Building A Colony

[Chamomile]

So I have a space thing I'm writing. A colony ship lands on another planet that is already habitable (there is, in fact, a hostile colony on it). So, assuming a planet is already earth-like, what steps would you take towards colonizing it? i.e. what objectives will the colony itself have to serve as a backdrop to the other stuff that's going on in the plot? I mean, at some stage (probably soon) you need to establish agriculture. And spaceports to trade with the motherland. But I don't really know what order those go in.

A good enough resource for this would be any detailed information on how Rome built their cities in their conquered territory or, even better, how the various European powers built their colonies in the Americas from a bunch of seasick colonists up to (usually) functioning independent nations. Unfortunately, while Wikipedia is happy to tell me what the colonies were and in what order they were established and why various European powers wanted colonies there specifically and the reasons those colonies sometimes got used as proxies for wars and etc. etc., it's alarmingly scant on what the process of actually building the colony was.

[sabs]

That depends entirely on the level of technology.
How is food handled normally? How much food did they land with.

Can their colony ship make landfall? or is it an orbital item only?
If they can make landfall, can they live on it for a while.

Basic Priorities are the same though

1) Shelter
2) Food
3) manufacturing

The first step is building housing. Hopefully you have some specialists, so you can do 3 things at once.
You're going to start by building the building that's going to allow you to make more buildings. A lumber mill, a blacksmithy if you're low tech enough. If you're higher tech.. Did they show up with land movers and concrete mixers?

At the "European colony level"
1) set up tents
2) send some people hunting and gathering
3) send some people cutting lumber (you did bring axes with you right)
4) send some people finding iron ore
5) build a channel forge, and your first step smithy.
6) boot strap yourself an anvil, and a hammer.
7) nails, plow shares, etc..
8) make a saw blade for making wooden planks.
9) make a lumber mill.

But a lot of that becomes moot if you've got access to robots and earth diggers, and you're building concrete and steel buildings. Though you need to somehow manufacture steel.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Dwarf Fortress with rocketships!

[fectin]

Read 'Downbelow Station', maybe. It has a bunch of other stuff, but includes building a colony.
Otherwise, look at mining camps or at European colonization of the Americas.

[hyzmarca]

Here's another important question, how fast and easy is your space travel?

In a relativistic universe, it's all a one-way trip. You're not going to have space ports to trade with the motherland because it just isn't efficient. Interstellar commerce will cost more than you can possibly get out of it.

This can also be true with slow expensive FTL and a big empty universe with few habitable planets.


In that case, you'll want to bring everything with you that is necessary to establish a self-sufficient civilization, because you won't get any support from home.

But yes. You basically want shelter and food production as your priorities followed by industry.

[Shatner]

Another question that needs to be answered is "Why colonize impossibly distant planets?" As Hyzmarca mentioned, if travel is slow enough to be essentially one-way then you'll need to pack everything for a civilization onto a star ship that can travel for decades (or centuries or millenia) without suffering from critical existence failure.

Once you have self-sufficient ships that can carry a proto-civilization for 100+ years, then you have to answer why you don't just have a ship-based diaspora. Instead of having 1 ship capable of supporting 10,000 colonists for a 250 year one-way trip, you build 500 ships capable of supporting 20 people for a couple decades. Then that swarm mines asteroids and builds solar arrays and otherwise tap into the gratuitous amounts of space and resources to be found in a solar system. This infrastructure then provides for the continued maintenance and creation of more ship-homes and you get... well something like Eclipse Phase or Firefly.

Now the answer can be "people already do the solar system house-boat thing, but THESE people are crazy pilgrims who really want to move to Proxima Centauri and leave the rest of humanity behind". That's fine, just make sure you have an answer.

[Chamomile]

How is food handled normally? How much food did they land with.

Food is grown at farms and then people eat it. Food supplies are good through the first year after arrival.

Can their colony ship make landfall? or is it an orbital item only?

Both, actually. The main parts of the ship are four colonial pods which can detach from the ship proper and land on the planet, leaving basically just a giant engine connected by an empty metal skeleton to the bridge.

If you're higher tech.. Did they show up with land movers and concrete mixers?

A fully packed colony ship comes complete with a bunch of pre-fab buildings, mining equipment, and the vaguely defined "colonial manufacturing plant" which contains all the infrastructure you need to make tools and small machinery.

The colony ship took off early, so it is not fully packed in basically whatever way would lead to the most interesting plot developments. Since the colony would be less interesting if it had to go completely native, the manufacturing stuff is probably going to show up intact. The pre-fab houses might be in short supply or completely absent, though.

Here's another important question, how fast and easy is your space travel?

It took three years to reach the colony planet, and that was longer than normal because they had to change course mid-transit because reasons, and even then it's been established that colony ships favor fuel efficiency over speed. So average travel time from a colony to the homeland on a wackyon particle drive is something like 1 year if you're on a trade freighter.

[PhoneLobster]

Food is grown at farms and then people eat it. Food supplies are good through the first year after arrival.... So average travel time from a colony to the homeland on a wackyon particle drive is something like 1 year if you're on a trade freighter.

As a farmer... people are going to STARVE.

[Chamomile]

As a farmer... people are going to STARVE.

Well, yes. They aren't fully equipped to survive due to a rushed launch because reasons, which is where most of the "oh crap winter is coming how do we not-starve" drama comes from. If it were a well-planned colonial expedition that went off without a hitch, I wouldn't have much of a plot, would I?

[Zinegata]

Are there natives in the earth-like planet you're aiming to settle? It's worth noting that European colonies in the Americas actually tended to survive only with the help and largesse of the Native Americans.

[sabs]

So given the information you've given. If I was the absolute monarch of the colony and hand absolute control over everyone.

Everyone who is an actual farmer with actual sklls, takes the seeds/etc and some bulldozers and tractors and about 1/3 of the unskilled/unimportant skilled labor force and goes fucking creating farms, right the fuck now.

Everyone who has manufacturing knowledge goes and makes the colonial manufacturing plant work.

Everyone who has building knowledge, takes about 1/3 of the unskilled/unimportant labor force and starts making buildings. Oh and wells, water sources.. etc.

Everyone who has actual culinary experience, esp in making food stretch.. is going to run the cafeterias.

Setup a hospital/clinic asap.
Everyone with medical knowledge works there, except for anyone with paramedic training.. which is going to go out with the farmers, and the hunters to be there for emergencies.
Anyone with police/military training is now part of the local militia. #1 job, guard the food. #2 job, guard the colony.
Of the rest, some small percentage get drafted into childcare/education.
Anyone with civil/chemical engineering experience takes some of the people who know how to build, and makes a waste treatment system/plant. Because the number one killer of colonies is sanitation, after starving to death.

Anyone left over whose above age 12 or so, gets split into some kind of labor force for doing shit. Probably some folks are doing exploration/hunting.

Oh I forgot.
Some group of folks become teamsters. Whose job it is to get raw materials to the manufacturing guys, manufactured goods to the contractors and the farmers, and well.. the farmers out to the farms.

[Finder]

A lot of the new-world colonies suffered because they were new to the whole colonizing business, as well as having to deal with any unforeseen problems such as harsh winters, crops failing, and local illnesses.

You can have your colonists run into a lot more problems than just the natives. Maybe the mine-ability estimates of the planet were incredibly off. They come with several pre-fabricated buildings, but if there's any lack of supplies, they could be fought over. You also have to take into account what their machinery is running on--don't know if that was mentioned. You could have a fuel shortage.