thought about it, and have some things in place that might explain the lack of singularity.

 

[LuciusTritus]

For my perspective see above. Even leaving aside man made or natural disasters standard biological evolution will ensure that Homo sapiens won't survive forever.

How can you be so sure? Standard biological evolution might be the thing that ensures we survive forever, or at least for a long while, and if not, don't you think we would have advanced a lot in genetic science to overcome extinction?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Good question, and I have thought of this a little. My idea is that policies have been put in place to hinder certain development and genetic advancement. Those policies has then been followed with strict methods, in my book there is even a civil war going on between those who want to keep these policies and those who want to freely go about advancing technology and genetics unhindered.
That is at least an undetailed idea, my concept is a bit more advanced, but I don't want to go into detail on it. Let's just say that I have thought about it, and have some things in place that might explain the lack of singularity.

How can you be so sure? Standard biological evolution might be the thing that ensures we survive forever, or at least for a long while, and if not, don't you think we would have advanced a lot in genetic science to overcome extinction?

Over time species change, we accumulate mutations in our genome that we pass on to the next generation. Natural selection can either remove these mutations, encourage their proliferation or ignore them. Over a very long time i.e. millions of years our species will be completely different because of these changes, if there are groups that have low levels of interbreeding (as their definitely will be with intergalactic colonies) the different changes happening in each group will ensure that they speciate.

As for your statement on tight political control of technological I don't think it is very likely one policy can be enforced upon millions of worlds for millions of years. At least some of them would just do it anyway (especially if they are founded by a group of colonists who keep their location a secret and act in isolation).

Forgive me if I sound rude (I in no way mean to be) but do you realize how long a time you are suggesting?? Half a billion years?

EDIT: Incidentally if you are interested in far (and I mean far) future science fiction you might want to pick up a copy of Alistair Reynolds "House of Suns." It's set 6 million years in the future and the galaxy is populated by millions of species all descended from Humans (either from natural evolution or artificial engineering). The main characters however are classically human because they spend most of their life traveling at close to the speed of light, don't reproduce and don't really partake in anybody modification.

 

[Andre]

The average lifetime for a mammal is about two order's of magnitude smaller than your timeline here. ...

True, been looking around a bit, Megafauna species are best documented and seem to last something like about 0.3 -1 million years, looking at mammoths, mastodons and rhinos. The earliest known Homo sapiens is about 200k years. So who is next? Homo Internetiens?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

500 million years have past since humanity came in control of a device that could send ships at great speeds across the universe, from the edge of one galaxy to the edge of another in weeks, sometimes even days. (There is a slight randomness of a couple of days to the travel time)

I don't understand what you mean. Weeks are made of days. Anything that takes weeks takes days. What's more, the distance between galaxies is not a fixed quantity, some galaxies are relatively close to each other compared to others. I don't understand what you mean by randomness here either. You should write about things you know.

Bonus question: Should Lucius quit his writing entirely?! :D

You do the math.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

True, been looking around a bit, Megafauna species are best documented and seem to last something like about 0.3 -1 million years, looking at mammoths, mastodons and rhinos. The earliest known Homo sapiens is about 200k years. So who is next? Homo Internetiens?

Not only that but we are fairly different to those early humans. Hell we only evolved to drink milk beyond infancy ten thousand years ago!

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Well, there are multicellular animals that survived largely unchanged in the general range of time you're talking about such as the horseshoe crab (Limulus sp.). (It's actually an arachnid, not a crustacean). However, given the likelihood of extensive modification of living systems by intention and combinations of materials that make our present distinction between the biological and non-biological seem quaint, intelligence may be embedded in systems whose characteristics we can't even imagine. Better you should follow the suggestions here and keep things on a human scale: a few centuries at most and Star Trek type characters speaking English and listening to rock n roll. This is not realistic, even on this time scale, but your readers can relate to it. Sexless humans modified to live on airless worlds at 180 Kelvin who grow their young on farms might not be very appealing to readers.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Well, there are multicellular species that survived largely unchanged in the general range of time you're talking about such as the horseshoe crab (genus Limulus (It's actually an arachnid, not a crustacean).

