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Brother Coa wrote:How many Eldar there are in the galaxy left?

From what I gartered from your posts and Lexicanum, the Eldar only outnumber the Tau by population.
What population can 1 Craftworld sustain? And what do Eldar do when it comes to children?
Are they doing something to stabilize the population?

A craftworld is the size of a small planet, and populated throughout. Assuming a comfortably low population density, due to excessive use of open space and whatnot, there's probably a lower limit on their normal population around that of the average hiveworld. I haven't heard anything about the craftworlds' populations doubling since the fall, since the Codex says that each generation is smaller than the last, though the two aren't necessarily exclusive considering the extremely long lifespans of Eldar; the initial generation of refugees produces a generation smaller than their own, which produces a yet smaller subsequent generation, and so on, with each generation surviving for nine or ten generations (or more, since we have no clue what an Eldar generation actually is), meaning a large population boom on board the craftworlds after the fall, that's slowly dwindled since (each generation unable to replace the generation dying off in its time, due to reduced births and attrition from war and young Eldar realizing how arbitrary and self destructive the craftworlder philosophy is, and deciding to become pirates instead), so now it's only twice the original population, and dwindling ever faster. That actually seems like a more entertainingly absurd situation: with every advantage, the craftworlders still couldn't help but kill themselves off through adherence to a philosophy that prevents them from thriving, while driving away their young.

Exodites are stone-age barbarians following a hunter-gatherer lifestyle on a handful of worlds. That puts their population in the low millions on the outside.

Commoragh is a city that compares to the largest of Imperial hives as "a soaring mountain is to a mound of termites", leaving it at roughly the size of a solar system in volume, which meshes well with the whole "contains seven stars" and "is a conglomeration of every old Eldar webway city and estate, technically located across the entire galaxy" things.

To take the mountain/termite analogy way too literally, and waste about half an hour waiting for various wikipedia pages to load, in addition to gratuitously making up the numbers that those pages don't contain, for reasons amounting to "I think it would be funny": if we take the average large termite mound (something like three meters high, and one meter wide, for a very rough volume of 2.4 m^3, considering it to be a cylinder for simplicity's sake), and the volume of mount everest (because this is already ridiculous, so why not go all out?; 8,848 meters high, and we'll assume it's a cone with 45 degree slopes because it's 4am and I don't feel like coming up with something more accurate, giving us 181,252,390,836 m^3), we find that everest is roughly equivalent to 76,964,921,799 termite mounds. The largest Imperial hive is Terra, which has a surface area of 510,072,000 km^2; we have absolutely no information on how deep the hive is, so I'm going to make a guess of five kilometers, which I assume is grossly underestimating it; for simplicities sake, let's ignore the issue that it's a crust on an approximate sphere, and pretend it's a flat box, so we get 2,550,360,000 km^3. Now, to convert that based on the analogy: 196,288,257,959,297,640,000 km^3 (196 quintillion; for reference, the area of a disk with a radius equal to the average distance pluto is from the sun is 106,883,258,684,868,356,273 km^2 (107 quintillion), making the offhand "roughly the size of a solar system" comment not too inaccurate, if conceptualized as a thin disk).

I took some gross liberties in calculating this, and I wouldn't begin to suggest it's accurate, but it does give a nice frame of reference (namely, that mountains are quite a lot bigger than termite mounds), and if we took a more average mountain (I don't know, maybe a third of everest's volume? I confess I don't know the first thing about mountains), and made a wild guess as to the size of a more average hive (maybe the size of the US, about 2% of the Earth's surface?), decided Commoragh was 99.9% empty space for some reason, and gave what remained a population density similar to Alaska (.46 people per square kilometer), only made it per km^3 instead of per km^2, it would still have a massive population (601,950,657,741,846, which is a bit saner, but still patently ridiculous). My math may be off in places, not least of which because I flagrantly ignored significant figures and on account of it being 4 am when I started this, not to mention because I just made up numbers that sounded reasonable when I was doing this.


