Colony Ship

[Geesuv]

I recently had an idea for a Traveller game based around a Homeworld style colony ship searching for a new home.
The ship will be carrying a million colonists contained in low berths and a number of smaller scout ships for exploration.
I realised while statting this colony ship up that it would need to be entirely self-sufficient (This will be set in an empty galaxy, as far as the players will know, earth is the only inhabited world. So no regular shipyards)
What kind of facilities and supplies would a ship such as this need to be self-sufficient?

 

[rust]

A closed biological life support system based upon genetically modified
bacteria and algae and the production of food through hydroponics, fish
tanks and microlivestock (= edible insects).

A production facility for basic equipment and spare parts, plus the raw
materials to produce them, with some of the organic raw materials pro-
duced on the ship (bioplast from algae, etc.).

A knowledge base with as much of the home world's scientific, techni-
cal and cultural heritage as possible, especially the methods and blue
prints to produce whatever could become important.

This means you would have to go beyond Mongoose Traveller technology
with the design of such a ship, otherwise the crew could only travel in low
berths, too, because the life support for a truly long voyage would take
more volume than the ship has, and the maintenance requirements would
lead to a rather quick decay of the ship.

 

[Reynard]

Are we assuming TL 9 with jump 1 capability? Essentially you are star hopping looking for a suitable wold in a universe not as human friendly as in a standard Traveller campaign? Besides a BIG ship for the engines you would probably be making regular stops for fuel as well as exploration. Your colony ship should have Prospector style spaceships to look for resources and facilities to process them. Fuel shuttles would supply either hydrogen from gas giants or water from planetary bodies if GGs are not available. The CS's sensor array could determine if GGs exist on nearby star systems. Jump capable scouts may be nessesary to determine water availability.

Save on space by only having tens of thousands of colonists. I believe it's been said you need over 5000 individuals for a healthy genetic pool. You're not trying to build a city outright. A small community needs much less resources to start and will grow into their new home. Look how quickly we colonized new lands on Earth and how fast technology advanced in a few hundred years. The CS inhabitants have the luxury of a much higher TL than muskets and sailing ships.

The bulk of people are, quire frankly, cargo. The crew that remains awake will live out their lives exploring the galaxy and servicing the ship. Consiter a standard crew for the size of the ship plus scientists and survey crews to explore and analyze plus crew who run fabrication facilities and workshops. I assume years rather than decades (maybe) or centuries (heaven forbid) to find a new world. Remember low berth slows metabolism not cease. They still age. Two weeks per jump covers a lot of territory in any given year.

Food animals may also share low berth status and that could mean small animals such as fowl and rabbits, not cattle, to conserve space. Plants, of course are easily stored as seed. While plants and animals are getting established planetside there will need to be facilities to produce biomass food for the colonists. Soylent Green is not an option.

I'll think up more stuff later.

 

[rust]

Just found the Mongoose Traveller data I was looking for, on page 21
of Beltstrike:

150 person-weeks of life support and equipment consumes 1 ton of
cargo space at a cost of Cr 150,000.

This includes rations, air, water and waste treatment/recycling.

So with Mongoose Traveller technology a crew of 150 would require 4
tons per month, 48 tons per year.

Since the colonists would normally need at least one growing season to
get their agriculture up and running, the colony ship would have to carry
supplies for at least three months, probably somewhat less than 50,000
tons for 1 million colonists.

By the way, the various vehicles, agricultural machines and production
facilities of the future colony would also require quite a bit of volume on
the ship.

For my colony settings I prefer a "split" approach, with an exploration
ship followed by a colony seed ship followed by the actual colony ship.
This way there is no need to keep all that material in space for the en-
tire process. The exploration ship searches for a suitable planet, once
it has returned with the data the colony seed ship with the small advan-
ce team is outfitted and sent on its way to start up the colony's habitat,
agriculture, mining and production, and about a year after that the act-
ual colony ship arrives. Although this requires the use of three ships in-
stead of one, the costs are significantly lower.

 

[Reynard]

Rust, your version sounds like standard operating procedure for routine colonization rather than an emergency situation. Costs are lower because the ships are reusable. The colony seed ship is a mobile construction platform that can be self sufficient if distance doesn't allow import of materials from supply ships. If it is colonizing a universe as crowded as many Traveller campaigns, supply ships would be part of the logistics. You would more than likely be hopping supplies through other colonies to the new colony.

The actual colony ship is a dedicated passenger frieghter transporting only the colonists since even farm animals are probably established on the colony prior to the final colonization phase. When the colonists arrive the Seed ship and its crew have moved back to homeworld dock for refit and resupply. Actually, to save money, passenger lines my be pressed into service to carry colonists. No expensive dedicated ship. In Geesuv's case it's a one way trip and no expense is too great.

