How many people are on the island?

[Drift]

If you turn the spawns all the way up and have frequent attacks on your base, the typical Starving Bandit and Dust Bandit numbers range around 30-50 (on the low end) and they come typically every 5-15 minutes depending on where you are. Obviously you're not gonna have this issue if you live in the acid rain or other desolate places, but lets assume you're living somewhere in the Borderlands or HN territory. Not taking repopulation time into account, with women giving birth and all that, I feel like the biomass on the island would start to get a little thin after the first few months of slaughter. I've had a game running for about 500 days now and I'm sure I've killed actual millions, if not at least one million bandits.

How long before I completely sterilize the island? How many people are realistically there? I get that "because videogame" they'll keep respawning but lorewise, what do you think the real number is?

If the structures and landmass of the island are supposed to represent the world of Kenshi 1:1, I kinda feel like there would maybe be a max of a couple dozen thousand or so, maybe 100k if you count all the animals. Also, it's not really spoken about in-game, but are people coming into the planet from other worlds?

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

if it was more real life, they would most likely have stopped after the first few major losses.
so the number would most likely be a couple hundred to a thousand at most. and im putting that number in the super high range as criminal groups usually don't get that big.
and ones that do, usually know when to cut their losses.

[Drift]

Originally posted by HaTsUnE_NeKo:

if it was more real life, they would most likely have stopped after the first few major losses.
so the number would most likely be a couple hundred to a thousand at most. and im putting that number in the super high range as criminal groups usually don't get that big.
and ones that do, usually know when to cut their losses.

I don't mean the bandits exclusively, I mean all sentient life, including Hivers and Skeletons.

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

mmm in that case, i would have to go with maybe 100k
i don't think the land would permit higher numbers as the breadbasket is held by religious fanatics. as it pretty much shows them being the only major society that does any farming.
besides a handful of UC cities actually having farms

[Drift]

Originally posted by HaTsUnE_NeKo:

mmm in that case, i would have to go with maybe 100k
i don't think the land would permit higher numbers as the breadbasket is held by religious fanatics. as it pretty much shows them being the only major society that does any farming.
besides a handful of UC cities actually having farms

Right, given circumstances on the island, Bandit groups would basically go extinct trying to attack pretty much any player settlement after a certain tech tier.

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

or any city nation for that matter.

[Shidan]

I'd say hivers could easily bump the total up by a significant number, possibly several thousand, maybe a few tens of thousands. They live quite densely in their little villages, and swarm like bugs.

Skeletons I'd wager could only manage a couple thousand at best across the whole land. Largely in certain areas like the SE an Deadlands. They've been slowly dying out over time, and no more are being built.

Humans and Shek I'd say probably realistically have a minimum of a few tens of thousands combined, spread across all the nations. Based on frequency of the races spawning, they are by far the most common.

In the real world there is an island (Isle of Man) that is smaller than Kenshi's world, with large fairly uninhabited portions, that has a population of over 80,000. So Kenshi's world should be able to support numbers smaller than that fairly easily, possibly larger depending on how dense you assume the population would be.

[Drift]

Originally posted by Shidan:

I'd say hivers could easily bump the total up by a significant number, possibly several thousand, maybe a few tens of thousands. They live quite densely in their little villages, and swarm like bugs.

Skeletons I'd wager could only manage a couple thousand at best across the whole land. Largely in certain areas like the SE an Deadlands. They've been slowly dying out over time, and no more are being built.

Humans and Shek I'd say probably realistically have a minimum of a few tens of thousands combined, spread across all the nations. Based on frequency of the races spawning, they are by far the most common.

In the real world there is an island (Isle of Man) that is smaller than Kenshi's world, with large fairly uninhabited portions, that has a population of over 80,000. So Kenshi's world should be able to support numbers smaller than that fairly easily, possibly larger depending on how dense you assume the population would be.

The isle of Man is also home to forests and like, plant life too. They don't have acid storms or Giant satellites in the sky that fire down lazers.

I don't know that the hive would bolster the numbers a whole bunch, unless you're counting Deadhive and Fogmen as well. There's only around 50 of them at any given encampment in the West. And I think 10k for Shek is a little optimistic, they seem like just as dying of a breed as Skeletons, rushing into battle self-destructively all the time. Obviously there could be more on other islands, but as far as this area is concerned, there can't be too many. They only have two (crumbling) cities from the start and are in the middle of a political conflict with their leaders.

