Speed of colonization

[warwizard]

Now there are colonization rules that get down into the grass level World Tamer's Handbook specifying costs and benefits of that infrastructure.

The weather factors limit growth rates , a doubling of the maintenance costs for your roads and other items exposed to the elements become an enormous drag on rate of growth.

I've worked up some spreadsheets to automate the monthly output per WTH.
After your initial 10 years the replacement of worn out machines causes your growth rates to drop into single digit rates. (note to self need to exempt newly built capital from replacement costs for 10 years).
If you have just a single 10,000 Dt freighter doing two jumps each way you get the cargo load of that ship in materials sold to buy more capital goods and the rest of the room for more colonists with a once a month arrival rate. Eventually you are purchasing new capital only at the rate you can pay for it with exports. (food, raw materials or whatever you can build).

The bottom line is that it is quite the rare world that has mild enough weather, compatible biospheres and local fertility and resource richness that allows the colony to grow to major world status without major efforts from a sponsoring world.

The single ship load of colonists and equipment for a one time delivery can indeed establish a small colony, and without trade and immigration it will be many hundreds of years before it will be able to start sending out it's own colonies. But you CAN send these out up to 24 jumps out, placing one colony per year per ship, check on them again in 5 or 10 years, if they are dead, move on to another world, if growing, then target them for more investment. There are hundreds of stars per parsec, our mapping system just picks out one that looked good to the initial surveyors... hmm brown dwarf, nope, blue supergiant, it'll go nova soon and no planets formed, nope, ahh here is a nice stable class K main seq star with a planet in the liquid water zone, let's survey that one.

 

[Adam Dray]

I mean, what's stopping you from exploring every world within 20 parsecs of you, dropping a flag on each one, and parking a small navy ship there (and refreshing it every few months to give them a break)?

Just landgrab everything and then colonize them all when you have time, starting with the best worlds.

Meanwhile, establish a colony on the most distant world with good resources. Build it up as fast as you can and then use it as the forward base for the next 20 parsecs.

The goal is to suck up all the best resource worlds (for industrialization) as quickly as possible, and the garden worlds (for colonization), and use them as waypoints to the rest of the sectors.

 

[BlackBat242]

IMTU the main limit is the difficulty of 'gravmapping' which requires a STL first visit before jumps are safe.

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?

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.

IMTU is shorthand for "In My Traveller Universe" - a statement that "what I am saying applies only to the Traveller universe as I have house-ruled it for the games I run".

OTU is shorthand for "Official Traveller Universe" - in other words "canon".

When speaking hypothetically of possible different non-canon ways to run or deal with Traveller that someone does not actually already use, "ATU" (Alternate Traveller Universe) is sometimes used.

 

[GypsyComet]

I mean, what's stopping you...

A Navy presence in every system is an early form of strategic colonization.

If you are the only state around, only your own resources (including political and/or cultural will) might slow you down. Twenty parsecs radius is hundreds of worlds, so under panspermia assumptions quite a few of those worlds, and particularly the best worlds for easy colonization, will likely have other sophonts already in place. You may have competition well before you reach twenty parsecs, and it may well come from more than one direction.

 

[aramis]

I mean, what's stopping you from exploring every world within 20 parsecs of you, dropping a flag on each one, and parking a small navy ship there (and refreshing it every few months to give them a break)?

Just landgrab everything and then colonize them all when you have time, starting with the best worlds.

Meanwhile, establish a colony on the most distant world with good resources. Build it up as fast as you can and then use it as the forward base for the next 20 parsecs.

The goal is to suck up all the best resource worlds (for industrialization) as quickly as possible, and the garden worlds (for colonization), and use them as waypoints to the rest of the sectors.

Expense, political will, political capital, chain of command issues, supply chain issues, and risk/reward issues.

Whether 20 Parsecs is doable or pipe dream depends a lot upon jump capability.

You need to be able to get personnel out to your forward bases, and have those provide all the needed support - a logistical pain in the arse - we're talking potentially 2000 systems, probably about 1200.

You need also to have the materials and crews to remote build your forward operating bases. That's not cheap. As a practical matter, every system needs 3-4 ships and crews. Plus a dedicated supply line.

At low jump capability, that means you're not building the forward bases 20 Pc away until you've built them routes out to the edge.

You also need to have the public behind the effort. Including the ones being sent. If the ones being sent aren't, you may send a crew to their destruction at what was intended to be a forward operating base. And, in such cases, you often now have an armed defense cruiser there to help in taking the next one sent...

You also have to keep the forward bases supplied until they become self sufficient. Which means more ships, more crews, and more base support needs.