True but species life time varies between class, insects on average last a lot longer than mammals for example.

However, given the likelihood of extensive modification of living systems by intention and combinations of materials that make our present distinction between the biological and non-biological seem quaint, intelligence may be embedded in systems whose characteristics we can't even imagine. Better you should follow the suggestions here and keep things on a human scale: a few centuries at most,and Star Trek type characters speaking English and listening to rock n roll. This is not realistic, even on this time scale,, but your readers can relate to it. Sexless humans modified to live on airless worlds at 180 Kelvin who grow their young on farms might not be very appealing to readers.

I agree with the augmentation stuff but hard-SF that writes about these settings can be very good. Far more enjoyable than reading about a world where everyone is some idealised version of Now and whose society seems to not be affected at all by the magic technology all around them.

 

[LuciusTritus]

Over time species change, we accumulate mutations in our genome that we pass on to the next generation. Natural selection can either remove these mutations, encourage their proliferation or ignore them. Over a very long time i.e. millions of years our species will be completely different because of these changes, if there are groups that have low levels of interbreeding (as their definitely will be with intergalactic colonies) the different changes happening in each group will ensure that they speciate.

As for your statement on tight political control of technological I don't think it is very likely one policy can be enforced upon millions of worlds for millions of years. At least some of them would just do it anyway (especially if they are founded by a group of colonists who keep their location a secret and act in isolation).

Forgive me if I sound rude (I in no way mean to be) but do you realize how long a time you are suggesting?? Half a billion years?

EDIT: Incidentally if you are interested in far (and I mean far) future science fiction you might want to pick up a copy of Alistair Reynolds "House of Suns." It's set 6 million years in the future and the galaxy is populated by millions of species all descended from Humans (either from natural evolution or artificial engineering). The main characters however are classically human because they spend most of their life traveling at close to the speed of light, don't reproduce and don't really partake in anybody modification.

Like I said, I have some certain things in place that might explain why humans as we know them now might still be intact after 500 million years.
But if it doesn't pan out, I could just apply the "Fantasy" tag and not worry at all :)

I don't understand what you mean. Weeks are made of days. Anything that takes weeks takes days and vice versa. What's more, the distance between galaxies is not a fixed quantity, some galaxies are relatively close to each other compared to others. I don't understand what you mean by randomness here either. You should write about things you know.

You do the math.

Thank you! I am well aware that weeks are made up of days. What I meant was that it sometimes can take two or three weeks to cross and other times it may take just four to six days. The time depending on a certain feature I have imagined.

And since I doubt we have invented such ways of travel, I doubt anyone actually knows much about it, and even if I'm sure you know all about traveling between galaxies, I'm sure a work of fiction won't be a threat to your reality. (Note the slight irony)


Please, I just want to know if my numbers sound reasonable for a work of fiction, someone already answered that slightly and I thank you for that. But I would like some more opinions on the numbers.
I guess that in order to get a straight answer from a human... never mind... what am I thinking?! :P

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Like I said, I have some certain things in place that might explain why humans as we know them now might still be intact after 500 million years.
But if it doesn't pan out, I could just apply the "Fantasy" tag and not worry at all :)

Please, I just want to know if my numbers sound reasonable for a work of fiction, someone already answered that slightly and I thank you for that. But I would like some more opinions on the numbers.
I guess that in order to get a straight answer from a human... never mind... what am I thinking?! :P

Considering you are proposing a number of magic plasters to cover your plot holes any number sounds reasonable. Literally any.

But in the spirit of things let me help you...

An average of between 1 and 100 billion per solar system (assuming these systems to be similar to our own) sounds reasonable. As we see here now between 1 and 10 billion on a planet is OK, extend that to every Moon and conceive of most available mass turned into O'Neill habitats and between 1-100 for an average system with higher systems even capable of trillions.

In terms of fleet size it really depends on the technology available. If each ship masses a million tonnes and you are proposing an intergalactic industrial society then even if they just use all the mass of one solar system (similar to ours, disregarding the Sun) they could make 2.8e18 ships. That's 280 million trillion. In light of this your 10,000,000 ship proposal seems very underestimated.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

True but species life time varies between class, insects on average last a lot longer than mammals for example.

