Quote from: S'mon;973793Well I've seen IRL suggestions that the habitable depth of the galaxy may only be about 50 light years.

Based on what?

Quote from: Technomancer;973738Logisitcs? Exerting influence requires a supply line to get your assets to the region.  If supply line hasn't been developed, Empire might be able to get to the region on a case by case basis, but not able to maintain any real control.

This.  Bloody this.  Junior officers think about tactics, midlevel officers think about strategy, senior officers think about logistics.

It's all about logistics.  Especially since, as Douglas Adams said, "Space is big.  Really, really big."

All these are great answers,but I just have trouble visualising this.

You have a scifi empire, with suitably advanced levels of tech (we don't need to imagine anything bizarre) but I still can't square how you can have frontier or outlaw regions - especially within that border. So if you have trade routes near the civilised/imperial worlds (like a network of jumpgates or something), how then are those wilderness regions accessed? How would communities therein flourish or endure?

If speed of travel is very fast, as in Star Wars, there won't be a well-defined frontier. There will be civilised, backwater, and savage worlds all interspersed. "Empires" - coalitions of star systems - may actually heavily interpenetrate, since the actual location of the solar systems won't matter much.

Quote from: Biscuitician;973821All these are great answers,but I just have trouble visualising this.

You have a scifi empire, with suitably advanced levels of tech (we don't need to imagine anything bizarre) but I still can't square how you can have frontier or outlaw regions - especially within that border. So if you have trade routes near the civilised/imperial worlds (like a network of jumpgates or something), how then are those wilderness regions accessed? How would communities therein flourish or endure?

It's all a question of quantities. How many star nations are there? An empire implies to me that there are others. A galaxy is ridiculously huge and has a ridiculously huge number of stars, so there will always be an abundance of frontier, even if hardly anyone goes there. There are many types of quantities that will greatly influence the answer to what sorts of low-authority areas there are, where they are, etc. Quantities such as the parameters of how space travel works - how fast, expensive, reliable, available, and to whom? Same for communication. The parameters of detection and identification technology and weapons and defenses, as well. Also the quantities of the existing populations and governments and their distributions, as well as the number of ships of various types and what they do and who controls them. Political and social and legal divisions, too. Economic situations, including who has the means and authority to do what. As for the empire, what resources does it have, and what is it concerned with? If there are frontiers and lawless areas and backwaters with little/no imperial presence even inside its borders, that's probably because it has much more important things to do with its resources than enforce seatbelt laws on Alpha Proxima XIIB. Other quantities include the distribution of star systems and planets and what's useful to the empire (or to others) about them. Are most systems about the same, or are there some that are much more interesting and valuable to the empire (and/or to others)? In the latter case, which can arise not just from natural physical properties but also from who happens to be where, an Empire in competition with other powers will probably move strategically to dominate as many important systems as it can, quite possibly leaving many less interesting systems in between to get little or no attention. Ultra-fast FTL travel might be thought to even make it more likely for there to be internal backwaters, if the important systems are dispersed between thousands of less valuable systems - that seems to be the case in the Star Trek universe, for example.

And that's just (some of the) quantities. The arrangement of the specifics can also make huge differences, especially if travel is limited to wormholes / warp points / stargates or other terrain considerations.

For me, most of where you and I are seeing things differently are here...

Quote from: Biscuitician;973821...with suitably advanced levels of tech...

Though I would also add "... and resources..."

That is, a lot of media representations of interstellar civilizations these days, whether meaning to or not, essentially are post-scarcity. The Enterprise can go wherever it wants, talk to whomever it wants. Anyone in the Star Wars universe can build massive ships, talk across any number of worlds from anywhere, and so on...

If we assume a few things:

• Resources are limited
• Many people are content where they are
• Many worlds are worlds no one cares about and won't bother protecting or clearing out
• Ships can travel where they wish, but will take time
• Communication is slow and limited

I think you end up with something feasible.

Here's the opening of Traveller Book 1:

QuoteTraveller deals with a common theme of science-fiction: the concept that an
expanding technology will enable us to reach the stars and to populate the worlds
which orbit them. The major problem, however, will be that communication, be it
political, diplomatic, commercial, or private, will be reduced to the level of the 18th
century, reduced to the speed of transportation. The result is a large (bordering on
the infinite) universe ripe for the adventurer's bold travels.