Further, ship captains, while notoriously independent and usually quite loyal, have a history of claiming islands for themselves once the admiralty peeves them too much. Others, rather than claiming the island, install a puppet pirate friendly local government, one which, at first, still supports the military, but slowly figures out who's corrupt, and then at the right point, sieze a few more vessels, declare a freeport, and start raiding the other forward bases. Not one big happy fleet anymore.

And sometimes, a bad captain drives a crew to mutiny... and they take the support base and make a freeport. Or they make a freeport on a backwater area of a T-prime.

Now, if a world makes a grab like that, they can't defend it against serious aggression, either. Spread too thin.

 

[kilemall]

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?

The IMTU aspect was well covered in the other post, not canon in any way shape or form, just throwing a 'this is how I do it' out there as an alternative to get the brains going.

Actually this is a HUGE part of my universe I had to work out, being set in less then the first 100 years of Terran expansion.

 

[kilemall]

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?)

I'm using RTT Worldgen, with the 'less then 100 years since discovery' rules, which tend to create a lot of very low pop worlds on marginal planets, and some terraforming rules I tweaked (my TC is very ecology minded which is driving the terraforming people nuts, I expect less scruples as the story goes on).

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?

Sounds reasonable, in my case with the advent of jump the further outposts are awfully close so you don't have that quite yet, but there ARE people who are beyond the pale so to speak that are VERY disenfranchised from the main civilization.....

 

[GypsyComet]

The IMTU aspect was well covered in the other post, not canon in any way shape or form

Just keep in mind that we are in the "OTU" area of this board. Assumptions too far off of the published setting are presumably not what Adam is looking for.

 

[MR TEK]

Asumtions

People seem to be leaning to the throw caution to the wind crowd.

Even the most forward thinking large commercial ventures are only going to send out what they can expect to see some sort of return on within the working life-span of the senior management.

Smaller ventures might take a leap of faith. The rewards are immense, but the failure rate is steep enough to scare away all but the most courageous or desperate.

I would expect that for any but the most adventurous, unless there is the equivalent of rumors of gold in mass quantities in the new world, I could guess your expansion rates are overly optimistic by at LEAST 2-300 percent.

It will be at lest a few generations before the general population, many governments or the corporate interests are willing to jump into the KNOWN void of established frontier worlds, and there will never be more than a small fraction of a percent willing to jump into the completely unknown.

With probes and senor systems able to roughly determine the suitability of the next jump destination that process will speed up, but that takes generations to perfect with verification from closer observations.

In short you have all done a great job of calculating the maximum growth rate, but even the boldest and most optimistic races will never approach 30% of that potential and barring an immediate extinction threat in the settled regions, even that rate is seldom going to be seen and never sustained.

Sorry, no cannon, and not even hard statistics bound a cursory knowledge of colonization on this planet, but watching the dynamic between explorers and the established community, in many industries and research projects in the modern world, my gut tells me that Humanity at least will always fall far short of the maximum growth potential.

Plus we have a long history of being brutal to any civilization that gets in our way, and a civilization more bent on expansion will be less friendly to anybody in the way of their "Manifest Destiny"

Just my 2 crimps worth...

 

[aramis]

There is canon (two n's is a weapon) on colonial establishment... TNE's World Tamer's Handbook covers it in some (rather excruciating) detail. To get a viable colony, you can do it in about 10 Type R's and a Type M. At least, you can if the parent world is TL12+.

And that's without the optimistic Maker Tech of T5 and Agent.

 

[GypsyComet]

To get a viable colony, you can do it in about 10 Type R's and a Type M.

In another context that's about 200 semi truck trailers of stuff and three tour busses full of people. Spec the trailers as Conex carriers (which the Traveller expedition planner can certainly do the equivalent of) and that's an easy shake-and-bake for about two hundred people.

 

[aramis]

In another context that's about 200 semi truck trailers of stuff and three tour busses full of people. Spec the trailers as Conex carriers (which the Traveller expedition planner can certainly do the equivalent of) and that's an easy shake-and-bake for about two hundred people.

A large portion of which are raw materials for the fabricators. Another large portion is food for the period before initial harvests.

 

[Adam Dray]

A Navy presence in every system is an early form of strategic colonization.

If you are the only state around, only your own resources (including political and/or cultural will) might slow you down. Twenty parsecs radius is hundreds of worlds, so under panspermia assumptions quite a few of those worlds, and particularly the best worlds for easy colonization, will likely have other sophonts already in place. You may have competition well before you reach twenty parsecs, and it may well come from more than one direction.