[Shidan]

Keep in mind, the UC and other factions have a hefty Shek population, they are one of the most frequent races found in factions with multiple races. I'm not only counting the Kingdom itself, which is the only thing that is self-destructing in that way.

If you want to be literal with the games representations of towns, then a thousand total island population is probably about the max you'd get. Towns often have little to no housing for residents, certainly not enough for the population numbers being speculated in this thread.

As for the hazards. The primary places where those occur are inhabited by races immune to those effects. So I don't think it would affect populations as much as you're implying. Fertility wise, I agree it couldn't sustain as high numbers as I'm speculating. But it also doesn't in-game. The world is rife with people starving to death and not getting enough food. So clearly it has a higher population than it can sustain.

[Drift]

Originally posted by Shidan:

Keep in mind, the UC and other factions have a hefty Shek population, they are one of the most frequent races found in factions with multiple races. I'm not only counting the Kingdom itself, which is the only thing that is self-destructing in that way.

If you want to be literal with the games representations of towns, then a thousand total island population is probably about the max you'd get. Towns often have little to no housing for residents, certainly not enough for the population numbers being speculated in this thread.

As for the hazards. The primary places where those occur are inhabited by races immune to those effects. So I don't think it would affect populations as much as you're implying. Fertility wise, I agree it couldn't sustain as high numbers as I'm speculating. But it also doesn't in-game. The world is rife with people starving to death and not getting enough food. So clearly it has a higher population than it can sustain.

TBH I had kind of forgotten about the non-Shek Kingdom Shek, lol. I very rarely play with them and am generally hostile to anything that moves.

I guess it's not fair to assume the game represents its fauna 1:1, that there are creatures and people implied to be there but are otherwise unimportant to your game, so they are not rendered or cared for. In that respect, it would be reasonable to assume the population sits at around 100k but must be on the decline.

[Shidan]

Yeah, they've been having famines and starvation issues for at least a few decades based on what we know of the Red Rebellion. The population has gotta be dropping, at least for those who need to eat.

Skeletons wouldn't be terribly affected by that. And Hivers are likely doing fine food wise, since they don't seem to get bothered by any major factions, nor appear to have food shortages. Shek and Humans have gotta be dropping pretty fast though, with all the wars and starvation.

[Drift]

Originally posted by Shidan:

Yeah, they've been having famines and starvation issues for at least a few decades based on what we know of the Red Rebellion. The population has gotta be dropping, at least for those who need to eat.

Skeletons wouldn't be terribly affected by that. And Hivers are likely doing fine food wise, since they don't seem to get bothered by any major factions, nor appear to have food shortages. Shek and Humans have gotta be dropping pretty fast though, with all the wars and starvation.

Is there any implication that there might be offworlders coming in as well? It's always seem like this was a Prison planet or something similar, I know I've seen at least one other thread asking about that.

[Shidan]

Not that I've ever seen. There is evidence to suggest that the ancient civilization was at least locally space faring. Satellites, space elevator, etc. Nothing pointing to active traffic in the current day though.

[Drift]

Originally posted by Shidan:

Not that I've ever seen. There is evidence to suggest that the ancient civilization was at least locally space faring. Satellites, space elevator, etc. Nothing pointing to active traffic in the current day though.

Well then they would definitely be on the rapid decline. Nothing but normal gestation to replenish bodies would basically leave the Hive and Skeletons to rule when the Humans and Shek inevitably die out.

[SnugSnug]

I think cannibal numbers would bump the total as well, although represented in game relative small numbers i get the feeling they're suppose to be representative of a much greater number especially given their native group sizes regards patrols and raids. I'm not sure where screaming population would figure in, are they small or large community? And fish people, gulpers we counting them... cause there's a lot of water.

[Drift]

Originally posted by SnugSnug:

I think cannibal numbers would bump the total as well, although represented in game relative small numbers i get the feeling they're suppose to be representative of a much greater number especially given their native group sizes regards patrols and raids. I'm not sure where screaming population would figure in, are they small or large community? And fish people, gulpers we counting them... cause there's a lot of water.

I'm not sure I would consider Gulpers "Sentient" in the same way even Hivers or Cannibals are. I don't really anticipate many Gulper towns and outposts in their future.

I think cannibals would likely never get to the size they are in Kenshi, the logistics of their way of life don't really foster a growing community. It's the same with Starving Bandits, or any bandit faction, as Hatsune said.