Tobias said:
It's not like the rules just imply this. It is said flat out (in AM4) that psionic potential is not hereditary. It is similarly said that all nobles and intendants receive psionic training and that they can have "low" psionic strength - but not none at all.
It could hardly say anthing about psionic potential since that's something I've come up with on my own. It propably said that psionic power isn't hereditary.
I didn't remember that AM4 stated that outright. Very well, change 'imply' to 'state'. My argument remains the same.
a) we have at the very least about 1000 Marquises (pl?) even if only high population worlds have an assigned Marquis plus their families. 2000-3000 seems more like it.
It's easier to say that in theory you have one high baron or high marquis for each of the Imperium's 11,000 worlds. In practice, some noblemen double up on titles, like Norris who is both Marquis of Regina and Baron of Yori and Leonard of Aramis who is both Marquis of Aramis and Baron of Lewis. Some may even triple up, though I can't think of any examples. Some worlds will have counts instead of marquesses. So call it somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 high nobles, quite possible in the higher end of that range.
b) it makes sense to assume that Barons are considerably more numerous than Marquises. I assume a ratio of Dukes to Marquises to Barons of 1:10:100.
I assume a ratio of around 3:1 high barons to high marquesses, same for high marquesses to high counts, maybe 5 or 6 to 1 for high counts to high dukes. The ratios for the lower titles may be a lot flatter, actually. ISTR a figure of one count for every cluster of half a dozen worlds. That could make it one count, two marquesses, and three barons per six worlds, with some of the baronial titles doubled up on a marquis or a count.
We're not even getting into the topic of "honor nobles" here and how many there are compared to rank nobles.
That's true. I don't see honor and rank nobles outnumbering high nobles by a factor of 10, though. 3:1 perhaps. But you're quite right that we don't know for sure.
A Fleet Admiral is quite evidently a rank suited for the commander of one numbered fleet. That is evident because the next higher rank is "Sector Admiral" who is presumably responsible for the naval forces of one sector, but in any case for more than one fleet - you wrote this yourself in a discussion a while back.
Sure, but you can have more than one Fleet Admiral per fleet, just as you have more than one four-star admiral per navy on Earth today (Depending on the size of the navy, of course; IIRC, the CinC of the Danish Navy is a 3-star). And more than one sector admiral per sector. You might, for example, have four sector admirals for the Spinward Marches: The Sector Admiral, the Deputy Sector Admiral, the CinC Coreward Command at Rhylanor and the CinC Rimward Command at Glisten. (No evidence for that, this is just an entirely made-up example).
(Btw, I am quite sure you got something mixed up about the US Navy ranks. There are currently no 5-Star Admirals at all AFAIK.)
You're quite right. It must have been 11 4-star admirals.
Unfortunately, I can't find the file I had on the original numbers, and I've recently realized that I made a mistake when I converted the USN numbers to IN fleet numbers (I somehow got the idea that the US Navy had 500,000 members, but it turns out it's only 325,000).
I did find a thread on CotI where I have posted my final numbers. They are:
"Then the average personnel of a regular fleet (excluding the reserve fleet) would be 281,810 (of which 93,940 would be civilian employees).
Given the number of potential inaccuracies, it would probably be acceptable to round those figures off to 300,000 and 100,000.
In which case a fleet would need 132 flag officers: 6 admirals, 18 vice admirals, 42 rear admirals, and 66 commodores."
These would be based on my mistaken assumption that I should cut the numbers for the US Navy down to 3/5th for an Imperial fleet. I think the numbers for the USN must have been a total of around 110 2-, 3-, and 4-star admirals (1-stars are mere commodores, so let's forget about them).
Right now, until I find the original source of those number and can confirm them or revise them, I'll stick to a number of admirals (rear admirals, vice admirals, admirals, and fleet admirals) of roughly 100 per Imperial fleet, or 30-32,000 for the entire Imperial Navy. (Sector and grand admirals won't add more than about a hundred more).
The Imperium canonically has a population of 15 trillion.
Just out of curiosity, where does it say so? I mean, it's not too far off from the calculated ballpark.
I can't remember. Perhaps someone else can help?
Why shouldn't an Imperial baron be the social equal of the leader of half a continent?
Because the Imperium is not one planet and there are thousands of these guys?
Thouands of which guys? You have a handful of Imperial barons per major world, you have a handful of continental level rulers per world. Why shouldn't they be social equals?
Class definitions as used in modern social science deal mainly with income and standards of living - which is a definition that does not always work in the context of a nobility. A Soc B Knight is not necessarily richer or has a higher standard of living than a corporate executive with Soc 9.
You can have it one way or you can have it the other way, but you can't have it both ways. Either SL is determined by income and standards of living, in which case a person of SL11 per definition is richer and has a higher standard of living than a person of SL9, or it's not determined by income and standards of living but by either birth OR station (or both), in which case an impoverished noble does have a higher social status than a filthy rich corporate executive (Unless it's a megacorporate executive with a title of his own, of course). As for which way the rules indicate, they don't, unfortunately, provide examples of social levels 1 to 10, but the social levels they do provide examples of (11 to 15 (17, actually)) are expressed in terms of noble titles and nothing else.
Hans