I guess I'm coming into this with a lot of assumptions:

• It's fairly easy to colonize a world.
• You don't have to put settlers on all the worlds, just the good ones.
• You want to explore as much as possible, to find those good worlds.

Maybe the first point isn't true. From the systems that the rules generate (and these are supposed to be the frontier systems), people seem to live just fine on all kinds of planets we'd usually consider inhospitable: vacuum worlds, freezing cold desert worlds, planets with caustic atmospheres, and so on. Eventually you might terraform them, but people figure out how to live there anyway. Who knows why they bother.

Better, go explore every system within a couple month's travel and find the really good ones, the ones with resources and food and a friendly ecosystem. Drop people on those and ignore the rest. Concentrate your naval protection on them. Forget the crappy planets, unless you want to drop a fuel depot there. Sure, it's hard to protect that, but soon you'll have the full might of the resources of your garden world pumping out new ships.

I just don't see expansion happening one system at a time in a clean outward direction. Exploration, yes; colonization, no. Skip the crap systems.

 

[Adam Dray]

Expense, political will, political capital, chain of command issues, supply chain issues, and risk/reward issues.

Is that all? :rofl:

Whether 20 Parsecs is doable or pipe dream depends a lot upon jump capability.

You need to be able to get personnel out to your forward bases, and have those provide all the needed support - a logistical pain in the arse - we're talking potentially 2000 systems, probably about 1200.

You need also to have the materials and crews to remote build your forward operating bases. That's not cheap. As a practical matter, every system needs 3-4 ships and crews. Plus a dedicated supply line.

When you get out to the fringes of the explored Traveller universe, are there sophonts there? Are we all just retreading Grandfather's footsteps or are there any truly unexplored places?

And as I said in my last post, forget all 1200 systems. Just cherry pick the good ones. In 100 years, those will be the class-A starport hubs. Colonize the industrial worlds and the gardens, and let other people worry about the crappy worlds around them.

I suspect that people will jump at the opportunity for a land grab on a lush, garden world. "Every new colonist gets a homestead of 500 acres!" Sure, there's the threat of piracy and raiding, and maybe some weird indigenous biology we haven't encountered before, but what an opportunity for a low- or middle-class colonist-to-be.

Colonization efforts are risky for the patrons, sure. But the potential rewards are so enormous, a megacorporation would be insane not to have as many of these projects as they could afford. If it costs you 100 billion credits, but pays off a trillion credits over 10-20 years, that's a 10-1 ROI. If you have ten system colonization projects and only one pans out, and each costs 10 billion, then that's a break-even point. If two pan out, you double your money.

So what are the actual numbers? Looks like I need to dig into some Traveller books to figure this out. :coffeesip:

At low jump capability, that means you're not building the forward bases 20 Pc away until you've built them routes out to the edge.

You also need to have the public behind the effort. Including the ones being sent. If the ones being sent aren't, you may send a crew to their destruction at what was intended to be a forward operating base. And, in such cases, you often now have an armed defense cruiser there to help in taking the next one sent...

Who is destroying these ships? You're assuming that the most likely scenario is that a scout ship out in frontier space encounters sophonts with armed ships? And not that space is basically empty until we get there?

Is this sophont-filled universe canon? a Grandfather thing?

You also have to keep the forward bases supplied until they become self sufficient. Which means more ships, more crews, and more base support needs.

This looks like a job for free traders!

Further, ship captains, while notoriously independent and usually quite loyal, have a history of claiming islands for themselves once the admiralty peeves them too much. Others, rather than claiming the island, install a puppet pirate friendly local government, one which, at first, still supports the military, but slowly figures out who's corrupt, and then at the right point, sieze a few more vessels, declare a freeport, and start raiding the other forward bases. Not one big happy fleet anymore.

And sometimes, a bad captain drives a crew to mutiny... and they take the support base and make a freeport. Or they make a freeport on a backwater area of a T-prime.

If, as you said, these worlds can't stand alone, then they depend on shipments and support and protection from other systems. Thumb your nose at your patron, you end up embargoed and starving.

Now, if a world makes a grab like that, they can't defend it against serious aggression, either. Spread too thin.

Maybe there's a lot of trading worlds back and forth at first, until one side gets beaten. I'm talking about real frontiers here, where there's no established empire, so any "serious aggression" is spread thin, too. You might be able to take that system but you can't hold it.

I assume that megacorps don't engage in a lot of this kind of behavior. First of all, war is expensive. There'd have to be an enormous profit motive in getting into a war with a pocket empire or another megacorp over a system or two.

