So, I think that cities are still a fair analog here. Yes, ESD has a number of areas (docking Bay, water/gas tanks, reactors) that are not inhabited spaces. Cities are simulaneously more dense and less dense. A large apartment filled skyscraper ends up with 50-100 people per square meter of footprint space. But those high density areas are spread out by uninhabited spaces like streets and parks.
The point being, habitable vs inhabitable is irrelevant. Cities are measured at people per square km. No attention is placed on how/where those people in that given km are dispersed. Same goes for ESD. If we can figure out a rough area of deck space, we should be able to figure out the population within.
Perhaps the population density of a building is more in line. Volume of something like the Empire State building vs population of same?
I think EAS was way underestimating the habitable space of ESD. 25% is way low.
ESD and SB79 are not the same size though. The SB79 blueprints put it at only 2.6km in diameter, not the 3.8 listed by EAS.
And you're telling me that a Galaxy Class, something that can fit inside the docking bay of ESD, is able to take on 15,000 people, but ESD itself, which is 3.8km in diameter, and 5.5km in height, can only take on 3x that?
First, sorry my hand calculation was off by a few decimal places.
129,890,838,000 cubic meters habitable in ESD
Empire State building:
1,047,723 cubic meters
With a 2007 population of 21,000
So with that it comes to about 49.891571 cubic meters per person. Round off to 50.
ESD has a maximum population by space inside of 2,597,816,760
Ignoring life support and docking areas.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
And you're telling me that a Galaxy Class, something that can fit inside the docking bay of ESD, is able to take on 15,000 people, but ESD itself, which is 3.8km in diameter, and 5.5km in height, can only take on 3x that?
A Galaxy CAN (in emergencies like evacuations) fit 15k. Normal crew size is ~1000. ESD MIGHT be able to fit half a million people (and sustain them with oxygen etc.), but its regular complement are ~40k ... ?
A Galaxy CAN (in emergencies like evacuations) fit 15k. Normal crew size is ~1000. ESD MIGHT be able to fit half a million people (and sustain them with oxygen etc.), but its regular complement are ~40k ... ?
I think the basic mathematical operations are not the problem, but more the question of what each individual thinks is "reasonable" for a fictional space station but that's why we love Trek
Agreed. I don't really have anything to add at this time other than to agree I think the base would be a 3-to-1 ratio with more civilians than military personnel. Still, I'm really enjoying the conversation here, in the same way I love Trek.
Thanks guys!
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You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Keep in mind not EVERYONE lives on ESD only those that choose to live there or their duty does not allow them to leave normally. I mean Earth is right there they have shuttles and transporters. ESD can most likely hold more then a million. but day to day most likely 100,000 to 500,000 plus the ships inside would vary the crew on the station and what work is needed, ect.
Look at Bremerton Naval Shipyard has a work force of around 11,000 so that gives you an idea of just one US shipyard needs to keep some of it's ships running. note this is just the Civilian workers.
First, sorry my hand calculation was off by a few decimal places.
129,890,838,000 cubic meters habitable in ESD
Empire State building:
1,047,723 cubic meters
With a 2007 population of 21,000
So with that it comes to about 49.891571 cubic meters per person. Round off to 50.
ESD has a maximum population by space inside of 2,597,816,760
Ignoring life support and docking areas.
A population of 2.6 billion would produce 1.0391267e+12 BTU of heat per hour... approximately 761 megawatt-hours of energy. That's roughly the output of 2 nuclear reactors.
Keep in mind not EVERYONE lives on ESD only those that choose to live there or their duty does not allow them to leave normally. I mean Earth is right there they have shuttles and transporters. ESD can most likely hold more then a million. but day to day most likely 100,000 to 500,000 plus the ships inside would vary the crew on the station and what work is needed, ect.
Look at Bremerton Naval Shipyard has a work force of around 11,000 so that gives you an idea of just one US shipyard needs to keep some of it's ships running. note this is just the Civilian workers.
Are we assuming it's a strictly Starfleet facility? Or is it a civilian airport that has Starfleet shipyards? The new design clearly suggests some of the latter.
JFK airport probably has 300,000 people entering and leaving a day. That's one city airport on earth.
Double that to account for La Guardia to get an estimate of major airport traffic in NYC. There are 24 cities the size of NYC present day. (Maybe more in Trek's future but their global population is around ours.)
You end up estimating that a global airport would have around 7.2 million visitors per day.
Rule of thumb is generally one security guard or every two hundred people or maybe around 36k security guards on ESD. The computer can do a lot of the surveillance but it becomes a big security target for anyone looking to take over the station so it probably makes sense to go ahead and have most of those guards because not having them would allow anyone to take over after compromising the computer.
Note, that's on duty in a given day. Not all at once. Probably around 12,000 guards on duty at a given time.
