Talking a quick look at the Traveller map data, considering worlds that are members of either the Imperium or Solomani Confederation - that's 10633 systems. To get near "empire of 11,000 worlds" I think they have to be counting the Solomani Confederation.
Of those there are 4070 that have a population below 100,000 which I would consider to be in the candidate class of world that basically exists to service a larger world. Those larger worlds I'm going to take to be a population of at least 1 billion and tech level of at least 9. There are 929 of those within the imperium.
Of those 4070 worlds, 3850 are within 6 parsec of one of the high pop worlds, and 220 are not. It's difficult to imagine a low pop world existing to service a high pop world that is more than one jump away, at jump-6. Even further, presuming efficient trade is done at jump-2 or less, that gives 2476 of those low pop worlds that probably need some explaining.
Interesting, there are 6 of those low pop worlds 12 parsec or more away from one of the high pop worlds. True backwater. 3 in the Spinward Marches, unsurprisingly, 2 in the Hinterworlds, and one in Aldebaran. {Raweh, Froin, Lakou, Lady Mac, Murmur, Tiajama}, incidentally. Raweh has a naval base, at least.
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On January 19, 2018 9:50 PM, Evyn MacDude <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
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