Second, out here in the unexplored frontier, there are still virgin worlds to be tamed. Why would a megacorp bother to start a war over a system when they can just keep grabbing virgin ones?

 

[Adam Dray]

The IMTU aspect was well covered in the other post, not canon in any way shape or form, just throwing a 'this is how I do it' out there as an alternative to get the brains going.

Actually this is a HUGE part of my universe I had to work out, being set in less then the first 100 years of Terran expansion.

Oh! I had totally just skimmed over the "IMTU" in your post. My bad.

I love the stuff you're doing with YTU and don't mind at all hearing your different perspectives.

 

[GypsyComet]

I just don't see expansion happening one system at a time in a clean outward direction. Exploration, yes; colonization, no. Skip the crap systems.

There are indications that this is the pattern the Vilani used, as they were not very good at building biospheres. Their growth pattern was hampered by stellar arrangements, Jump being a borderline technology, and because they kept finding other people already there. And because they themselves were people. People with a fear of the dark, and of thinking machines. People with a very particular approach to innovation. They took thousands of years.

Statistical models might support fast growth. People don't always.

 

[maksimsmelchak]

Hi Adam,

So what are the actual numbers? Looks like I need to dig into some Traveller books to figure this out. :coffeesip:

Well, that's one of the pickles of this issue... Traveller canon is well-defined (i.e. what Marc Miller says) However, after Marc, there is a vast sea of information and much of it is not definitive, is most definitely subjective, and nearly always is in conflict with some other data point, leaving vast grey areas... LOL ;-)

The TNE books probably had about the best leads for this sort of thing... However, many of the IISS (Scout Service) books also have interesting leads...

I assume that megacorps don't engage in a lot of this kind of behavior. First of all, war is expensive. There'd have to be an enormous profit motive in getting into a war with a pocket empire or another megacorp over a system or two.

Second, out here in the unexplored frontier, there are still virgin worlds to be tamed. Why would a megacorp bother to start a war over a system when they can just keep grabbing virgin ones?

The already-explored systems are... Already developed. Development takes time. Hi (High-population as in the high millions or billions... perhaps even trillions for really high density... I don't think any world could hold quadrillions, even with TL-15 technology) worlds generally don't happen overnight. Populations and markets take time to grow.

I would think that while some megacorps might take the long view and develop the frontier, it would probably be easiest for the biggest economic sharks out there, i.e. the megacorporation, to just let someone else do the hard work and then come in and buy them out. Or seize them. Or employ any one of probably hundreds or dirty tricks to take good development away from others. human nature, being what it is, often leads on paths that are distinctly different than altruism.

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

 

[Adam Dray]

I would think that while some megacorps might take the long view and develop the frontier, it would probably be easiest for the biggest economic sharks out there, i.e. the megacorporation, to just let someone else do the hard work and then come in and buy them out.

But really, who else has the resources to do this colonization?

A buy-out price is going to be higher than the speculative cost, probably, because the seller is looking to recuperate their speculative cost and make a profit. Only the megacorps and some large governments have the kind of capital to make colonization risks possible.

 

[maksimsmelchak]

But really, who else has the resources to do this colonization?

* Interstellar governments
* Pariah groups
* Exiles
* Rich playboys
* Evil guys, who say "Muhahahaha..."
* Connected nobles...

A buy-out price is going to be higher than the speculative cost, probably, because the seller is looking to recuperate their speculative cost and make a profit. Only the megacorps and some large governments have the kind of capital to make colonization risks possible.

That's assuming they are operating honestly... I'm pretty sure that the megacorps do not play honestly, follow the rules, or play fairly. Profit is sometimes about letting the other guy take it in the shorts.

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

 

[Adam Dray]

Do they really?

Interstellar governments: Sure. I mentioned those.

Pariah groups and evil guys, who say "Muhahahaha...": Only if they're as big as megacorporations. At that point, they're megacorporations.

Exiles, rich playboys, connected nobles: I'm not seeing it. Individuals do not have the financial capital to build entire colonies on worlds. Furthermore, the vast scale of system colonization takes enormous logistical ability, something that small groups and individuals do not have. As soon as they develop those facilities, they're basically megacorporations.

But let's say that there are a handful of very rich trillionaire playboys and splinter groups out there, ready to play the colony prospecting game with their money. There aren't enough of them to really push the border of frontier space forward with any kind of speed that I'm talking about. Certainly not fast enough that corporations can afford to swoop in and buy them out and make that a viable expansion strategy. Besides, arrogant trillionaire playboys and weird splinter groups probably won't sell.