Assume 7.2 million visitors per day. 300k per hour.
At a comfortable capacity of 36k by Taco's math, that would mean that the average time spent on the station is 7.2 minutes for people using it as a port of call.
That's probably not totally right but you could probably assume there would be new faces coming and going constantly, the bulk of whom would be very random looking civilians, probably over half of which would look human.
About 10% of parties would probably be children, based on stats I just found from airports. (Numbers range between around 5 and 15%.) Average party size is around 2. So around 5% of the traffic would be children.
That's actually something that would lend a LOT of flavor to the station. WoW has kids in its cities, particularly its capital which even has an orphanage.
From the perspective of content/placement, a big thing I can see would be to emphasize a station population that is constantly rotating, as in a new wave of civilians doing things several times an hour. About 1 in 20 as kids (which can be made in the alien/unlocked character tool). Try to go for the feeling that these people all have their own reasons for being there.
Might be novel if the trash vendors cycle out periodically using the hourly event mechanics. For convenience's sake, the same vendors will tend to be in the same places like Ferengi style vendors outside the tailor. But you could have specials pop in and out.
At five minutes before the hour, for example, maybe a commodity vendor starts to look impatient and a new commodity vendor beams in on the transporter pad and begins walking to the commodity area. On the hour, the commodity vendor beams out and the new one arrives at the commodity area and sets up shop with slightly different supplies.
Maybe have someone show up every fifteen minutes with various freebies to collect for modest amounts of EC like marks bundles or dilithium, as a way to reward socialization. But the location of freebies would vary.
Maybe have some scavenger hunt elements. Not unlike the books or fishing in Dalaran in WoW.
This would be down the line but I think what I'd love would be a hybrid of the MACO gear and motion picture era station security outfits on the ESD guards and have the costume unlocked for players via scavenger huints that involve rare inventory and random daily rewards. Y'know, track down enough Contraband on ESD, solve enough disputes, help enough lost kids find their families, etc. and you get deputized by Quinn as station security and get awarded a station security uniform.
A population of 2.6 billion would produce 1.0391267e+12 BTU of heat per hour... approximately 761 megawatt-hours of energy. That's roughly the output of 2 nuclear reactors.
Something to think about.
Sounds like something a Federation fusion reactor could easily handle. If the station doesn't even use a matter/antimatter reactor. (It's never been established whether these are used on spaceships only for the massive energy requirements of warp, though I think it has been established that DS9 uses only a fusion reactor. But DS9 is a bit smaller...)
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I'll see if I have time to load up Spacedock in 3DSmax later to extrapolate the habitable area, but a few important things to consider:-
Comparing to a citys area is problematic, since citys have buildings that have multiple floors abive the ground, ESD doesn't (so make sure this is properly taken into account)
Comparing to buildings is also problematic, since they could be made up of offices with very dence populations of workers, also many buildings don't have the equipment needed to make them run, for example power plants. Whereas ESD is totally self sufficient.
The population of ESD could comprise of people that just work there, but live on earth, as well as people that do decide to live there. This could have a huge impact on the actual population of the station.
When comparing to modern day airports, take into account we've never see that many ships buzzing around ESD in the series and since we also we have transporters, the chances are people coming to Earth beam down directly to the planet, there is no need to see ESD as a major transport hub for getting to Earth that requires such a huge security force. Although in STO, we 'do' have alot of traffic, so in that case there is definatly some relevance, but it should probably be compared more to a military base rather than a commercial airport.
The Galaxy class comparison seems fair, space wise they probably would be similar (when removing the area of the spacedock from the volume). We have to remember this is the future, so there is way more automation of tasks, so less people are required to run things.
I'll see what numbers I can come up with later today using various volume and crew ratios of ships compared to ESD. ;-)
I'll see if I have time to load up Spacedock in 3DSmax later to extrapolate the habitable area, but a few important things to consider:-
Comparing to a citys area is problematic, since citys have buildings that have multiple floors abive the ground, ESD doesn't (so make sure this is properly taken into account)
Comparing to buildings is also problematic, since they could be made up of offices with very dence populations of workers, also many buildings don't have the equipment needed to make them run, for example power plants. Whereas ESD is totally self sufficient.
The population of ESD could comprise of people that just work there, but live on earth, as well as people that do decide to live there. This could have a huge impact on the actual population of the station.
When comparing to modern day airports, take into account we've never see that many ships buzzing around ESD in the series and since we also we have transporters, the chances are people coming to Earth beam down directly to the planet, there is no need to see ESD as a major transport hub for getting to Earth that requires such a huge security force. Although in STO, we 'do' have alot of traffic, so in that case there is definatly some relevance, but it should probably be compared more to a military base rather than a commercial airport.
