Planetary or Orbital Colonization?

[Lord Frost]

One small issue has always proved bothersome when I read about the possibility of large-scale planetary colonization: the improbability of finding a planet with both the gravity and atmosphere similar enough to a colonizer's home world to actually sustain life. So maybe the atmosphere can be modified via terraforming, but gravity's effects on any potential colonist cannot be ignored or easily rectified.

Wouldn't it be a bit more conceivable that space faring beings would rather build orbital colonies where they can maintain an artificial gravity and atmosphere? Planets, at such an advanced point of technology, would really only be good for resource extraction and weapons testing anyway.

Thoughts?

 

[Price21]

I think Orbital Colonisation should be included as an Option, Although I see Planetary Colonisation as a more, Get it over and done with approach as well as allowing more growing space.

 

[Kaiser Timo]

You can have slave population, slaves that belong to other races that may find their living conditions perfect on the planets you seek to colonize and take control of!

 

[palomer]

If you are going to build an orbital colony, why even build it at a planet? I thought the whole idea of colonizing a planet was that it was way more economical than building space habitat for the same number of people. Considering there are people who weigh 500+ lbs and can still walk, I think colonizing a planet with up to double the homeworld gravity should be doable. Obviously even microgravity is livable as well. Earth is the largest terrestrial planet in the sol system, it might be that almost all terrestrial planets are close enough in gravity to at least habitate. Gas giants don't strike me as much of an option for surface colonization however.

You are right though that the game should acknowledge the difficulties involved. Maybe there should be a negative modifier based on how far away from the homeworld's gravity a planet is?

 

[Harle]

It always bugged me that no matter how hostile most planets are to life (especially human life) and yet in most games planets are almost universally habitable (bonus points for colonizing gas giants).

Between gravity, radiation, toxic/corrosive atmospheres, and atmospheric pressure (here's lookin' at you, Venus) it just isn't always practical.

I'd love to see a game that focused on more rare and valuable habitable planets, and otherwise a lot of space stations and asteroid/moon/dwarf planet exploitation.

For colonizing 'hostile' planets, colonies should basically be small purpose-built outposts with minimal population. If you want cities on a planet, you should need a good, rare, Homeworld like planet with comparable conditions.

 

[DC123456789]

It's possible that the intention is to only represent the star systems with planets conducive to life - all the other billions of stars that don't have just the right planet are ignored.

 

[aplsin]

(here's lookin' at you, Venus)

http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/07/the-surprisingly-strong-case-for-colonizing-venus/373560/

 

[Harle]

http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/07/the-surprisingly-strong-case-for-colonizing-venus/373560/

No I'm aware of the aerostat plan, but that's not colonization in the sense I mean. You could never colonize venus to the extent that you might colonize an earth-like planet. Or even Mars. It would be too costly to support a large population.

That would basically be an outpost, which I think is something that should be distinguished from colonies. Like I think it would be interesting to have deep-sea outposts on oceanic planets, but because it's not easy to build or expand in a high-pressure environments, they would be highly restricted. They gather resources but don't provide the kinds of economic/cultural/scientific growth that a rapidly growing and expanding population can grant.

 

[Ayn Mandarb]

Never say never. The biggest scientific barrier to space faring is travel and especially to fiction like this being plausible is Faster Than Light travel, which relativity suggests to be impossible.

If that can be overcome, it should be trivial to overcome gravity. We already have ways to artificially adjust gravity, there are no ways to travel Faster Than Light.

 

[Heath-Bar]

One small issue has always proved bothersome when I read about the possibility of large-scale planetary colonization: the improbability of finding a planet with both the gravity and atmosphere similar enough to a colonizer's home world to actually sustain life. So maybe the atmosphere can be modified via terraforming, but gravity's effects on any potential colonist cannot be ignored or easily rectified.

Wouldn't it be a bit more conceivable that space faring beings would rather build orbital colonies where they can maintain an artificial gravity and atmosphere? Planets, at such an advanced point of technology, would really only be good for resource extraction and weapons testing anyway.