It does sound like all your ships are progressing at the same time but at separate intervals. Not strategic or cost affective. Staying together shares resources. If any of the ships are lost there's no point anyway.The explorer is naturally freer to move about but would still benefit from a homebase. I believe one big colony ship is more efficient. Again, the passengers are just cargo and some can be awakened to perform colony construction. When tossing your eggs into the void kepp them in the same basket.

 

[rust]

The main problem with using only one ship is in my view that it either
has to carry equipment, seeds, livestock and so on for many different
local situations and types of ecology, or to continue to search for the
"goldilocks planet" that is "just right for what we have brought with us"
while ignoring all potentially habitable planets the colonists are not well
enough equipped for. This is the main reason why I prefer a phased
approach with the data from the exploration ship as the base for the
decisions on the equipment of the actual colonization project.

As for the emergency situation, I think if there is enough time to de-
sign and construct a ship able to transport a million colonists and their
equipment, this time can just as well be used for the exploration part
of the project.

 

[BFalcon]

Rust is right, I think...

Far better to spend money on several exploration vessels and then shotgun them into space (ie send them to as many different candidates as possible).

To me it would go something like this:

Stage 1: Probes launched into various close systems looking for suitable planets. Information then beamed back at the fastest possible method to the home world.

Stage 2: While probes are en-route, work starts on the colony survey ships. These would contain enough machines, shelters and food supplies (in seed and embryonic form) to provide for a crew of a few hundred, including colony specialists (like geologists and botonists) who'd only be woken upon reaching the system. These are then launched (probably 2 or 3 to a system to prevent accidents from wiping out the whole attempt) as soon as the information is recieved. Command section of the ship stays in orbit while shuttles take the crew and supplies to the surface (the rest, including the main drives, being used recycled to provide extra housing and buildings). This then acts both as a communications satellite and also as a beacon to the home world and incoming colony ships. Either probe launched back to home world or message beamed back to with progress reports.

Stage 3: Seed colony ships (built since Stage 1) are then sent to those systems that report a successful colony still in existance 1 year after founding - this is to prevent colonisation of a hostile world. These contain much more supplies and many more colonists than the Stage 2 ships, but are still not as large as the ships to follow. The main goal of these ships is to provide a stable gene pool to the colony and the food supplies, but also to provide more advanced technology and better facilities to the colony (for example, production facilities to make them semi-self sufficient). These ships would land at sites cleared by the initial colony survey team and would then provide materials for the building of the colony's shelters

Stage 4: Colony ships (massive and shipping in bulk) would be sent using robotic autopilots (since, by now, the system is going to be refined) with bulk colonists (and little else), expecting the food supplies to be established already (Stage 3's main task would have been the massive over-production of food to the scale where a full-blown colony could be sustained). These would also be cannibilised for materials upon landing.

Stage 5: Regular ships in both directions - shipping the latest high-tech and manufacturing machinery to the colony and mineral wealth in return, using nearby gas giants, comets, etc for refuelling at the colony's end. Establishing of orbital station (not necessarily pressurised or fully-enclosed) to speed up the loading, unloading and refuelling of bulk craft and to act as replacements for the (now aging) stage 2 craft in their communications role.

Eventually the colony would become nearly self-sufficient, so making their needs less and less, probably ending up with low-berth-frozen luxury goods and high-tech gadgets being the only goods being sent out to them, so the cargo ships would most likely end up being cargo-pod orientated to reduce the size on the outward trips...

It's complicated, but you don't want to send a super-carrier ship with millions of lives in just one package that a meteor would total in just one collision... sending several (smaller) ships in each stage ensures that at least one should arrive safely each time (except the probes - if they don't arrive, it's just inconvenient and wasted money - you can always build and send more). You also don't want to land millions of people on a planet only to find out that the plants won't grow and the animals find the local food to be poisonous... better to have a crew of a couple of hundred find that out.

There's also the political element - what happens if the planet is already occupied, but the probe didn't pick it up? The sudden arrival of millions of colonists might spark a war - a few hundred or a few thousand, you might be able to apologise for and bring them back. That's why I suggest a delay in each step before launching - give each stage a chance to make some progress and report back before launching more lives and more money at each stage.

 

[rust]

Mining and production are also an example of the advantages of a phased
approach. If the colony has the capacity to mine industrial metals and to
turn these raw materials into basic tools and machinery, it can expand its
industrial base from there.

