Size of the Lyran Commonwealth during the Star League Era?

[Croix129]

I noticed that the Lyran state is traditionally considered to have 300 or so systems (319 as of 3130, per Dark Age: Touring the Stars), yet its also stated that a good deal of the near-Periphery systems came from their annexation of the Rim Worlds Republic in the 2770s and 2780s. Per Combat Operations, the RWR had 248 systems in 2750 (including small settlements). So, knowing that the Lyrans annexed the bulk of the RRW's choice worlds, that suggests the Commonwealth was actually fairly small in terms of systems during the Star League era; more akin to the Capellans or the Hegemony rather then the FWL, FedSuns or the Dragons. Is there any era specific information on the Lyran Commonwealth's size for the period that can shed light on this?

[Middcore]

We have pretty reliable maps of the Lyran Commonwealth both before and after the Archon's "police action" snapping up what Kerensky left behind on his way to Terra.

Here it is as of 2571 (founding of the Star League): https://www.sarna.net/wiki/File:Lc-2571.png

For perspective here is a map of the Inner Sphere as a whole as of 2750: https://www.sarna.net/wiki/File:2750_Inner_Sphere_(Sarna).svg If we're just going by eyeballing the "area" of these very irregular shapes, then we can see the LC is probably about equal to the Combine and FedSuns, a little bigger than the FWL, and markedly bigger than the Confederation, and MUCH bigger than the Hegemony.

(Of course, most of that "area" is empty space, what matters is the number of settled systems within it, but aside from the Confederation being noticeably more "tightly packed" with systems, which is interesting but off-topic, none of the factions look significantly more "dense" than others so we can use area within borders as a decent approximation of meaningful "size.")

And here is the LC after the 1st SW. There are also changes that happened along the Kurita and Marik borders here of course, but we can ignore that, the shading shows the change in the Periphery rim border: https://www.sarna.net/wiki/File:Lc-1sw-2822.png

Actually, there is a better version on the RWR page: https://www.sarna.net/wiki/File:Rwr_-_first_sw.jpg

To save the time of eyeballing the map, Sarna also has a list of former RWR systems absorbed (although the usual disclaimers about Sarna not being 100% reliable apply): https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Republic-Commonwealth_War It comes to 94 worlds.

In sum: the Lyran Commonwealth was never small per se, but it did get bigger. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the Commonwealth's power has always been its economic and industrial might. I feel like there may be some kind of idea that because the Commonwealth is known for having lots of factories producing lots of big 'Mechs, everything about it is "big," but it's never been the biggest Successor State by sheer number of worlds. That "honor" actually goes to the FedSuns. 

As for the RWR... if you go to Sarna's page for former RWR systems and just click on a few names at random, what you'll see over and over again is that the worlds that DIDN'T become Lyran disappear from the map entirely, with some becoming parts of pirate havens or minor Periphery states.