A few others have said it, but it bears repeating to yourself until it *really sinks in*. Space is BIG. Repeat it like a mantra. No matter how big and technologically advanced your empire is, space itself is bigger*. To help it sink in, just take a look at this page that models our own solar system to scale where the earth's moon represents a single pixel. Now imagine any government trying enforce its will/policies/whatever into many such areas. Thinking logistically, you're going to focus almost entirely on where the population centers are, leaving the majority of the actual physical boundaries unwatched and un-managed. That leaves truly vast amounts of raw space that can be pushed into by groups looking to escape said empires influence.

*For this reason I usually make my "empires" relatively small. I tend to posit that most human empires are going to be capable of managing a small number of "worlds" (not necessarily all planets) before the sheer scope becomes literally unmanageable. Governmental systems can only grow so much before they collapse under their own weight. How much will, of course, vary by group.

Quote from: Skarg;973987Which Star Wars universe? In the OT, the Empire has quite a time finding rebel bases. In the PT, the Jedi think they have records of everyplace, but they don't quite, yet it's still possible to assign one Jedi to look for clues and have him go to the right place somehow, etc. In TFA, between episodes the bad guys can turn a whole planet into a secret base and then in a day or so of action where no one has any trouble finding anyone else ever, worlds get blown up from across the galaxy and everyone just has to look up from whatever planet they are on (in a different star system) to see it, and basically not much makes any sense. Oh and then there's that comedy scene at the end of Empire Strikes Back where they fly someplace where they can see the whole galaxy and watch it spin in real time because oh that looks so cool and that's more important than having any speck of understanding of how spectacularly wrong that is.

The Edgelord Strikes Back

Lordamercy, folks, stop using George Lucas' vision of Nazis in Space as the standard for an empire.  I love Star Wars as much as anybody, but it's about as serious as the old 1930s Flash Gordon serials.

Look at historical Earth empires... China, Persia, Rome... Don't send a "legion of stormtroopers" to each and every backwater shithole.  Set up satrapies.  As long as "All Conqueror of Foes Cheese" sends his tax money on time, nobody on Giedi Prime gives a shit how ACofF Cheese runs his ten planets.

Quote from: Skarg;973987where they can see the whole galaxy and watch it spin in real time because oh that looks so cool and that's more important than having any speck of understanding of how spectacularly wrong that is.

I know exactly how wrong it is.

I don't care.

Quote from: AsenRG;973981Easily, I can think of at least three options:).

First, there is the "Middle Planetdom" option, where this region just isn't considered important enough, culturally and politically. Why go and build infrastructure elsewhere if you can build it next to home? And the people near you want you to invest in infrastructure near home. If you do that, they would be happier. And those people are the ones that matter.
Those people that went to the outside? Well, you'd have them paying tribute, and might periodically invite some of them to join the empire if they ever become prosperous enough. But mostly, if they pay the tribute, let them wallow in their barbarian ways!
As a variant, those places might be part of the empire, just considered colonies. Who cares how the colonies live? Let them stick to their way of living, as long as they do our dirty processing we don't want on Capital Planet, and if anyone goes to visit them - well, feel free to blow off some steam. As is widely known, whatever happens past the Last Civilised Place, stays there!

Second, space is huge. You might be having a schedule for colonizing worlds that goes thousands of years ahead. From start to having a planet developed enough to voluntarily join the Empire, there might be a couple generations.
As a variant, the people that get to be first settlers might know they're going to live their entire lives in less ordered, less lawful and less developed societies than they would were they not shipped to colonize those planets...but that's what criminals are for, right? And failing that, there's always societal-level "black lotteries".
In either of these sub-options, the frontier would be moving every couple of generations. Pick either "the settling of the Wild West", or the settling of Australia, and do that.

Third, the frontier might be a literal frontier between two empires. One or both of them might even see it as being to their advantage to keep some planets in a less-than-stable situation, so they could act as buffer between the two, thus preventing or at least greatly reducing the odds for open warfare.
Or it might be that a weaker empire might be stirring up local conflicts, in order to prevent some planets from being accepted as parts of the stronger empire. Thus, you get your pockets of instability, corruption and vice.

I just gave you two variants for each possibility, each of them with distinct historical precedent. Have fun;)!

Interesting.

But what reason would there be for black lotteries? Surely (assuming I haven't misuderstood you), just kicking people out chosen at random seems counter productive. Criminals, I can understand. But you might end up selecting Joe who was 99% on the road to curing space cancer.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;973991Look at historical Earth empires... China, Persia, Rome... Don't send a "legion of stormtroopers" to each and every backwater shithole.  Set up satrapies.  As long as "All Conqueror of Foes Cheese" sends his tax money on time, nobody on Giedi Prime gives a shit how ACofF Cheese runs his ten planets.