So bringing mining equipment makes a lot of sense - but without knowing
anything about the planet in advance, the colonists have to be prepared
for all types of mining operations, strip mining as well as deep mining, mi-
ning through hard rock as well as mining below a water table, and so on.

Knowing in advance what the planet has to offer and how to get it means
that the colonists can save both lots of money and - potentially even more
important - lots of cargo space volume by bringing the right equipment for
the task, instead of having to ship in a dozen different mining system, the
majority of which could well turn out to be useless.

 

[Rick]

Rust has a good point - the governments or corporations that set up a colonisation process are not doing it as a philanthropic gesture - they'll want to send colonists to planets that have natural resources that they can use and profit from. They'll want to see a rich return from their initial investment so the initial colonists will be government/corporate employees setting up facilities to mine/harvest these resources. To try to generate more profit, they might allow other individuals to buy transport to the planet plus a land grant (away from their resource-rich areas), or even sell off unwanted land grants to other governments to dump involuntary colonists (convicts or dole scroungers) on them, well away from their resources. A planet is a big place so there's always going to be ways of making money out of it, even if the initial investment is huge.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

There are two possibilities here.
You will be running your campaign at the dawn of the Solimani Empire, when the Terrans first moved out into the stars only to find it already populated with space-faring humans.
Or you are simply using the Traveller game mechanics and you're creating your own campaign setting.

In either case, since this part of your game universe is "so early" in Traveller terms, I would seriously look at the alternate types of drives and fuel sources within the Mongoose rules. There is also the 5% rule that other rule systems sometimes use... a ship requires 5% of it's mass for jump fuel in stead of the 10% rule.

I kinda like the idea of a large "mother ship" heading in a general direction with a small fleet of small scout ships exploring in all directions as you go.
Before I started my current Traveller campaign, I in fact was going to start my friends on a very similar mission. The very first explorers setting out from earth to explore and discover the traveller universe.

Anyway, as far as the facilities involved with such a large ship has already been discussed. I would only add mining/processing ships to mine all the raw materials floating around. Space is full of ice and iron.
My only advice is as a GM don't let your idea get too bogged down in the rules of ship design. Get the basics down and fudge the rest. Be general and don't kill yourself trying to write up EVERYTHING on paper.
If the colony/exploration ship doesn't fit perfectly into the ship building rules, don't worry. It's not so important that you allow the game mechanics of Mongoose to torpedo your story line. The mother ship is in fact a plot device, so treat it like one.
Now... when dealing with the smaller scout type ships your players will be on, going out in advance of the mother ship.... THOSE you can design within the tried and test Traveller ship design game mechanics.

This sounds fun. So have fun!

 

[phavoc]

I recently had an idea for a Traveller game based around a Homeworld style colony ship searching for a new home.
The ship will be carrying a million colonists contained in low berths and a number of smaller scout ships for exploration.
I realised while statting this colony ship up that it would need to be entirely self-sufficient (This will be set in an empty galaxy, as far as the players will know, earth is the only inhabited world. So no regular shipyards)
What kind of facilities and supplies would a ship such as this need to be self-sufficient?

Lets assume your ship is departing Terra in search of a new home for its crew and passengers.

First how will the ship be travelling? I'm assuming that there must be some sort of supra-light capability, or else its gonna be a looonggg trip!

Are you having this as a purpose-built hull, or are you able to take say an asteroid ship with you?

Is your ship more of a travelling space station, where the it's actually able to support its population in a station-like environment, ala Babylon 5 stations, or the early O'neil space stations where it spins to provide gravity and is cylinder-like (or maybe its a rotating wheel like the stations in Cherry's Downbelow universe? This is important because the ship itself woudl have an entirely different function upon arriving at their destination.

If you have jump capabilities then you'll have a swarm of scouts that you dispatch every time you jump to look at different nearby systems and see how successful you can colonize them. Remember that once you achieve the ability to live in space, you don't really 'need' a planet... but people seem to like them for some reason. Maybe that will change when we get spacers for real.

Your ship will need full manufacturing capabilities to supply the colony with industrial goods. I would suspect you would carry automated processing equipment that would be used to first replicate your industrial structure, and then as you have time and resources, to build more dedicated industrial infrastrucutre.

You'll need a complete organic catalog of all plants and animals you wish to bring with you. If you have the tech, frozen embryo's are the best way to go, and if you have space and supplies, you could have a small group of animals alive at all times (and you'll need to grow food for them, etc).

Hydroponics of some sort to create fresh food (and carniculture if you allow it to 'grow' fresh meat). Crews get sick of canned stuff pretty quick.

Speaking of crews, if you have the space you'll need to be able to revive your passengers once you arrive, so you'll need additional quarters onboard (most likely.. in some instances you might revive on the ground).

