Speed of colonization
- Thread starter Adam Dray
- Start date
But what stops a jump-capable species from expanding quickly to the bounds of the galaxy? Sure, the empires fragment, but then those empires expand to solidify control over resources and so on. If there's a chance that any discovered worlds are populated by lower-tech civilizations, that is a source of conscription to pad their militaries.
I suspect that the only limit ("only") is economic. If you're fragmenting away from an established empire, your forces are projected inward to defend your border. If you were a former frontier, you're building up infrastructure and can't quickly expand.
So does expansion come in waves?
1. Empire slowly expands.
2. Empire fights resistance (a new species or a strong faction).
3. Empire grows to the largest sustainable size.
4. Frontier areas ally and form new empires.
5. Frontier empire fights with core empire.
6. Frontier empire slowly builds infrastructure until it's solid.
7. Frontier empire starts its own expansion (goto 1).
Do you remember where it's canonized?
The only bit I remember is "speed of communication" limiting the size of an interstellar empire, with a couple of real-world examples.
While I don't quite recall the "many kinds of Class A starports", I know it's at least strongly implied widely across rulesets. For example, "many kinds of starports" is definitely in T5 and probably inherits from CT et al. Adventure 3 has four Class C starports, equidistantly placed around the equator (hence "many types of Class C starports" and then to generalize from there).
I'd advise you to look at 2300 AD (any version), as, even with a diferent FTL system and othr constrains (as interface, having no gravitics) it represents just this kind of situation: an expanding culture.
There, in about 200 years of colonization, Earth has expanded up to about 50 LYs, having encountered no resistance from other species (but some wars among Earth nations) and mostly limiting colonization to garden planets (with a few exceptions).
IIRC there are about 20 colonized worlds there, and, again IIRC only 2 were founded as penal colonies...
As you say, the main constrains are economic:
- how many ships?
- what capacity they have?
- what autonomy they have?
- do you need to build facilities before going another step?
- which ressources do you need (or look for)?
- what population presure do you have at home?
- what capacity to colonize hostile environs you have?
- etc...
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeah, I've read 2300AD. It represents a very different economic model, and a growing empire at the very beginning stages. I don't think it really helps me understand how fast a large empire grows.
Assuming a uniform spread of systems across space and constant resources, empire radius grows at 1/x^2 rate. The number of systems in the empire grows at a constant rate.
However, resources increase, too, so that should increase the speed of growth. If I were a growing empire, I'd incentivize megacorporations to create mass manufacturing centers in spreading hubs around the borders of the empire. They'd build scout ships and prefab colonies and start pumping food and other necessities outward. This is, after all, a land grab war.
Meanwhile, you have to protect your borders, but probably not all of them. A powerful and fast fleet should suffice at first, but you'll want that to grow as fast as your world expansion or you dilute your power.
You'd probably have to force people to colonize after a while. Sure, there are always the frontiersmen who are excited to go to the crappy new world, but after a couple of those, you'll be light on volunteers. This (lack of willing colonists) might be the limiting expansion factor. Of course, if these worlds are already populated when you get there, then they're either allies, subjects, or enemies.
The speed of communications bit has been canonized since almost the very first Traveller book. When each jump takes a week and J-6 is as fast as you can go, travelling from one end of charted space to the other is a pretty serious endeavor.
It was meant to recall the age of sail or the Roman Empire, two of traveler's historical inspirations.
It also makes many kinds of adventure possible. In a world with FTL communications, it gets pretty hard to stay ahead of the law.
The rest is spread out over lots of different editions although TNE prominently comes to mind.
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
There are several reasons to plant colonies. Overpopulation or an oppressive situation (be it economic, ethnic, or legislative) will drive people outward, but so will simple opportunity. The gradual settlement model (go get a resource, then send people to support those getting the resource, then develop the infrastructure *they* need, etc) will usually produce a different settlement pattern than strategic settlement (ala Cherryh's Forty Thousand in Gehenna) using shake-and-bake infrastructure.
You also have a hard limit on just overall population growth. Population growth historically here has been about 2%.
While colonists may be encouraged to "breed like rabbits", those in the major population centers still have the weight of numbers behind them in terms of affecting overall population growth.
Early colonists are certainly more "hearty" and "adventurous" than later colonists. The latter phases are more folks just coming out due to population pressures, or looking for a better job. "Moving to the suburbs" essentially.
2% of a 1B people is 20M people, and that's a LOT for colonization. But it still takes time to move all of them, and most of them wouldn't be trailblazers, but just "suburbanites". So, they'll be in the third and fourth wave of actual colonization, once the area has actually been civilized to the point where they feel they can safely raise their kids and make a living.
It would be an interesting profession segment, a "bootstrapper" or something. A person who's profession is an early colonizer. Pick up and move every 3-5 years. Just enough to clear some land, set up the initial construction, manage the notable early threats. Surveying the new lots, selecting city sites, etc.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
I want to say I've read SF that actually used this idea, but it has been a while.
Yes, I have been working on this. My current project is to determine the First Imperium size and UWP from the Eras of history as described in T5.09
Does exploration of the "empty hexes" count?
One example: The Vilani (Vilani & Vargr p. 17-19)
The Vilani discover jump drive in -9235 and achieve the following
Exploration Radius
Distance: 20 Parsecs, Time: 10 years (-9225), Speed J1, Hexes Explored: 1261 Avg rate: 126.1 hexes/year
Distance: 180 Parsecs, Time: 3235 years (-6000), Speed J1, Hexes Explored: Avg rate: 30.21 hexes/year
Last edited:
On building Starports (before you get to building scouts):
Like Mongoose Starports Supplement, MMT Pocket Empires (p. 50 & 107) described graduating starports as a process of going from one level to another. Pay the resources and wait the time. That one is great as it had speed of building.