The Galaxy class comparison seems fair, space wise they probably would be similar (when removing the area of the spacedock from the volume). We have to remember this is the future, so there is way more automation of tasks, so less people are required to run things.
I'll see what numbers I can come up with later today using various volume and crew ratios of ships compared to ESD. ;-)
We also have to consider that Starfleet has subspace compression technology at some point in the timeline. We saw them experiment with this on DS9 and it being used by Daniels and the 31st Century Timeship in Enterprise.
It is possible that all Starships and Starbases now make use of it and this would naturally change everything. This will have to come up at some point between the end of Voyager and 3125.
This could also explain the baseball stadium sized bridges that our ships have.
I'll see if I have time to load up Spacedock in 3DSmax later to extrapolate the habitable area, but a few important things to consider:-
Comparing to a citys area is problematic, since citys have buildings that have multiple floors abive the ground, ESD doesn't (so make sure this is properly taken into account)
Comparing to buildings is also problematic, since they could be made up of offices with very dence populations of workers, also many buildings don't have the equipment needed to make them run, for example power plants. Whereas ESD is totally self sufficient.
The population of ESD could comprise of people that just work there, but live on earth, as well as people that do decide to live there. This could have a huge impact on the actual population of the station.
When comparing to modern day airports, take into account we've never see that many ships buzzing around ESD in the series and since we also we have transporters, the chances are people coming to Earth beam down directly to the planet, there is no need to see ESD as a major transport hub for getting to Earth that requires such a huge security force. Although in STO, we 'do' have alot of traffic, so in that case there is definatly some relevance, but it should probably be compared more to a military base rather than a commercial airport.
The Galaxy class comparison seems fair, space wise they probably would be similar (when removing the area of the spacedock from the volume). We have to remember this is the future, so there is way more automation of tasks, so less people are required to run things.
I'll see what numbers I can come up with later today using various volume and crew ratios of ships compared to ESD. ;-)
I guess my assumption was that transporters were mainly a feature on military and very advanced ships. Your average civilian ship doesn't necessarily have either transporters or maybe landing gear either.
I also figured based on some TOS lines that you needs a pilot's license of sorts to fly a ship.
Also figured there are issues like decontamination and trying to bottleneck traffic through a physical security point so that, without red tape and licensing, nobody visits or leaves earth without passing through ESD. Not that you couldn't but that your average person traveling in space doesn't own a ship or a transporter.
I guess my assumption was that transporters were mainly a feature on military and very advanced ships. Your average civilian ship doesn't necessarily have either transporters or maybe landing gear either.
I also figured based on some TOS lines that you needs a pilot's license of sorts to fly a ship.
Also figured there are issues like decontamination and trying to bottleneck traffic through a physical security point so that, without red tape and licensing, nobody visits or leaves earth without passing through ESD. Not that you couldn't but that your average person traveling in space doesn't own a ship or a transporter.
I'm fairly certain that ESD wouldn't take 100% of earths traffic.
If the moon has a population of 50 million people, then I don't think it would be unreasonable to ballpark an estimate of 1 to 2 million for ESD. In an emergency (such as a massive influx of refugees), I can see the Engineering Teams fabricating room for an additional 2 to 3 million (although this would likely take a few days).
The population consisting of Starfleet personnel, and their families. Shipyard workers, construction crews, and repair crews.
In addition to Starfleet personnel, you also have to consider that MACOs or Federation Marines (or whatever term you want to use to describe them) also have barracks and training facilities there, as they will also be on board Starfleet vessels for boarding actions and ground assaults. Along with habitable space for their families.
Then you have hospitals -- how much of the population will consist of the sick or injured? How many Starfleet Medical officers will be there to care for those sick and injured?
How about diplomatic offices? The Romulan Republic, the KDF (we have Kivra shuttles flying around our fleet starbases), and non-member worlds such as the Pakleds, or the Ferengi Alliance. You have to consider there must be facilities to accomodate Ambassador Sugihara's Diplomatic Corps., and specific decks/rooms to accomodate environments for those who do not live in a Class-M environment (like Tholians or Breen), or decks which exist entirely underwater to accomodate species such as the Xindi-Aquatics, or decks filled with mineral rock to accomodate hortas.
And then the clerical and support staff for those embassies and consulates on ESD.
Then you have Starfleet academy cadets who are moved from San Francisco to ESD (in the same way our fleet starbases have cadets), and their instructors and professors.
In addition to that, you have all of the civilian personnel who live on ESD instead of Earth or Luna.
It is, but I think it's important to mention that ground soldiers and others we wouldn't normally see in Star Trek consist of a large population. Not just red shirts, blue shirts, and gold shirts.
If we're in war, we're going to have a large population at ESD to take care of the sick and injured, and the legions of ground troops we normally don't consider part of a starships crew.