For me that's enough as long as we combine this premise with other elements found in the implied setting details of Books 1, 2, and 3: there is a remote, centralized government "back that way"; resources are limited; infighting within the government keeps decision making and effective use of power limited; and the risks of travel concrete (which they are in the original Traveller rules) which means most people don't travel often or easily. With these qualities in mind one ends up with situations that make, in my view at least, a frontier possible.

Note that I specifically refer you to the original rules of Classic Traveller (those found in Books 1, 2, and 3). Specifically those of the 1977 edition if you can find them which prompt a much more rowdy and less cosmopolitan setting of play than is found even in the 1981 rules. But even the 1981 rules the sense of isolation and limits on communication and travel are felt much more strongly than in the flavor text of The Traveller Book or Starter Traveller -- in which space travel is compared to jumping on a plane and the whole feel of space is more like 20th century Europe.

Quote from: Biscuitician;973821You have a scifi empire, with suitably advanced levels of tech (we don't need to imagine anything bizarre) but I still can't square how you can have frontier or outlaw regions - especially within that border. So if you have trade routes near the civilised/imperial worlds (like a network of jumpgates or something), how then are those wilderness regions accessed? How would communities therein flourish or endure?

The same reason Somali pirates still exist and are a credible shipping danger, even with the presence of the Egyptian, Saudi and Indian fleets.

Quote from: Baron Opal;973846The same reason Somali pirates still exist and are a credible shipping danger, even with the presence of the Egyptian, Saudi and Indian fleets.

And the same reason smugglers operate daily on small and large scales transporting drugs, persons, wildlife, and other contraband items into the U.S. from Latin America. No government has the resources to monitor everywhere at once.

Just read Lois McMaster Bujold's "Miles Vorkosigan" books.  FTL travel is through wormholes and communication is speed of light.  Local systems can be pretty darn independent.

Space is big. Really big. Eventually the empire is going to run out of men and material to patrol all of it. Unless you are positing an empire that literally rules all of the available map, and there has never been one in Earth history, there will always be somewhere that is beyond the pale.

The empire may decide, like the Chinese did, that it rules all the world worth ruling and so not pursue an expansionist exploratory agenda. Not every empire is founded on the myth of subduing the untamed frontier.

Perhaps the empire is in a state of decline and decay and the now "frontier" worlds were formerly imperial territory.

Quote from: S'mon;973825If speed of travel is very fast, as in Star Wars, there won't be a well-defined frontier. There will be civilised, backwater, and savage worlds all interspersed. "Empires" - coalitions of star systems - may actually heavily interpenetrate, since the actual location of the solar systems won't matter much.

There's another place Traveller is brilliant. Space geography (astrography) maters. Especially if you don't allow empty hex jumps.

Frank

Quote from: ffilz;973886There's another place Traveller is brilliant. Space geography (astrography) maters. Especially if you don't allow empty hex jumps.

Frank

How so?

This is an excellent thread. Loving the ideas. Kudos everybody.

Space is vast... We tend to think of it as smaller because we just can't comprehend its size. So even with ships that can travel at interstellar speeds, it's still vast and the resources needed to control everything would be impossible.

Since a government's resources are finite they would be spread far too thin the further they go. It's just not worth the trouble (or cost) at some point. Even if logistics can be matched to some degree, they would still have to use certain protected routes. So that, in turn, would still limit government's capabilities (by sticking closely to them). That's the way I'd think about it anyway.

I can see several simple ways of having a frontier with a SciFi Empire.

Freedom - Settlers move from the Empire and set up colonies on space stations, asteriods and planets that are technically outside the Empire's borders. The Empire does not have any power over these, but might want to bring them into the Empire. As the colonies become more successful and strategic, the Empire will try and absorb them.

Clash - Two Empires have a border and the colonies along the border are disputed. Each side tries to disrupt the border colonies, to prevent the other side from gaining too much influence.

Ravage - The frontier zone is regularly attacked by raiders who come and go quickly, taking goods, supplies and people. The frontier is too far away and too unimportant for the Empire to care about, so doesn't send troops/ships to protect the colonies.