Why build a colony at all?

[CharlieC]

I wonder if there is a bit of a problem with the whole concept. Why are they building a colony that is likely to kill them? Why not just build a comms desk and signal a ship and spend the $1000 getting the hell out?

Maybe contacting ships should only happen a lot later in the game when the colonists have something worth staying for like children & homes and a lot of research is needed before ships can be contacted?

BTW this is shaping up to be a classic. I have been near addicted to it since I bought a few days ago. It's knocked my Gnomoria addiction into a cocked hat. I loved looking at the prototypes as well. The tactical game reminded me of the old SSI game Roadwar2000. Pity no one has yet made a new version of that.

[Galileus]

Use search function. You'll find identical topic where someone asks OP to use search function

In short: space travel is VERY slow, traders are not equipped to house passengers, traders are unlikely to pick up unknown folk in fear of riders, colonists have nothing and no-one to come back to (time needed for space travel makes sure of that).

[CharlieC]

I did use the search and nowt came up that had anything to do with the question. Using the terms 'why, build, colony' only comes up with my question unless I am doing the search wrong 

If travel is so slow there seems to be a huge amount of ships and travellers flitting about in the bit of space the moon resides. In such a universe is it not likely that enterprising souls would start up rescue services for the large amount of folk who seem to get themselves stranded? They have no problem in picking up slaves. I could understand it if there was a universal law stating that all rescued travellers become the property of the rescuer or suchlike.

[todofwar]

It has come up before, in diferent forms. I think many people miss another point entirely, and that is we are not really building a colony in this game. In the sense that a colony will grow into a new city, at any rate. This is a group of people trying to survive a hostile world in a hostile galaxy. All they are building is a base to survive, that is all.

[Cdr.Keen]

I wonder if there is a bit of a problem with the whole concept. Why are they building a colony that is likely to kill them? Why not just build a comms desk and signal a ship and spend the $1000 getting the hell out?

Maybe they want to stay, because it's their new home planet

I think leaving the planet will be a feature in the endgame, or some typ of quest to win a szenario. Building a colony fits the space between this

[Jaginun]

Heya, I have just bought the game, not even played it yet, but from the text on the website it seems that this is a hard sci-fi universe.

That means there are realistic limits on space craft, and as you may or may not know taking off from a planet takes an immense amount of energy, especially if there is an atmosphere, which is why space shuttles take off with a massive rocket after just a few minutes they discard that. The energy that it would take to land the ship on the ground would just about cripple their fuel supplies, if not ground them.

But you may ask the question, 'Well in that case, how do they get the supplies you sell them to their ship?'
I imagine they use some kind of small drone with a high Thrust to weight ratio to pick up the small amount of supplies you give them.

Anyhow, I have no idea what this game is actually like to play, so I may be completely wrong on this  .

[CharlieC]

I am sure it will all get worked out in the end after all the game is in early stages of development. Really having a great time playing with what we have at the moment. Did I really just see a group of those boomrats thingys get zapped by a lightning strike?? Ha ha.

Great stuff Ty, lots of great ideas and I'm still just finding out what does what.

[Tynan]

What I'm saying about why you can't just hitch a ride with traders:

It would be like saying, hey, you're stuck in Bangkok, why can't you just hitch a ride home with a passing bead-seller on a tuk-tuk?

The people you're trading with are in-system traders, not interstellar. You could ride with them, but they'd probably just take you as slaves. Even if they didn't, they're not going anywhere you really want to be.

Real space isn't like in Star Wars or Star Trek. The difference between a planetary voyage and a voyage to another star is a factor of a trillion.

[komrath]

You could technically arrest everybody and sell as slaves BOOM, here's your escape plan

[CharlieC]

Ahh interplanetary travel and not intersteller. I have a clearer picture of the setting now. Ta. BTW your prototypes are fascinating thank you for sharing them, I spent the first couple of nights playing with them without even getting to the game. 

[Bob Buddha]

You can have interstellar/interplanetary trade without a ship that can land and take off from a planet's surface.
No matter what level of technology you are imaginining the action of deorbiting, landing on a planet, and taking off again is a big deal in any realistic, probable, or practical sci-fi.  The idea of in-system traders would requires  that there are populations nearby living and working on ships or space stations or living on neighboring planets.