It is, but I think it's important to mention that ground soldiers and others we wouldn't normally see in Star Trek consist of a large population. Not just red shirts, blue shirts, and gold shirts.
If we're in war, we're going to have a large population at ESD to take care of the sick and injured, and the legions of ground troops we normally don't consider part of a starships crew.
That is true, and it is canon that the Galaxy-Class was mostly modular space to take on mission modules.
That is true, and it is canon that the Galaxy-Class was mostly modular space to take on mission modules.
Right. Like the USS Odyssey in DS9 wouldn't have the teaching staff and children the Enterprise-D did, but it would have made use of that room for barracks or armories.
Since in STO we are at war, I'd argue that large swaths of ESD's population are for the unseen ground troops and marines we send against the KDF, the Borg, and whatever other species we happen to be pissing off during the latest game update. And the more war fronts we're at, the larger our troop surges must be.
I'd argue ESD's population was lower before the Tholian Assembly attacked us (we were neutral as of DS9). But then as a result of the Nukara Strike Force -- more personnel were sent to ESD to accomodate that front too. So, each subsequent front we're on, the larger the population becomes.
Right. Like the USS Odyssey in DS9 wouldn't have the teaching staff and children the Enterprise-D did, but it would have made use of that room for barracks or armories.
Since in STO we are at war, I'd argue that large swaths of ESD's population are for the unseen ground troops and marines we send against the KDF, the Borg, and whatever other species we happen to be pissing off during the latest game update. And the more war fronts we're at, the larger our troop surges must be.
I'd argue ESD's population was lower before the Tholian Assembly attacked us (we were neutral as of DS9). But then as a result of the Nukara Strike Force -- more personnel were sent to ESD to accomodate that front too. So, each subsequent front we're on, the larger the population becomes.
^ This. ESD probably has a very large contigency of M.A.C.O. present at any given time. I'm honestly disappointed that we never see MACOs walking around ESD besides our characters.
Taco, please make it so. If nothing else, you're advertising the Omega Rep Gear!
Right. Like the USS Odyssey in DS9 wouldn't have the teaching staff and children the Enterprise-D did, but it would have made use of that room for barracks or armories.
Since in STO we are at war, I'd argue that large swaths of ESD's population are for the unseen ground troops and marines we send against the KDF, the Borg, and whatever other species we happen to be pissing off during the latest game update. And the more war fronts we're at, the larger our troop surges must be.
I'd argue ESD's population was lower before the Tholian Assembly attacked us (we were neutral as of DS9). But then as a result of the Nukara Strike Force -- more personnel were sent to ESD to accomodate that front too. So, each subsequent front we're on, the larger the population becomes.
That makes sense, I don't think it really goes up though, since all the "wars" are happening at different times, yet all at once. MMO's are weird man.
^ This. ESD probably has a very large contigency of M.A.C.O. present at any given time. I'm honestly disappointed that we never see MACOs walking around ESD besides our characters.
Taco, please make it so. If nothing else, you're advertising the Omega Rep Gear!
I know we all mostly play STO for starship gameplay, but if STO is truly two games in one (ground and space), then it's a good idea to consider not everyone on ESD wears a red, blue, or gold shirt. The Voth Battlezone is a good indication that 'enlisted personnel' are not just those who work on starships or ESD itself.
Tacofangs also doesn't do NPC artwork (from what he's said), that's someone else's arena. But it would be a good suggestion to have ground troops on ESD in large numbers to indicate just how many war fronts we're on.
Some NPCs in Nukara Gear, some in Omega Force Gear. Someone in Mk XII Dyson Armor sharing a drink with someone wearing MACO armor having 'war story' time on what happened on the Sphere and then following a similar story to what happened on some planet in Gamma Orionis.
You put all of those on ESD, and then consider the logistics and support crew for each of them, and the mental image of the space station containing a population of 1 or 2 million beings is not that far fetched.
That makes sense, I don't think it really goes up though, since all the "wars" are happening at different times, yet all at once. MMO's are weird man.
Do they have to be happening at different times? To me it's no different from World War II where you have different theatres. Only now it's at an inter-stellar scale, and it's not just the population of Earth, but multiple worlds.
Do they have to be happening at different times? To me it's no different from World War II where you have different theatres. Only now it's at an inter-stellar scale, and it's not just the population of Earth, but multiple worlds.
Clearly some of them do. Most if not all of the reputations happen after the KDF war, the Undine stuff happens after the Voth stuff, both of those happen after the New Romulus missions, so on and so forth.
Clearly some of them do. Most if not all of the reputations happen after the KDF war, the Undine stuff happens after the Voth stuff, both of those happen after the New Romulus missions, so on and so forth.
It's also being altered constantly, and they've obviously retconned some of the previous story material (like the Iconians making the Undine believe the Federation breached Janeway's treaty with them, since now the story is that the Undine Janeway made a treaty with were a 'small portion' of the populace and did not speak on behalf of the entire Undine government).