And this was basically the premise behind what eventually became the Official Traveller Universe. The empire is basically trade itself, and the rest is managed on more local levels.

Quote from: Skarg;973987Oh and then there's that comedy scene at the end of Empire Strikes Back where they fly someplace where they can see the whole galaxy and watch it spin in real time because oh that looks so cool and that's more important than having any speck of understanding of how spectacularly wrong that is.

I actually thought this was really brilliant. Dark Lord is sifting through every known system in the Galaxy... "Be not there", Instead be so far outside of the Galaxy that you can see the entire Galaxy from your ships lounge. So are so far away from where anyone is actively searching that no one, and I mean no one, ...is going to be looking for you there. That would be something that I would do if I were being hunted, and thought that sequence totally rocked.

Very large Empires will have very disparate tech as well, with many advanced areas, and also total backwaters, where tech is barely, ...or may not even be... Interstellar, anymore. This is within the Empire, not even on the frontier, or periphery, by the way.

Quote from: GameDaddy;973997I actually thought this was really brilliant. Dark Lord is sifting through every known system in the Galaxy... "Be not there", Instead be so far outside of the Galaxy that you can see the entire Galaxy from your ships lounge. So are so far away from where anyone is actively searching that no one, and I mean no one, ...is going to be looking for you there. That would be something that I would do if I were being hunted, and thought that sequence totally rocked.

Very large Empires will have very disparate tech as well, with many advanced areas, and also total backwaters, where tech is barely, ...or may not even be... Interstellar, anymore. This is within the Empire, not even on the frontier, or periphery, by the way.

It's true that if their galaxy is like ours and they can move over even a few percent of the diameter of the galaxy and back, then they could go off the plane of the galaxy to hide (which is yet another way to avoid an empire), but the perspective and the speed it was turning were greatly out of scale - the angular size implies they've gone several galaxy-diameters away, and the rotation rate looks about like 1/minute, compared to the Milky Way's ~1/250,000 years.

Quote from: Skarg;974001and the rotation rate looks about like 1/minute, compared to the Milky Way's ~1/250,000 years.

250 million years. Otherwise you'd have stars orbiting at a substantial fraction of lightspeed.

It's still weirdly fast. :eek:

Quote from: S'mon;974007250 million years. Otherwise you'd have stars orbiting at a substantial fraction of lightspeed.

It's still weirdly fast. :eek:

Yeah, I meant 1/250,000,000 years, thanks. Also I don't think they really rotate that way, but spiral/swirl. So wrong kind of movement and about 100 trillion times too fast. But "who cares?" for some. Oh well.

Quote from: Skarg;974009Yeah, I meant 1/250,000,000 years, thanks. Also I don't think they really rotate that way, but spiral/swirl. So wrong kind of movement and about 100 trillion times too fast. But "who cares?" for some. Oh well.

I'd rather say "Who cares, it was fun" than fret about some silly movie 37 years later.

Quote from: Biscuitician;973990The Edgelord Strikes Back

Quote from: Skarg;973987Oh and then there's that comedy scene at the end of Empire Strikes Back where they fly someplace where they can see the whole galaxy and watch it spin in real time because oh that looks so cool and that's more important than having any speck of understanding of how spectacularly wrong that is.

Silly Rabbit, the galaxy isn't spinning. The ship is. The camera is looking out a window, and being fixed to the deck is rotating with the ship, giving the illusion that the galaxy is rotating. Doesn't anyone understand film?

Quote from: SavageSchemer;973994And this was basically the premise behind what eventually became the Official Traveller Universe. The empire is basically trade itself, and the rest is managed on more local levels.

Yup and yup.

I have no problem with the "uncivilized world next door to civilized world" issue that some folks have.

Some examples of vastly different neighbors on the same planet:

The Dominican Republic and Haiti share an island.

Singapore (which is practically a futuristic domed city) is next door to Malaysia.

South Korea and North Korea. No more need be said.

Any government is only as large or spread out as it can project its power. Maybe it's a galaxy. It takes a lot to invest the empire into the next galaxy, or the next one or the one that is all the way across the universe. Unless of course you are talking about an all encompassing Universal Empire. The man power alone to keep order throughout the universe is something I doubt any of us can truly comprehend. Even then, are there pockets of usurpers? Rebels? Dissatisfied union workers?