I changed "species" to "animal". Afaik, no multicellular animal species has survived for 400-500 My.

I agree with the augmentation stuff but hard-SF that writes about these settings can be very good. Far more enjoyable than reading about a world where everyone is some idealised version of Now and whose society seems to not be affected at all by the magic technology all around them.

The OP is just starting. It takes a master to pull off what you're talking about.

 

[LuciusTritus]

Considering you are proposing a number of magic plasters to cover your plot holes any number sounds reasonable. Literally any.

But in the spirit of things let me help you...

An average of between 1 and 100 billion per solar system (assuming these systems to be similar to our own) sounds reasonable. As we see here now between 1 and 10 billion on a planet is OK, extend that to every Moon and conceive of most available mass turned into O'Neill habitats and between 1-100 for an average system with higher systems even capable of trillions.

In terms of fleet size it really depends on the technology available. If each ship masses a million tonnes and you are proposing an intergalactic industrial society then even if they just use all the mass of one solar system (similar to ours, disregarding the Sun) they could make 2.8e18 ships. That's 280 million trillion. In light of this your 10,000,000 ship proposal seems very underestimated.

Thank you! This is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for.
So I think I will increase both ship numbers, size and manpower size for each fleet then, or just increase the fleet numbers.

Let's say one fleet consists of a couple of moon sized or half-earth sized main ships, with many tens of thousands of smaller ships as support. And five billion or more in manpower spread out across that fleet. Does that sound better?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Well, there are multicellular animals that survived largely unchanged in the general range of time you're talking about such as the horseshoe crab (Limulus sp.). (It's actually an arachnid, not a crustacean).

Actually, Limulus is fairly recent. The genus is 20 million years old. The species limulus polyphemus may be even younger. Yes, there were horseshoe crabs 400 million years ago, but they were not the same as modern ones.

500 million years is only a little less time that it took to get from starfish-like creatures to humanity. The ballpark number of generations needed for speciation is about 10,000. For people, this is 1/2000 the time you are thinking about.

Another way to think about it is that humans and chimpanzees split 4 million years ago. You are talking 125 times as much time.

 

[bigfooted]

Heck I could do it, but I am on meds.

You can populate an entire galaxy with 100 billion people?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Thank you! This is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for.
So I think I will increase both ship numbers, size and manpower size for each fleet then, or just increase the fleet numbers.

Let's say one fleet consists of a couple of moon sized or half-earth sized main ships, with many tens of thousands of smaller ships as support. And five billion or more in manpower spread out across that fleet. Does that sound better?

What mass are you making your ships? My advice for working it out is this; work out the mass for the ships you want, work out how much mass you want your society to budget (back of the envelope calculations tell me that the mass of the Solar system without the sun is ~2.8e27kg) and from that work out the number of ships you like. One tip would be to take the mass of the Moon then decide of how much of the internal volume would be hollowed out for space and use that to work out ship mass.

Manpower depends on how much automation you want for your ships, they could just be highly sophisticated drones capable of teleoperation or being run by a skeleton crew or (a usual SF trope) just one pilot fused with the ship. When deciding on how many people to put on each ship decide what they are actually going to do.

Two last points; 1) remember you have to figure out how these Massive ships are going to move, if you're going to throw in artificial gravity, inertial negation etc. 2) Whilst Moon sized ships sound impressive are they worth it? If you took that mass and made a vast fleet of smaller ships you would be able to cover more area at once and would have a much larger ship-surface:ship-volume ratio meaning that a fleet of smaller ships could have vastly more armament than a single Moon sized ship. Indeed all this fleet of smaller ships would need to do is to take advantage of the fact they vastly outgun the large ship and slag its surface so that it cannot fire or be entered etc.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

There is a problem with the numbers. I don't have time right now to give a full explanation, but it has to do with the make-up of the so-called Local Group. Here is an excerpt from the wiki page:

With a diameter of about 50,000 light years, the Triangulum galaxy is the third largest member of the Local Group, a group of galaxies which also contains the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy, and it may be a gravitationally bound companion of the Andromeda Galaxy. Triangulum may be home to 40 billion stars, compared to 400 billion for the Milky Way, and 1000 billion stars for Andromeda.

wiki - and therefore unreliable
Perhaps someone else will explain why this makes the numbers in the OP unlikely before I have a chance to come back and do it myself.