Of course, this really just goes to demonstrate the complete lack of scale that pops up in 40k fluff, with things like Cadia having a population less than that of the US, or Eldar living in a couple dozen planet sized ships, which notably provide significantly more living space than a thin layer covering a small portion of a planet, and yet being treated as though they had a total population barely larger than Cadia's...

Brother Coa wrote:Commoragh is a size of a Solar System?

That was an offhand joke. Hilariously, it matched up with the extremely unreliable calculations I did.

To try to make it more realistic, let's assume the "soaring mountain" in the analogy is actually just a big hill (say, 2,000 times the size of a termite mound), and the hive in question only covers a third of the surface of a planet roughly the size of Terra, we still get something around 1,683,237,600,000 km^3. If it were as sparsely populated as Idaho (and we decide that per km^2 should be per km^3, further reducing the density since people live in an effectively flat plain on the surface, less than a hundred meters high under most circumstances; 7.3 people per km^2, the seventh lowest in the US; for comparison, the most densely populated state, New Jersey, has a density of 462 people per km^2), it would still come to 12,287,634,480,000 (twelve trillion), in the same ballpark as estimations of the Guard's numbers.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:Highly unlikely Eldar outnumber Tau.

Tau populate dozens of planets in dozens of systems with world populations The species is also short lived, indicating they most likely reproduce very quickly. Given city layouts in 40K for most races, I'd clock Tau in at perhaps 100 billion+ depedning on how much new fluff has them expanding.

Eldar have a few Craftworlds with a few million apiece on them. Malantai was described as being one such large Craftworld and was destroyed by a few Nids and the "doom"

Had they billions on the craftworld it is unlikely a few nids would of been able to destroy it.

I would estimate the remaining Eldar at 300,000 - 500,000 million at the very most including the Dark Eldar. Remember, a single chapter brought a war to Commoragh, if they had billions the Space Marines would of been wiped out in minutes.

You're underestimating the Eldar and possibly the Tau as well. The Tau have... seven, isn't it? main populated worlds, and a few dozen small colonies. We don't know how populous their main colonies are; they could have smaller populations than Modern Earth, making the entirety of the Tau less than the population of a single craftworld, or they could have populations in line with the average hiveworld, leaving them with a total population roughly equivalent to that of a single craftworld.

For reference, the space marines that were allowed/lured into Commoragh were large contingents from three chapters, with a battle barge and a dozen strike cruisers. They suffered in excess of 75% casualties, and lost every ship apart from the battle barge and the cruiser they came to recover, in the span of a few minutes, facing only a disorganized resistance from those who happened to be close enough to react before they fled, further complicated by the campaign of sabotage and assassination Vect's servants carried out against the nobles leading the defense.These were Space Marines, the Mary Sues lugging around several metric tons of plot armor each, and they were slaughtered.

1hadhq wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

For reference, the space marines that were allowed/lured into Commoragh were large contingents from three chapters, with a battle barge and a dozen strike cruisers. They suffered in excess of 75% casualties, and lost every ship apart from the battle barge and the cruiser they came to recover, in the span of a few minutes, facing only a disorganized resistance from those who happened to be close enough to react before they fled, further complicated by the campaign of sabotage and assassination Vect's servants carried out against the nobles leading the defense.These were Space Marines, the Mary Sues lugging around several metric tons of plot armor each, and they were slaughtered

Fascinating.
Not what codex Dark Eldar states.