So, if the story itself is malleable and retconnable, I don't think the idea of altering a 'timeline of events' is out of the question.
After all, we're still in the year 2409 -- for 4 years. Although Jesse Heinig's "Hearts and Minds" mission had a stardate log that indicated that mission took place in 2413 (or thereabouts when he was likely making the mission and using the in-game stardate log, so to use that as an indication Cryptic advanced the timeline is a little sketchy).
Time is very malleable in STO, since you can both argue that we're 4 or 5 years into the war and each 'reputation' happens at different periods of time -- or you can argue the current 4 or 5 years of real life gameplay has been condensed into a single year of events, with several war fronts opening in the span of a single year (with the Borg happening in February, the Dominion FE happening in May, the Tholians in June, New Romulus in August, the Sphere in September, etc. etc.)
I choose to believe we're still in 2409, until _Kestrel_ says otherwise.
It's easy when you keep in mind it's a fictional scenario. The population of ESD is an exercise in mathematics and engineering, but any number of possibilities could be called into play to justify a lesser or greater populace.
Honestly, I don't think you can argue for or against a population estimate of ESD without considering what time period we're at in STO -- and like you said, if the reputations happen in chronological order or if they're all there at once, having multiple theatres to participate in.
They're both connected to each other, if you want to put some serious mathematics into the equation. And if several fronts are happening at once, then logistically speaking, the population of ESD will be much larger than if there were only one or two.
It's easy when you keep in mind it's a fictional scenario. The population of ESD is an exercise in mathematics and engineering, but any number of possibilities could be called into play to justify a lesser or greater populace.
Honestly, I don't think you can argue for or against a population estimate of ESD without considering what time period we're at in STO -- and like you said, if the reputations happen in chronological order or if they're all there at once, having multiple theatres to participate in.
They're both connected to each other, if you want to put some serious mathematics into the equation. And if several fronts are happening at once, then logistically speaking, the population of ESD will be much larger if there were only one or two.
Very true, but until we get an official timeline from cryptic, (Odd that we don't have one of those really) we can't really say that everything is happening at the same time.
^ This. ESD probably has a very large contigency of M.A.C.O. present at any given time. I'm honestly disappointed that we never see MACOs walking around ESD besides our characters.
Taco, please make it so. If nothing else, you're advertising the Omega Rep Gear!
We're talking about a place with several million square meters of floor space, and you are disappointed that you don't see MACO guys running around the couple thousand square meters you have access to? MACO is the special forces. They would not be relegated to guard duty.
Since this keeps coming up, here's my personal take on ESD's use/occupancy.
ESD is run/administered by Starfleet. It is a military base. It has numerous defenses it can throw out should the need arise. That includes not only torpedos and phasers, but large hangars of fighters, and their crews. For starfleet, it serves as a staging point. An airport/train station for starfleet personnel leaving the system to transit through from Earth to their assigned ships.
It's equally a transit point for anyone coming through Earth's space. ESD would serve as traffic control for the immediate space. Civilians, Aliens, Transport crews, etc. etc. would all potentially come through ESD for various reasons. They may be dropping off/picking up cargo, personnel, or information. They could be transferring ships. They could just be looking for a little short term shore leave for their crew.
MACO would certainly be stationed there, but I imagine they'd have their own designated areas, including holodecks they could use as training aids. I'm sure you'd see them around the station regularly, but I don't think they'd be in full uniform when off duty.
ESD would be equipped with some of the best equipment Starfleet has access to. Science labs, design departments, office spaces, etc. would be in abundance. These would be for use not just of starfleet personnel, but for civilians, aliens, etc. that have obtained permission. I'd imagine non-starfleet people would obtain essentially a lease, or permit to use the facilities of the base.
ESD would contain a large hospital complex, along with smaller clinics (like the Infirmary) scattered throughout the station. The hospital may not have mass amounts of patients normally, but would serve as the main triage/treatment point for all of Sol space during an emergency. It would also be where much of Starfleet's medical study/knowledge is located. If you end up with some weird alien disease, and don't die of it immediately, they'd bring you to ESD for test/treatments.
My personal opinion follows the Starbase 79 plans in the use of the 'bell' of the station. I don't think it makes sense to have a secondary docking bay, and I like the idea of there being an immense park/recreation area in there for use by both station personnel and transient populations. There would be temporary housing available for those transient populations, and crew quarters for the stationed personnel.