 

[LuciusTritus]

What mass are you making your ships? My advice for working it out is this; work out the mass for the ships you want, work out how much mass you want your society to budget (back of the envelope calculations tell me that the mass of the Solar system without the sun is ~2.8e27kg) and from that work out the number of ships you like. One tip would be to take the mass of the Moon then decide of how much of the internal volume would be hollowed out for space and use that to work out ship mass.

Manpower depends on how much automation you want for your ships, they could just be highly sophisticated drones capable of teleoperation or being run by a skeleton crew or (a usual SF trope) just one pilot fused with the ship. When deciding on how many people to put on each ship decide what they are actually going to do.

Thank you, I think I got the basic idea.

There is a problem with the numbers. I don't have time right now to give a full explanation, but it has to do with the make-up of the so-called Local Group. Here is an excerpt from the wiki page:

wiki - and therefore unreliable
Perhaps someone else will explain why this makes the numbers in the OP unlikely before I have a chance to come back and do it myself.

I understand what you are getting at, that one galaxy is not like any other, that they all come in different shapes and sizes. This will be handled in the book. A sidenote might be that this doesn't necessarily need to take place in our local galaxy cluster.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Let me make some suggestions which, of course, you are free to ignore. There are some rules for writing good SF. 1)Do not blatantly violate any basic laws of physics as they are currently understood. 2) Develop characters that your (presumably) human readers can relate to.

Forget FTL travel. It involves some nasty time paradoxes. Instead consider ALS travel (not the disease but Almost Light Speed). You can shorten the ship time to any point in the known universe to be as small as you please, but not zero.

Energy: Presently cosmologists are considering the possibility of an infinite multiverse. Therefore there is infinite energy from which you can draw at ALS.

For human characters, let me suggest a tongue in cheek scenario. The Earth experiences a catastrophic something (nuclear exchange, epidemic, etc). This attracts the attention of advanced aliens who have been hanging around in the area for some time. They find that some retired baby boomers (BBs) living in Venice, California have somehow survived. Being very ethical beings, they take these BBs under their protection and restore their youth. They also greatly enhance their intelligence so that the BBs can understand and use the alien technology. Being very ethical beings who have not seen social violence for millions of years, they can't imagine that the enhanced BBs would attack them. But they do, and they take over the alien technology (which includes unlimited procreation capabilities) and launch off(at ALS)to bring sex, drugs and rock n roll to the entire universe (but not the entire multiverse).

 

[Evo]

You can populate an entire galaxy with 100 billion people?

If there is only 1-2 planets that can support life in a galaxy, sure, but I thought he said multiple galaxies, which would make more sense.

 

[256bits]

500 million years have past since humanity came in control of a device that could send ships at great speeds across the universe, from the edge of one galaxy to the edge of another in weeks, sometimes even days. (There is a slight randomness of a couple of days to the travel time)

Problem 1 is the time frame of 500 million years that has already been pointed out. A civilization of 5000 to 10,000 years might be more digestible for a reader and easier to comprehend and understand why the Galactic Kingdom is now at WAR. Or why put any empahise on the timespan at all. Why not just a passing "We have been here for x number of eons and we are not going to let any c-- s---- b--- aliens with lizard popping green eyeballs just push us around." Humans can be prolific breeders with just enough spare time and resources.

Problem 2 is your device - somewhere you will have to explain its beginning and function. Calling it The Device and that it was found by the cave trekking Bob and Fred when eveyone thought they were lost but Eureka they came out 2 weeks later with The Device and told stries of going to other worlds leads nowhere but to rolling eyeballs. On second thought maybe that would work and they have statues in every world now..Surely every ship has The Device, in which case it has been duplicated and its internal workings known to the users. It is powered by the gamma phase inversion of space itself pioneered by Dr. Ginup D. Picjonston and Dr Emily Snod-Humfotjucot and allows a craft to create an expansion in space in the direction of travel with the ship being pulled along for the ride.