By which you mean, taken directly from the codex? From page 14: three chapters (the Salamanders, Howling Griffons, and Silver Skulls) committed two dozen strike cruisers (okay, so I got the number of strike cruisers wrong, meaning they actually had more forces there) and a battle barge; these were met by a few hundred small craft, the only types mentioned being those usable in game (voidravens, razorwings, and ravagers), which are notably each less than a hundredth the size of the smallest Imperial escort (I know there's a picture of one someone built to scale, that came out somewhere on the order of twelve feet long... there's also a picture of Imperial ships as compared to actual objects and other sci-fi ships, let's see if I can find it... well, it's not anywhere on my hard drive, as far as I can tell), which is itself diminutive compared to a cruiser (which, converted to the same scale as tabletop models, would come out to roughly the size of an eighteen wheeler), and disabled by them, at which point they jettison the space marines on board and are promptly not mentioned again, aside from the battle barge. From page 15: by the time the nearby wych cults have reacted, there are around 500 marines in the city, and they've already suffered 50% casualties (so, three chapters each committed more than three companies to the fight, averaged out; the Salamanders probably sent more, meaning the others sent less); several leaders of the defense are assassinated by other Dark Eldar, one with a dark lance and another by Lelith; the machines holding the captured cruiser in place are sabotaged, freeing it, and about half the surviving marines teleport away, with those unable to teleport away for whatever reason being slaughtered or captured; the remaining ships flee as the forces attacking them are set upon by other Dark Eldar ships.

So, 75% casualties, in just over the amount of time it takes for a wych cult to react. By the time even the nearest houses realized they were even there, and had some troops marching on their position, they'd fled.

Brother Coa wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:The usual assumption is that the IoM has one million worlds (a round number.)

Modern science estimates two billion Earthlike worlds in our galaxy, not to mention worlds for species like the Vespid, and terraformed planets.

If that is the case, the IoM, although spread out over a large area, only occupies a small percentage of the available planets.

The rest of them could harbour any number of Exodites, Orks, Tau, Hrud, Demiurg, and other species. If they were unfriendly, the size of the IG would be utterly irrelevant. The other factions could afford to obliterate all the IoM Star systems entirely, and barely notice the loss of living space.

(But, as always with 40K fluff, GW have no grip on reality so the whole thing will dissolve easily when looked at in any detail. Best to leave it alone and make up some nice sounding numbers.)

Modern science? 10 years ago they didn't know that there are planets around other suns ( until HABL shot one black dot on a star ). Our galaxy has 500-600 billions stars, 2/3 of them have planets. Avrage of 10 planets per star, 3-5 of them can always be terraformed. And on every 2'nd or 3'rd star there is a planet like Eart ( atmosphere, wather in liquid state, continents... ). Did you get the numbers?

Imperium surly have more than 1 million worlds, I read somewhere that "Imperial lose on a dally basis 10 worlds and settle 100 more". And don't forget Human lost colonies still left to be discovered by Imperium. And some of them surely have Human level of technology from DaoT. And all aliens are already unfriendly toward Humanity, but they are also unfriendly to themselves ( Orks for example ), so Imperium will never be crushed by them - neither he will ever be able to crush them giving the number of enemies they already have.

And as always, GW fluff is rather strange when it comes to reality . But Imperium will never lose when it comes to GW, because the center of 40k IS IoM and it's warriors - The Space Marines and their battle for Humanity's survival.

100-400 billion stars and an estimated 50 billion planets, with 500 million within the habitable zone of their star. The number of habitable worlds, or those that could be/happened to be terraformed is unknown, but it's not unreasonable to assume it's less than one percent of those 500 million, since "habitable zone" means exactly nothing as to the composition or size of the planets, only their distance from a star. The "one million worlds" in the Imperium figure is the only number that ever shows up, and as far as I know "thousands of trillions of humans" is the only figure on human numbers.

1hadhq wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
From page 14: three chapters (the Salamanders, Howling Griffons, and Silver Skulls) committed two dozen strike cruisers and a battle barge; these were met by hundreds of small craft, the only types mentioned being those usable in game (voidravens, razorwings, and ravagers), and disabled by them, at which point they jettison the space marines on board and are promptly not mentioned again, aside from the battle barge.

Such a surprise GW mentions units they may plan to realease someday...