The area you have access to in the new ESD is the administration level. Spacedock operations is here, obviously. The other areas, Club, Infirmary, Exchange, Shops, are there for the convenience of those that spend their day there, as well as any dignitaries/diplomats that might be there at any given time. The Shuttlebay brings in cargo for the Exchange, and shops, but is also the main access point for the shuttles of those diplomats, as well as Quinn and other personnel when they need to get someplace. IMO, the transporter wouldn't be used for everything. For instance, unless there was an emergency or such, you would not necessarily transport to Earth. You'd get a shuttle, and take that down. You also wouldn't transport around the station. Turbolifts would get you around pretty quick, but if you really wanted a direct route from one end of the station to the other, you might grab a shuttle.
Hopefully that explains my thoughts on ESD a little better.
Comments
First, sorry my hand calculation was off by a few decimal places.
129,890,838,000 cubic meters habitable in ESD
Empire State building:
1,047,723 cubic meters
With a 2007 population of 21,000
So with that it comes to about 49.891571 cubic meters per person. Round off to 50.
ESD has a maximum population by space inside of 2,597,816,760
Ignoring life support and docking areas.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
A Galaxy CAN (in emergencies like evacuations) fit 15k. Normal crew size is ~1000. ESD MIGHT be able to fit half a million people (and sustain them with oxygen etc.), but its regular complement are ~40k ... ?
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That makes sense.
He is math in full blood
I think the basic mathematical operations are not the problem, but more the question of what each individual thinks is "reasonable" for a fictional space station
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You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Look at Bremerton Naval Shipyard has a work force of around 11,000 so that gives you an idea of just one US shipyard needs to keep some of it's ships running. note this is just the Civilian workers.
A population of 2.6 billion would produce 1.0391267e+12 BTU of heat per hour... approximately 761 megawatt-hours of energy. That's roughly the output of 2 nuclear reactors.
Something to think about.
Are we assuming it's a strictly Starfleet facility? Or is it a civilian airport that has Starfleet shipyards? The new design clearly suggests some of the latter.
JFK airport probably has 300,000 people entering and leaving a day. That's one city airport on earth.
Double that to account for La Guardia to get an estimate of major airport traffic in NYC. There are 24 cities the size of NYC present day. (Maybe more in Trek's future but their global population is around ours.)
You end up estimating that a global airport would have around 7.2 million visitors per day.
Rule of thumb is generally one security guard or every two hundred people or maybe around 36k security guards on ESD. The computer can do a lot of the surveillance but it becomes a big security target for anyone looking to take over the station so it probably makes sense to go ahead and have most of those guards because not having them would allow anyone to take over after compromising the computer.
Note, that's on duty in a given day. Not all at once. Probably around 12,000 guards on duty at a given time.
Assume 7.2 million visitors per day. 300k per hour.
At a comfortable capacity of 36k by Taco's math, that would mean that the average time spent on the station is 7.2 minutes for people using it as a port of call.
That's probably not totally right but you could probably assume there would be new faces coming and going constantly, the bulk of whom would be very random looking civilians, probably over half of which would look human.
About 10% of parties would probably be children, based on stats I just found from airports. (Numbers range between around 5 and 15%.) Average party size is around 2. So around 5% of the traffic would be children.
That's actually something that would lend a LOT of flavor to the station. WoW has kids in its cities, particularly its capital which even has an orphanage.
From the perspective of content/placement, a big thing I can see would be to emphasize a station population that is constantly rotating, as in a new wave of civilians doing things several times an hour. About 1 in 20 as kids (which can be made in the alien/unlocked character tool). Try to go for the feeling that these people all have their own reasons for being there.
Might be novel if the trash vendors cycle out periodically using the hourly event mechanics. For convenience's sake, the same vendors will tend to be in the same places like Ferengi style vendors outside the tailor. But you could have specials pop in and out.
At five minutes before the hour, for example, maybe a commodity vendor starts to look impatient and a new commodity vendor beams in on the transporter pad and begins walking to the commodity area. On the hour, the commodity vendor beams out and the new one arrives at the commodity area and sets up shop with slightly different supplies.
Maybe have someone show up every fifteen minutes with various freebies to collect for modest amounts of EC like marks bundles or dilithium, as a way to reward socialization. But the location of freebies would vary.
Maybe have some scavenger hunt elements. Not unlike the books or fishing in Dalaran in WoW.
This would be down the line but I think what I'd love would be a hybrid of the MACO gear and motion picture era station security outfits on the ESD guards and have the costume unlocked for players via scavenger huints that involve rare inventory and random daily rewards. Y'know, track down enough Contraband on ESD, solve enough disputes, help enough lost kids find their families, etc. and you get deputized by Quinn as station security and get awarded a station security uniform.
Sounds like something a Federation fusion reactor could easily handle. If the station doesn't even use a matter/antimatter reactor. (It's never been established whether these are used on spaceships only for the massive energy requirements of warp, though I think it has been established that DS9 uses only a fusion reactor. But DS9 is a bit smaller...)