And as they say the rest is history.

 

[phinds]

My idea is that policies have been put in place to hinder certain development and genetic advancement. Those policies has then been followed with strict methods

Given the time span you are talking about, the concept that such restrictions would hold is optimism carried to the point of lunacy.

 

[Vanadium 50]

This doesn't make any sense for even more reasons.

In your scenario, after 500M year, humanity has expanded to the point where everyone lives a few weeks away from everyone else. You expect the total number of people to be 10¹⁷. That means that, on average, each couple has something like 2.0000008 kids - a population doubling time of 20 million years. To compare, it took something like 40 years for the most recent population doubling.

I don't see how you are going to hold your future humanity to 5 galaxies. If you go 1000x as far, you get 5 billion galaxies, with years to get from one edge of humanity to another, true, but only weeks to get from the edge of habitation to the next unoccupied galaxy.

You also have the problem "why is there war"? The people who feel they would be on the losing end can always find a sixth galaxy and pick up stakes. If they need to build spaceships anyway, why build warships when you could build run-away ships?

 

[LuciusTritus]

Yes how dare I defy the laws of physics and reality in my imagination. How dare I write a piece of unrealistic fiction. THE CRIME!

There is only one solution for heretics such as myself:

And yes, I am implying that I'm an 80 year old lady.

Spoiler

I think you lot are taking this too seriously. :P
I'll just slap the "Fantasy" tag on the book and leave it more open for my own imagination. And then I can write it any way I want. :)

 

[phinds]

Yes how dare I defy the laws of physics and reality in my imagination. How dare I write a piece of unrealistic fiction. THE CRIME!

I think you're missing the point of why we are giving you advice on this stuff. One of the excellent tenets of good sci fic is to only ask the reader to suspend disbelief on ONE major thing and everything else should make sense (within the context of that item). It sounds like you plan on asking the reader to suspend disbelief on pretty much everything, which doesn't seem like a good idea. Good luck with that.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I would love your opinion on this and any advice you can give.

Yes how dare I defy the laws of physics and reality in my imagination. How dare I write a piece of unrealistic fiction. THE CRIME!

Hmmmm...

 

[LuciusTritus]

Allright I will try to make an effort to address some of your concerns. I do appreciate that you try to help me, it's just, you seem to get lost into details I have not even told of yet.
I do not wish to bring these details up, forgive me for that. But I will try to explain some basics of my concepts to you.
And please do remember that this is not at all a too serious project.I never really said these 500 million years would be a cake walk, there would of course be serious hardships and near extinction scenarios throughout the age.

In your scenario, after 500M year, humanity has expanded to the point where everyone lives a few weeks away from everyone else. You expect the total number of people to be 10¹⁷. That means that, on average, each couple has something like 2.0000008 kids - a population doubling time of 20 million years. To compare, it took something like 40 years for the most recent population doubling.

I don't see how you are going to hold your future humanity to 5 galaxies. If you go 1000x as far, you get 5 billion galaxies, with years to get from one edge of humanity to another, true, but only weeks to get from the edge of habitation to the next unoccupied galaxy.

Yes one would think we would have advanced much further, but we must also remember that the human mind and spirit is one of tradition and culture. And it might seem easy to just say "get up and move", that is, if you are not the one "getting up and moving".
Add to that a number of other difficulties, such as plauges, wars and most important; economy and you might get a basic idea. This will be more detailed in the book, but might give a slight hint as too how I'm thinking.

You also have the problem "why is there war"? The people who feel they would be on the losing end can always find a sixth galaxy and pick up stakes. If they need to build spaceships anyway, why build warships when you could build run-away ships?

Like I said above, we are a race of culture and tradition, to just leave your home is not a simple thing. And I never said there wouldn't be anyone who left their home, there will of course be many many groups who would have traveled far away to escape.

But the war is focused on a group that has a lot of space to control, it might be hard to move an entire galaxy just like that. This will also be explained in a bit more detail in the book.