What? My goal was to point out that the only craft mentioned are those that exist on the tabletop, and are geared towards killing infantry and tanks, not strike cruisers. As there was no "and larger warships" or somesuch added, we can only gather that it was a fleet of a few hundred bus sized ships going against twenty four warships that compare to an aircraft carrier as an aircraft carrier does to a bus (and one that similarly dwarfed the others), and at the very least hacking all of their guns off and crippling the battle barge to the extent that it crashes, only to regain power after the strike cruiser they'd come to rescue was freed (wait, rereading it seems the battle barge effectively crashed into some Space Power Lines and fried itself, because whoever was piloting it was an idiot who crashed into some Space Power Lines...). No ship other than the battle barge or the freed strike cruiser is mentioned after "One by one the Imperial guns were silenced."

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
From page 15: by the time the nearby wych cults have reacted, there are around 500 marines in the city, and they've already suffered 50% casualties. the machines holding the captured cruiser in place are sabotaged, freeing it,

Sabotaged? Nice name for Termies destroying what held the battlebarge whilst fending off the DE.
Did these DE succed in destroying the space marine vessel? NO? Got shotdown all of them?

"Miraculously, each missile seemed to trigger a chain explosion, and the burning shards crashed down into the streets below." -> The spars were rigged to go up at the slightest touch, since the whole point of the whole ordeal was to disgrace the Commorite nobility (a krak missile has a hard time doing anything at all the front armor of the light APCs used by the Guard, what exactly is it supposed to do against "giant building able to hold a strike cruiser in place"?); for all we know the missiles didn't even touch the spars, and they were just remotely detonated (educated guess based on the effective range of a missile launcher being less than the width of the ship, let alone enough to hit nine spars surrounding it on all sides).

The page goes on to have all the other haywire fields that had kept the imperial weapons offline mysteriously shutting off, and the first organized aerial resistance to the intruders to be set upon by other Dark Eldar forces, affording the surviving vessels, of which only two are acknowledged as still existing, time to flee.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
and about half the surviving marines teleport away,

You dislike correct numbers it seems. How about improving this and next time we see unaltered GW fluff?

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
So, 75% casualties, in just over the amount of time it takes for a wych cult to react. By the time even the nearest houses realized they were even there, and had some troops marching on their position, they'd fled.

Not sure where you get your ideas from.
Deepstriking 500 and losing 50% never amounts to 75% casualties.
Taking your objective and leave is a tactical retreat.

By the time the closest wych cults responded there were 500 living marines in the city, and they'd already suffered 50% casualties ("The Space Marines in the city were now almost five hundred strong... The Space Marines fell back; they had lost half their number already, and badly needed to regroup."). This is roughly halfway through the battle. Once the strike cruiser is set free, "the bulk" of the survivors teleport away, leaving those unable to to die. 75% casualties is a lowball estimate, when they'd suffered 50% within minutes of landing, facing only what was already beneath them, and then later still some number greater than 50% but less than ~80% of what was left at alive that point managed to escape. So, losing somewhere in excess of half a chapter, to rescue a single, heavily damaged strike cruiser, at the very least losing every single gun on a battle barge and twenty four strike cruisers, potentially losing any number of those strike cruisers, all to those forces that they actively landed on top, in the time it took for the next closest houses to realize something was going on and rush to get in on the action, while Vect's servants took the opportunity to cripple the defense effort.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:DE don't clone, they're in vitro test tube babies but still conceived naturally. Considering its one of the reasons DE are the way they are I wouldn't go down that road either if I were craftworld either.

It doesn't necessarily have to be conceived naturally either; a fertilized egg can be produced in a lab, which would make more sense than trying to extract it from a living host. There's also no side effects of the process mentioned, aside from being permanently stuck in a lower social class than the nobility who reproduce naturally.

Grey Templar wrote:DE with enough wealth can even cheat death. they hack a piece of their body off(a finger will do) and send it to a Homonculus. He can then use the Finger/whatever they hacked off to grow the DE a new body for his soul to inhabit.

naturally the price is steep so you either have to give him alot of new toys or have him indebted to you.

The price is part of their soul, and they're revived from whatever could be recovered from their body after death, not a piece removed preemptively.