I'll see what numbers I can come up with later today using various volume and crew ratios of ships compared to ESD. ;-)
We also have to consider that Starfleet has subspace compression technology at some point in the timeline. We saw them experiment with this on DS9 and it being used by Daniels and the 31st Century Timeship in Enterprise.
It is possible that all Starships and Starbases now make use of it and this would naturally change everything. This will have to come up at some point between the end of Voyager and 3125.
This could also explain the baseball stadium sized bridges that our ships have.
I guess my assumption was that transporters were mainly a feature on military and very advanced ships. Your average civilian ship doesn't necessarily have either transporters or maybe landing gear either.
I also figured based on some TOS lines that you needs a pilot's license of sorts to fly a ship.
Also figured there are issues like decontamination and trying to bottleneck traffic through a physical security point so that, without red tape and licensing, nobody visits or leaves earth without passing through ESD. Not that you couldn't but that your average person traveling in space doesn't own a ship or a transporter.
I'm fairly certain that ESD wouldn't take 100% of earths traffic.
The population consisting of Starfleet personnel, and their families. Shipyard workers, construction crews, and repair crews.
In addition to Starfleet personnel, you also have to consider that MACOs or Federation Marines (or whatever term you want to use to describe them) also have barracks and training facilities there, as they will also be on board Starfleet vessels for boarding actions and ground assaults. Along with habitable space for their families.
Then you have hospitals -- how much of the population will consist of the sick or injured? How many Starfleet Medical officers will be there to care for those sick and injured?
How about diplomatic offices? The Romulan Republic, the KDF (we have Kivra shuttles flying around our fleet starbases), and non-member worlds such as the Pakleds, or the Ferengi Alliance. You have to consider there must be facilities to accomodate Ambassador Sugihara's Diplomatic Corps., and specific decks/rooms to accomodate environments for those who do not live in a Class-M environment (like Tholians or Breen), or decks which exist entirely underwater to accomodate species such as the Xindi-Aquatics, or decks filled with mineral rock to accomodate hortas.
And then the clerical and support staff for those embassies and consulates on ESD.
Then you have Starfleet academy cadets who are moved from San Francisco to ESD (in the same way our fleet starbases have cadets), and their instructors and professors.
In addition to that, you have all of the civilian personnel who live on ESD instead of Earth or Luna.
It is, but I think it's important to mention that ground soldiers and others we wouldn't normally see in Star Trek consist of a large population. Not just red shirts, blue shirts, and gold shirts.
If we're in war, we're going to have a large population at ESD to take care of the sick and injured, and the legions of ground troops we normally don't consider part of a starships crew.
That is true, and it is canon that the Galaxy-Class was mostly modular space to take on mission modules.
Right. Like the USS Odyssey in DS9 wouldn't have the teaching staff and children the Enterprise-D did, but it would have made use of that room for barracks or armories.
Since in STO we are at war, I'd argue that large swaths of ESD's population are for the unseen ground troops and marines we send against the KDF, the Borg, and whatever other species we happen to be pissing off during the latest game update. And the more war fronts we're at, the larger our troop surges must be.
I'd argue ESD's population was lower before the Tholian Assembly attacked us (we were neutral as of DS9). But then as a result of the Nukara Strike Force -- more personnel were sent to ESD to accomodate that front too. So, each subsequent front we're on, the larger the population becomes.
^ This. ESD probably has a very large contigency of M.A.C.O. present at any given time. I'm honestly disappointed that we never see MACOs walking around ESD besides our characters.
Taco, please make it so. If nothing else, you're advertising the Omega Rep Gear!
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
That makes sense, I don't think it really goes up though, since all the "wars" are happening at different times, yet all at once. MMO's are weird man.
This is a good example of the population of STO we don't see represented well in-game.
I know we all mostly play STO for starship gameplay, but if STO is truly two games in one (ground and space), then it's a good idea to consider not everyone on ESD wears a red, blue, or gold shirt. The Voth Battlezone is a good indication that 'enlisted personnel' are not just those who work on starships or ESD itself.
Tacofangs also doesn't do NPC artwork (from what he's said), that's someone else's arena. But it would be a good suggestion to have ground troops on ESD in large numbers to indicate just how many war fronts we're on.
Some NPCs in Nukara Gear, some in Omega Force Gear. Someone in Mk XII Dyson Armor sharing a drink with someone wearing MACO armor having 'war story' time on what happened on the Sphere and then following a similar story to what happened on some planet in Gamma Orionis.
You put all of those on ESD, and then consider the logistics and support crew for each of them, and the mental image of the space station containing a population of 1 or 2 million beings is not that far fetched.
Do they have to be happening at different times? To me it's no different from World War II where you have different theatres. Only now it's at an inter-stellar scale, and it's not just the population of Earth, but multiple worlds.