Upgrade Years Total Years
X to E 1 1
E to D 2 3
D to C 10 13
C to B 20 33
B to A 30 63
Since you are playing an "empire", a spectacular success roll would halve the time for upgrade, so if you were really, really good, you could upgrade to A in 31.5 years
Last edited:
One method (but not the only one) is Trillion Credit Squadron. There are two versions, CT and MgT. I use MgT because that system has actual interstellar survey sensors and associated task rolls for characters. There is another sort of with MMT Pocket Empires.
In the main, The basic idea to answer your question is it takes
Money
Time
Shipyard space
TL of your system
Starport Class
Using the MgT system, ship size determines construction time, so...(MgT High Guard p.55)
Size (tons) Duration (weeks)
50 or less 24/15
60 to 80 32/19
90 to 100 40/24
200 to 300 48/29
400 to 500 64/38
600 to 700 96/58
800 to 900 112/67
1,000 to 4,000 120/72
5,000 to 7,500 144/86
10,000 to 15,000 160/96
20,000 to 40,000 174/104
50,000 to 75,000 192/115
100,000 208/125
200,000 to 400,000 224/134
500,000 to 900,000 232/139
1,000,000 240/144
The first number in time is the "first in class" ship, the other is for further ships in the class. So...
A Class A starport could build two 100 ton Scouts a year per shipyard slip.
Oh, how many slips do I have? That is fluid in that specific size slips are not created but an overall capacity. From there play with your construction.
MgT Trillion Credit Squadron (p.15)
Population*TL /10,000
This is TOTAL for all uses, including maintenance of existing ships and so on.
So for me, Vland, back in -9000 has a population of 1.5 billion and a TL of 9. My capacity is 1,350,000 tons per year subtracting tonnage allocated to maintenance .
Now how many you can afford is based on maintenance cost and budget. Budget in MgT is the following
Cr.1,000 x GovernmentTypeModifier x Population
GovermentModifier Ranges from.5 to 1.2 in non-wartime, 1.2 to 1.5 depending on type.
I don't have any real problems with these, save for the ramp up time.
All of those numbers seem fine for a society that take star travel for granted.
But I think it's different from the day they discover J1. I just think that once they discover the drive, it's going to be several years before they just start ramping up and dispatching as many scout ships as they can. That there's a lot of learning curve and finesses that we (as an advanced society who's had jump drive for 1000 years) take for granted.
Societal drive could accelerate (or not) such a drive ("Forget caution, in to the darkness!" vs "Well, we want to just make sure, don't want to lose any more folks.").
No doubt it will only slow down the initial phase, 10-20 years I would think. Within 30, it would be routine.
All of those numbers seem fine for a society that take star travel for granted.
But I think it's different from the day they discover J1. I just think that once they discover the drive, it's going to be several years before they just start ramping up and dispatching as many scout ships as they can. That there's a lot of learning curve and finesses that we (as an advanced society who's had jump drive for 1000 years) take for granted.
Societal drive could accelerate (or not) such a drive ("Forget caution, in to the darkness!" vs "Well, we want to just make sure, don't want to lose any more folks.").
No doubt it will only slow down the initial phase, 10-20 years I would think. Within 30, it would be routine.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
IMTU the main limit is the difficulty of 'gravmapping' which requires a STL first visit before jumps are safe.
A more aggressive approach is jumping in raw, but misjumps abound. Therein lies a story and an adventure line.
So initial surveying costs STL time, after that several months to complete the main lane gravmaps and initial planetary surveys.
Since I am doing initial Terran expansion, this time limit precisely defines the 'march of humanity', along with other things that may or may not be happening.
For understanding the biological nuances of worlds, perhaps years, which is no small issue.
But the big limit is how many want to colonize- in some cases, forced to.
The follow-on limit is finance and terraforming, absolutely huge capital costs especially for the latter, not to mention suitable worlds and how principled one is about terraforming over the local life.
Man, as a relative newb to Traveller (two years now), I feel like I'm missing so much canon. I've never heard of gravmapping or seen jump roll penalties for going in dry. Is this in a scouts supplement somewhere?
Why aren't unmanned probes the right answer?
That's very helpful. Thank you.
I suspect the pioneers of the future don't tread carefully into new worlds, but rather burst into them and deal with problems as they arise, throwing caution to the solar wind.
You're right that terraforming has an enormous cost. I hadn't considered that. I assumed that the systems that the Traveller rules create were like that before people arrived.
(I believe I asked this in another thread but I didn't see an answer: Are there published rules for creating virgin worlds with no people?)
Regarding the idea of unwilling colonists, that creates exactly the kind of frontier that breeds a new empire, doesn't it. Lots of bitter, hardy pioneers and scouts who have been uprooted from their old homes and plopped down on a dangerous backwater planet without the resources required to make a righteous go at a good living. Eventually they get some armed starships and start a revolution. Is the entire rim of the empire full of worlds like this, full of grumbling resistance fighters?
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
For the exploration phase of things there is also the sensor survey rules in several of the CT Alien modules, and some discussion of surveying in the (admittedly harder to find) Grand Survey from DGP.
It's not canon, if that's what you're asking.
In CT, one can jump up to 3 parsecs away based upon standard sensors alone, without a database. It is, in fact, part of one adventure in one of the alien modules.