I think you're missing the point of why we are giving you advice on this stuff. One of the excellent tenets of good sci fic is to only ask the reader to suspend disbelief on ONE major thing and everything else should make sense (within the context of that item). It sounds like you plan on asking the reader to suspend disbelief on pretty much everything, which doesn't seem like a good idea. Good luck with that.

Yes, and I appreciate you trying to help me, but this is not going to be a die-hard sci-fi. Just as long as things sound somewhat reasonable, based on the circumstances that I will add in the book, but not go into detail on here.

It's always important to remember that everything in life is not black and white, life is gray. And some things that may appear easy and shallow on the surface, can be very deep and complex once you enter it's domain.

I thank you all for your help, I have conceived some basic ideas and understanding from it, thanks, and a happy new year!

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I understand what you are getting at, that one galaxy is not like any other, that they all come in different shapes and sizes. This will be handled in the book. A sidenote might be that this doesn't necessarily need to take place in our local galaxy cluster.

Yes, it does have to take place in the local group. You said that this story was about humanity. We live in the Local Group. That's how it got its name. I don't think you grasp the entire number problem. However, if you answer every objection with "This will be handled in the book", then the answer to your original question is yes, everything is feasible given a lenient author. The problem with the numbers is that there are about 50 galaxies in the local group only two of which can be considered in the same order of magnitude as the largest. As you say, in order to have 5 galaxies with roughly the same number of star systems having roughly the same inhabitants each, they would have to leave the local group. But this raises the question why are there only several of the 50 local galaxies colonized and yet far distant large galaxies are inhabited. Since it only takes weeks to get from one to the other, it should take little more than a year for a tourist to visit each galaxy in the local group and they have 500 million years in which to do it. Did they lie dormant for 499,990,000 years and then start colonizing 10,000 years ago? If so, then why not make a more reasonable jump 10,000 years from now rather than 500 million?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Add to that a number of other difficulties, such as plauges,

You can't simultaneously have a rate of evolution that is orders of magnitude smaller than anything that has ever been observed in animals and a population whose numbers are limited by plagues.

 

[LuciusTritus]

Yes, it does have to take place in the local group. You said that this story was about humanity. We live in the Local Group. That's how it got its name. I don't think you grasp the entire number problem. However, if you answer every objection with "This will be handled in the book", then the answer to your original question is yes, everything is feasible given a lenient author. The problem with the numbers is that there are about 50 galaxies in the local group only two of which can be considered in the same order of magnitude as the largest. As you say, in order to have 5 galaxies with roughly the same number of star systems having roughly the same inhabitants each, they would have to leave the local group. But this raises the question why are there only several of the 50 local galaxies colonized and yet far distant large galaxies are inhabited. Since it only takes weeks to get from one to the other, it should take little more than a year for a tourist to visit each galaxy in the local group and they have 500 million years in which to do it. Did they lie dormant for 499,990,000 years and then start colonizing 10,000 years ago? If so, then why not make a more reasonable jump 10,000 years from now rather than 500 million?

Mate, you need to relax a bit.
You seem to get lost into details and story elements I have not even shared. Things may seem weird and some things you may not understand right now, but these will be explained in the book.
And no, it does not need to take place in the local group. It's actually a vital part of the main story that it does not.
Also, I never said that any of the far reaching galaxies wouldn't be inhabited, when did I say that? You seem to confuse yourself with things I have never even told of.

I'm asking for the numbers of the main and some of the outer galaxies, because that's where my focus will be. If I had to include every little detail, the reader would be given a headache and the book would be more than a million pages, and I would be dead before I finished it. You need to come down to reality and see what is possible and what's not.

I'm creating an entire universe from my head, it's bound to be errors and holes, I'm just one human. And that's why I'm here, to try and correct some of these holes as good as possible, and some sadly can't be corrected.
Have a happy new year, and don't get lost in all the webs of confusion!


On-Topic
I also noticed a major flaw in my first topic, it's supposed to say:
10 million inhabited systems per main galaxy. (5 main galaxies)
And;
100 thousand inhabited systems per non-main galaxy. (unknown number non-main galaxies)
These are also of course estimates and approximates, no galaxy will have the same number.
Please forgive me for this complete blunder, I have quite a lot on my mind right now.