Clearly some of them do. Most if not all of the reputations happen after the KDF war, the Undine stuff happens after the Voth stuff, both of those happen after the New Romulus missions, so on and so forth.
It's also being altered constantly, and they've obviously retconned some of the previous story material (like the Iconians making the Undine believe the Federation breached Janeway's treaty with them, since now the story is that the Undine Janeway made a treaty with were a 'small portion' of the populace and did not speak on behalf of the entire Undine government).
So, if the story itself is malleable and retconnable, I don't think the idea of altering a 'timeline of events' is out of the question.
After all, we're still in the year 2409 -- for 4 years. Although Jesse Heinig's "Hearts and Minds" mission had a stardate log that indicated that mission took place in 2413 (or thereabouts when he was likely making the mission and using the in-game stardate log, so to use that as an indication Cryptic advanced the timeline is a little sketchy).
Time is very malleable in STO, since you can both argue that we're 4 or 5 years into the war and each 'reputation' happens at different periods of time -- or you can argue the current 4 or 5 years of real life gameplay has been condensed into a single year of events, with several war fronts opening in the span of a single year (with the Borg happening in February, the Dominion FE happening in May, the Tholians in June, New Romulus in August, the Sphere in September, etc. etc.)
I choose to believe we're still in 2409, until _Kestrel_ says otherwise.
It's easy when you keep in mind it's a fictional scenario. The population of ESD is an exercise in mathematics and engineering, but any number of possibilities could be called into play to justify a lesser or greater populace.
Honestly, I don't think you can argue for or against a population estimate of ESD without considering what time period we're at in STO -- and like you said, if the reputations happen in chronological order or if they're all there at once, having multiple theatres to participate in.
They're both connected to each other, if you want to put some serious mathematics into the equation. And if several fronts are happening at once, then logistically speaking, the population of ESD will be much larger than if there were only one or two.
Very true, but until we get an official timeline from cryptic, (Odd that we don't have one of those really) we can't really say that everything is happening at the same time.
We're talking about a place with several million square meters of floor space, and you are disappointed that you don't see MACO guys running around the couple thousand square meters you have access to? MACO is the special forces. They would not be relegated to guard duty.
Since this keeps coming up, here's my personal take on ESD's use/occupancy.
ESD is run/administered by Starfleet. It is a military base. It has numerous defenses it can throw out should the need arise. That includes not only torpedos and phasers, but large hangars of fighters, and their crews. For starfleet, it serves as a staging point. An airport/train station for starfleet personnel leaving the system to transit through from Earth to their assigned ships.
It's equally a transit point for anyone coming through Earth's space. ESD would serve as traffic control for the immediate space. Civilians, Aliens, Transport crews, etc. etc. would all potentially come through ESD for various reasons. They may be dropping off/picking up cargo, personnel, or information. They could be transferring ships. They could just be looking for a little short term shore leave for their crew.
MACO would certainly be stationed there, but I imagine they'd have their own designated areas, including holodecks they could use as training aids. I'm sure you'd see them around the station regularly, but I don't think they'd be in full uniform when off duty.
ESD would be equipped with some of the best equipment Starfleet has access to. Science labs, design departments, office spaces, etc. would be in abundance. These would be for use not just of starfleet personnel, but for civilians, aliens, etc. that have obtained permission. I'd imagine non-starfleet people would obtain essentially a lease, or permit to use the facilities of the base.
ESD would contain a large hospital complex, along with smaller clinics (like the Infirmary) scattered throughout the station. The hospital may not have mass amounts of patients normally, but would serve as the main triage/treatment point for all of Sol space during an emergency. It would also be where much of Starfleet's medical study/knowledge is located. If you end up with some weird alien disease, and don't die of it immediately, they'd bring you to ESD for test/treatments.
My personal opinion follows the Starbase 79 plans in the use of the 'bell' of the station. I don't think it makes sense to have a secondary docking bay, and I like the idea of there being an immense park/recreation area in there for use by both station personnel and transient populations. There would be temporary housing available for those transient populations, and crew quarters for the stationed personnel.
The area you have access to in the new ESD is the administration level. Spacedock operations is here, obviously. The other areas, Club, Infirmary, Exchange, Shops, are there for the convenience of those that spend their day there, as well as any dignitaries/diplomats that might be there at any given time. The Shuttlebay brings in cargo for the Exchange, and shops, but is also the main access point for the shuttles of those diplomats, as well as Quinn and other personnel when they need to get someplace. IMO, the transporter wouldn't be used for everything. For instance, unless there was an emergency or such, you would not necessarily transport to Earth. You'd get a shuttle, and take that down. You also wouldn't transport around the station. Turbolifts would get you around pretty quick, but if you really wanted a direct route from one end of the station to the other, you might grab a shuttle.
Hopefully that explains my thoughts on ESD a little better.