A trader shooting down boxes is actually not a bad way to imaging how it could work.  Getting things back up without some kind of shuttle seems like it needs some explaining, how about a cargo drone?  Slave transport down can be in some kind of suspended animation pod, but going back up would need a launch vehicle or shuttle, unless we have teleporters.

Why escape? The likelyhood of a random ship failure ending up with you landing on a habitable planet is very unlikely.  I would have to think that this planet was the intended destination, just not with the intended circumstances.
Though your arrival may have sucked, you would have no choice but to continue with what you came there to do.  I could also see where all the raiders and wanderers were actually fellow survivors of your colony ship.  Tynan stated the inspiration of Firefly, and their wild west vision of space colonization. Included in their backstory is that Earth had became a polluted wasteland that mankind fled, which is not difficult to imagine from where we stand today.  The concept of escape requires a 'somewhere else' to go. If humans were to find a planet that we could live on without spacesuits and domes, that planet would have so many people on it that it would resemble ants on a candy bar.

FYI, there is another kickstarter game called 'Planet Explorers' which has an interesting first person MMO/Minecraft composite play style.  Their backstory is eerily similar.
http://planetexplorers.pathea.net

Yet another is Starbound.  Read their backstory: www.playstarbound.com/about

[ShadowDragon8685]

It would be like saying, hey, you're stuck in Bangkok, why can't you just hitch a ride home with a passing bead-seller on a tuk-tuk?

The problem with this analogy is, you're not stuck in Bangkok. You're stuck upland in rural Thailand. It's not a completely appropriate analogy, since in RimWorld you're in completely unsettled wilderness and even in rural Thailand there's people around, but it works. In this analogy, paying a bead-merchant on a tuk-tuk to take you to Bangkok would be a step up, because Bangkok is a big city and you would probably rather be in a big city than in the middle of nowhere, digging at a mountainside and shoveling huge quantities of human remains into graves.

The people you're trading with are in-system traders, not interstellar. You could ride with them, but they'd probably just take you as slaves. Even if they didn't, they're not going anywhere you really want to be.

If they're intrasystem traders, that's worse. Intrasystem trade means that those ships have to have somewhere to fuel, somewhere to offload their wares, somewhere (other than you) where they acquire their wares, somewhere they repair and get maintenance and the like.

It means that there is definitely either some sort of major metropolitan pressurized habitat or ground city either with affilitated space station or ground-launch system, (or that these ships are capable of landing and taking off as they see fit) somewhere in system, which would be a huge step up from "digging into the rocks in the remotest wilderness."

It also means that if they are in-system traders, then their companies are housed in-system. Companies like making money, so even if the carriage situation is a problem the first few times they come around, and even if they're heartless bastards who won't front their own money to mount a rescue mission once their company HQ knows where you are, you could hire one of them (probably one of the ones who does not deal in slaves, IE most of them,) to refit one of their ships for passenger transport and collect all of your colonists for resettlement somewhere else more conductive to continued survival and less conductive to constant, incessant raids by Borderlands psycho-raiders.

[Galileus]

Agreed on the fact, that traders being in-system create more problems than it fixes. If they were in fact interstellar, but limited to two, maybe three neighbouring systems (in a natural, small cluster), that would make much more sense to me. If we're even considering existence of long-range interstellar travel, in-system travel is always kind of trivial. In present, in-system travel is possible in theory.

[todofwar]

A trade ship would have only space for the skeletal crew to run the ship, no more. Which means they would not be so readily able to pick up travelers. Besides, they see all the corpses and guns, they would probably not trust you. Let me paint a picture: You stumble upon a group of people packing heat, surrounded by bodies, on a planet known to be frequented by raiders. Would you believe their "We were stranded here, please let me on board" story? Also, with people capturing random travelers and selling them as slaves, would you really be comfortable getting on board the ship and leaving your weapons behind? We're not talking saints here, we're talking simple traders in a hostile world who want to offload their wares and gtfo. They probably are only selling/buying from you out of the goodness of their hearts.

[Galileus]

That's all dandy and was said before - but that works with inter-system traders. If they have hub in the system and at least one other colony (to drop that goods at), they have some police forces (because raiders) and they have resources to mount up a SAR party. It's obvious no one would care if we're talking about some system X lightyears away, that just happens to be on the way of a populated trade route. If we're talking about crashing liner and stranded people few light minutes away... that is a whole different perspective.