You'll need hangar space, machinery and parts to maintain your ships. If they aren't indestructible, you'll need spare ships as well as spare parts to rebuild them completely a few times over. Less if you knew roughly how long you'd be in space. You may be able to combine your existing industrial equipment onboard to make your ship parts as required.

You'll need stocks of certain minerals and other things that are rare in space. Iron, nickel, etc are easily found and mined. But you may not find, say gallinium, iridium, uranium, etc lying around. So if you require them for industrial needs, you'll have to have a stockpile to drawdown.

Then you'll need all the stuff you need for you colony - structures, medical gear, medicines, clothing, tools, sewing kits, etc. That's going to take up a LOT of space because the list is so long. And little things like insect repellent, or netting to protect you. And guns. Lots and lots of guns. With cool black trench coats to hide them in! Oh, sorry, thinking of Neo from the Matrix.

You'll also have copious data archives cataloging every book, poem, artwork and cultural thing that your civilziation created. Fortunately data takes up almost no room, so you can pack that stuff away in a closet and be done with it.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

I recently had an idea for a Traveller game based around a Homeworld style colony ship searching for a new home.
The ship will be carrying a million colonists contained in low berths and a number of smaller scout ships for exploration.
I realised while statting this colony ship up that it would need to be entirely self-sufficient (This will be set in an empty galaxy, as far as the players will know, earth is the only inhabited world. So no regular shipyards)
What kind of facilities and supplies would a ship such as this need to be self-sufficient?

What is the purpose for the colony?
In America, most of the first colonies were established as commercial enterprises by a combination of private industries with some Royal backing.
Is this colony gong to be a corporate enterprise? (maybe like a large scale Avatar)
Or is the earth doomed and your players are looking for a planet sized life boat out in the universe?
Or is there some other purpose you are working on?
That should narrow down the focus on the mission and help to better define the colony ship.

 

[Reynard]

I looked at the capital ship design section in High Guard seeing how a million ton vessel will perform as a colony ship. First thing I checked was a low berth unit to carry the colonists. Once again things are simplified so there's no Tech Level, I shall assume it can be TL 9 at the dawn of a planet's space age. By the way Geesuv, have you consitered what TL your campaign is? I've mentioned TL 9 as an assumption of colonization shortly after a world begins space travel but it could be any age. They still colonize at TL 15.

In any case I see a few people here describe millions of colonists at a time. Quite frankly I find that number what you may see if a world was panicking because their sun was exploding or an asteroid was coming and every nation with the resources were building and launching ships ala Titan A.E.. Even so a low berth is a half ton unit. A million sleeping colonists would take up half the ship's volume. I won't mention you ain't putting any useful stuff in there too.

So, if you really feel you need millions of colonists, you're talking a huge fleet of sleeper ships with an even bigger fleet of supply and construction ships to build the new home, literally a city, before the colonists ever step down. Bigger ain't better though we see on our own world reason isn't universal.

Or we throw out the Traveller restrictions and assume building a small mobile moon is okay. It becomes a background prop much like the Babylon 5 station with stories occuring inside and the near space around it. Sounds cool to me. With this concept you needn't worry about what facilities are there. It's big enough to have the personnel and facilities as your story calls for.

 

[AndrewW]

Or we throw out the Traveller restrictions and assume building a small mobile moon is okay.

Complete with Eagle Transporters?

 

[phavoc]

Or we throw out the Traveller restrictions and assume building a small mobile moon is okay.

Complete with Eagle Transporters?

Yar! And shape-changing aliens that you pick up as crew along the way.

 

[BFalcon]

I looked at the capital ship design section in High Guard seeing how a million ton vessel will perform as a colony ship. First thing I checked was a low berth unit to carry the colonists. Once again things are simplified so there's no Tech Level, I shall assume it can be TL 9 at the dawn of a planet's space age. By the way Geesuv, have you consitered what TL your campaign is? I've mentioned TL 9 as an assumption of colonization shortly after a world begins space travel but it could be any age. They still colonize at TL 15.

In any case I see a few people here describe millions of colonists at a time. Quite frankly I find that number what you may see if a world was panicking because their sun was exploding or an asteroid was coming and every nation with the resources were building and launching ships ala Titan A.E.. Even so a low berth is a half ton unit. A million sleeping colonists would take up half the ship's volume. I won't mention you ain't putting any useful stuff in there too.

So, if you really feel you need millions of colonists, you're talking a huge fleet of sleeper ships with an even bigger fleet of supply and construction ships to build the new home, literally a city, before the colonists ever step down. Bigger ain't better though we see on our own world reason isn't universal.

Or we throw out the Traveller restrictions and assume building a small mobile moon is okay. It becomes a background prop much like the Babylon 5 station with stories occuring inside and the near space around it. Sounds cool to me. With this concept you needn't worry about what facilities are there. It's big enough to have the personnel and facilities as your story calls for.

If you noticed, I only mentioned the "few million" colonists once the colony was already established and shelter and facilities were already in place (for the most part) - tentage could be used to pick up any shortfalls until such time as more permanent shelter could be arranged... and as I also said, don't overlook the ships themselves as building materials - there's a lot of decking and other materials inside a ship that could be shipped down to the surface for use as building materials if need be. The whole idea of that stage would be to get people to the colony partly to alleviate population pressures at home, but also to jumpstart the colony's development.

The rest of the ship you need only a M-drive, a P-plant, a Bridge, a decent amount of fuel and some solar panels to help alleviate the fuel useage when able to get close enough to a star - you can, of course, tailor the fuel requirements since you know precisely where it's headed after having scouted out and established the colony...

 

[BFalcon]

On the other hand, you could make a super-large ship and have a generation ship... a cylindrical ship and the gravity could be caused by the whole ship spinning...

 

[Reynard]

A generation ship suggests low tech travel. As great as they look in sci fi movies such a ship would bankrupt the entire planet UNLESS this was a one way exodus and there won't be a planet or civilization to worry about. Remember the end in the movie 2012?

And you may be talking thousands of years or more depending on how lucky you are to have systems close by and at lest one of them happens to be habitable. A generation ship is also wildly cost ineffective but makes sense, kinda, if there is no low berth technology. Still resources need to be TIGHTLY controlled. Since this is Traveller gimme that ol' tyme jump drive!

By the way, solar panels suck outside a system. That's why our probes have nuclear power generators.

Again, for me at least, sending millions of colonists out in the early stages is problematic with incredible upfront cost and infrastructure nightmares. Detroit, San Jose and Dallas are all close to a million people. Los Angeles, Huston and Chicago are 'a few million". How long would it take to build any of them and what would the resources and costs be to build fairly quick?

If we're talking expansion colonies you send in what's needed to get started and grow. New colonists would come as the colonizing agency decides who is nessesary plus there would be growth from the colonists. Even today it takes time and other Traveller games have expressed colonial population growth in increments of decades and centuries.

Geesuv's concept, as I read it, is an all or nothing effort. For whatever reason they want to colonize, no ifs, ands or buts, however, their information on what's out there is minimal. They take the kitchen sink with them and don't stop until they plant the flag. We can see stars and gas giants but can't detect Earth-sized bodies so we must go there. We may send a ship back once established to spread the news but for the duration we only go forward. Space Family Robinson!

 

[BFalcon]

Reynard: I agree about the Generation Ship - but I suggested it as a possible means of getting a lot of colonists moved with minimal fuel requirements since you only need the acceleration and deceleration fuel for the drives and to keep it heated and lit while in transit - and possibly sensors, but that'd be optional since pretty much nobody would be able to do anything about it anyhow...

I only suggested the solar panels as a possible means of getting more power if you pass close to another system as a means of saving power - but I suspect you're right.

As for the colony ship in general, I fully agree - that's why I put the largest ships as years after the initial colony was established - no point in doing so earlier and I'm assuming that the building planet has populations in the billions, like we do right now. As for bankrupting the planet, not so sure - if it's only one or two ships being sent out and you expect to get minerals in return, I don't think it'd be that much of a committment, although I do think that millions might be excessive...

I've assumed that jump drives weren't available - obviously if jump drives are available, the whole procedure can be speeded up - although I'd still let the initial colony a year or two to find out if there's any problems with the colony.

And lastly, I still say that having tens of thousands of colonists turn up on a planet would be cause for a war if that planet is already claimed by another power - having a small colony would be easier to pack up in the event that it was needed for any reason.

 

[Reynard]

"And lastly, I still say that having tens of thousands of colonists turn up on a planet would be cause for a war if that planet is already claimed by another power ..."

What, no imperialistic expansion?! That's what made every powerful nation on Earth what they are today and even the United States,to this very day, has never apologized as it swept across the continent then grabbed Alaska and Hawaii in violence and treachery. Traveller itself makes it clear there is no Prime Directive only Profit.

On that note a GM's race could actually be the good guys no matter what. Part of a campaign can be about First Contact with other races. That could go well or could go horribly. Can you imagine if a gigantic ship came to an inhabited world and said "Hi, we're looking for a home but we see this one's already taken so we'll move on but we'll try to make contact again when we settle down. Bye!"