Thoughts?

We can't currently imagine what technologies will develop in the next 100-500 years or more; hell ~500 years ago the earth was flat and at the center of the universe. It is highly probable that we or another species will develop means of altering any aspect of a planet. It would be interesting to show different levels of terraforming technology throughout the game so that early on you may be only able to colonize worlds similar to your species home world. While later developing technologies to colonize harsher worlds, and please not just one technology for each planet type like GalCiv3; there should be technology chains allowing your species to colonize different classes of worlds over time as technology improves. Imagine you start in the Sol system, early tech would allow your species to establish small outposts on moons and mars. After tech level increase you could then expand to full colonies on mars and moons and so on while gaining the ability to set up small outposts on Pluto or in orbit around any of the Gas Giants. Then only with advanced tech could you construct outposts on say Venus or Mercury.

 

[DC123456789]

hell ~500 years ago the earth was flat

Correction, 2300 years ago.

 

[Harle]

I don't buy into the 'anything is possible, so everything is possible!' line of thinking. That leads to some over-the-top places.

Obviously this is just my preference, but where it comes to sci-fi, I like to keep the physics-breaking craziness down to the necessary pieces to make the setting actually function (FTL travel is needed for any game at a galactic scale), and take a conservative bend when we start looking at things like manipulating the gravity of planets.

I tend to get bored of space 4X games right around the time my empire is capable of colonizing every single planet it comes across, but again, that is just me. I'd rather have a game about gathering resources from uninhabitable planets to support the growth of colonies on more habitable planets. It makes the idea of a colony more interesting and special.

 

[palomer]

What is even the time scale we are dealing with here? If the game is only as few centuries, there are not a whole lot of generations with with to populate worlds. 300 years is roughly 12 generations. If you double the population every generation, you could turn 1,000 colonizers into a little over 2,000,000. That is the population of 1 major city, and only after 300 years of breeding. Maybe we will have better Octomom tech?

 

[DC123456789]

Advanced medicine + encouraging lots of children = very fast population growth, if you want to do that. Can you imagine how quickly a population would grow if each family had 7-8 (or more!) children, and they all had a very high chance of survival?

 

[Saintrl]

Didn't the devs mention that on planets that are simply too hostile to colonize, you may find it better to just mine resources from orbit rather than colonize it on the ground? It does sound to me like there will be both planetary and orbital colonization in Stellaris. How else would you be able to mine gas giants?

 

[aitaituo]

Advanced medicine + encouraging lots of children = very fast population growth, if you want to do that. Can you imagine how quickly a population would grow if each family had 7-8 (or more!) children, and they all had a very high chance of survival?

Plus, there's no reason to assume low initial populations. Right now, if we had the technology, we could found around 80 colonies per year with a million settlers each and the Earth's population would remain stable. After 300 years, we could easily top a trillion people that rate.

 

[palomer]

Okay I guess 1,000,000 colonists could become 64,000,000 in 100 years, but would not be like EU4 where a new world province goes from unpopulated to populated in a few years. I guess a planet doesn't have to be fully populated (what does that even mean anyway) to be a useful colony. It just seems wierd to me. Maybe colonies could have a population stat that rises over time based on various modifiers and it's productivity would be multiplied by it's population?

 

[Sir Pellew]

If you are advanced enough a Dyson-Sphere would make much more sense ... Energy-wise.

 

[palomer]

I honestly don't want to play with a dyson sphere. Just the thought of that much efficiency is depressing to me. (I am a government employee)

 

[*Aqua*]

I think colonizing a planet with up to double the homeworld gravity should be doable. Obviously even microgravity is livable as well.

In reality it isn't that easy. Humans are build to survive in a 1 g enviroment. If you go below that your bones and muscles go weak. If you go above it your joints will wear down faster and your heart might not be strong enough to fight higher gravity for an extended amount of time.

There numerous other problems: In low-G enviroments your equilibirum sense in your ears don't work as good and precise. In high-G enviroments it may not work at all.
etc.