If you were the Governor ...

[rust]

Apologies for the long post and any mistakes in the quoting, but I hope it's useful.

No need at all for apologies, and thank you very much for your ideas.

Wind turbines/batteries will probably be better for the outpost areas while they are small. Wave energy is a better option over tidal as the ocean's swell would provide power for them (e.g. Pelamis).

For the smaller outposts and thelike I was thinking of Savonius turbines.
They are not very efficient, but they are easy to build, require not much
maintenance and are rugged enough to survive the many storms that
a water world most probably has:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savonius_wind_turbine

As for wave energy, I was also thinking of the Pelamis "sea snake" de-
sign, which could for example be used to supply underwater installations with a power cable running inside the anchor cable of the "sea snake".

Strong tides will stir up the sea bed lifting a significant amount of sediment in the shallows.
(...)
Deep-water mining will put sediment into the water, which while detrimental to organisms in the vicinity might be beneficial to those on the fringes of the operation as nutients are returned to the water when the sea bed is disturbed.

The tides on Pandora will be comparatively weak, because the planet has
no moon, leaving only the solar tides.

Most of the mining will be done by remotely controlled mining drones at a
location about 30 km from the main settlement and in a depth of almost
200 m, on the rim of the collapsed crater of an extinct underwater volca-
no which once moved the ores to this area.

Like most of the sea floor of Pandora, the sea floor in this region is also
covered by primitive sponge like creatures which filter nutrients out of the
material that is sinking down to the sea floor, and these "sponges" are in
turn the main food source for several species of sea floor "grazers".

Some other suggestions for what to do with your players ...

Thank you very much, nice ideas.

 

[rust]

The Abyss is another film that would be good for underwater stuff, or if you want to move into alien territory.

Indeed, and The Abyss is one of the few underwater science fiction mo-
vies that is well researched "hard" science fiction.

 

[rust]

By the way, give this real world beauty four short clawed tentacles to grab
its prey, and the result is very much like I imagine the basic type of the
native Pandora creatures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OgcocephalusParvus.jpg

[... and I wonder where it gets the waterproof lipstick ...]

 

[BP]

Ah! The inspiration behind the DJ in The Fifth Element! :lol: