Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

In a turn of events, my players have unanimously decided they want to run a space colony with their characters. Considering GURPS has no books on the best way to manage this, I am creating a whole framework for it based on various sources and forum posts.

For colony planning (Where to build what), what would be important skills? I was imagining Engineering (Civil) being useful for it. Are there any other skills?

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

For running the maintenance of a space colony, you'd actually want Industrial Engineering. Civil is for designing structures; Industrial is for managing waste, money, resources, maintenance, etc.

And frankly, you might even be better served with Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and/or an optional specialization of Mechanical - Aerospace Engineering for designing the space station to begin with. Civil usually deals with structures under compression (buildings) which isn't really the case in orbit.

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

Architecture - especially if it has artificial gravity, including the rotational kind. But even without, this skill encompasses notions of what makes building useful and functional as well as beautiful, and indeed even design for systems for living larger than a single building.

Engineering (Spaceships) - because it has a hull, atmosphere systems, etc.

Engineering (Electrical) - presumably the colony has power generation and distribution

Engineering (Electronics) - as close as we get to network engineering, to lay out the comms systems. You might file that under Civil instead, along with the roads and sewers, since in the glorious future it's considered basic civilized infrastructure.

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

If you do not yet have City Stats and Pyramid #3/54, get those. The former provides the framework GURPS uses to discuss settlements, while the latter contains suggested rules on how to handle governing them. The key skill for running a settlement is Administration, though the city management article is written from the point of view of the chief administrator, so it tends to sweep related technical skills under the rug, assuming that the administrator will, if successful, find a suitably skilled technical expert to handle the mechanical work.

But I suspect that what you'll really want so far as planning is concerned is something like Professional Skill (Urban Planner). Various engineering skills will tell you how to build power plants, sewage systems, public transportation networks, and so on, but deciding how much you need and where they should go so that people will make the most effective use of them and how much and what kind of capacity you'll need in order to manage changes in population and economy is as much a social skill as a technical one, if not more so.

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

Aside from everything else that has been discussed, you'll want to start out with Finance, to raise the funds for construction. Accounting will also be needed to keep track of budgets and expenditures, but that will be at a lower level. Unless, of course, an auditor gets sent in to find out how the station management fiddled away the odd billion. . . .

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

Clearly what you have in mind is a full sized DS9 type establishment.

Any Law Enforcement skills

Political skills like Politics, Diplomacy, Administration.

HAZMAT

For the matter of that, just look in Starports.

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

Though, PCs being who they are, piracy may fill in for financial acumen.

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

That sounds like a pretty elaborate set up for mere pirates. Unless they are privateers.

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

I already have writeups on various other skills, ADministration, Finance, Accounting, Sociology and all sorts of skills.

I was looking for the skill that might help with exactly what Turhan said:

The skill associated with that is what I was looking for.

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

As I said, Professional Skill (p. B215). This is a textbook example of something which is, as the description says, more useful for making a living than adventuring.

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

In a small community, though, I think you can substitute Leadership. You'll be fine up to five hundred people, and you can make it work for a few times that number.

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

Substitute leadership for city/community infrastructure layout? Not sure I understand the reasoning. Maybe explain?

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

That looks like Administration to me - pushing around your resources (human and capital) to maximize the success of a large scale project.

I suppose there is a familiarity penalty for people who've never administered a colony project, but management is different for every kind of project. You don't need a specialized skill for each kind of enterprise you can manage.

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

I don't mean the resources required, I mean City planning aspect. Which looks like professional skill.

The idea is "If we put houses here, street here, bridge here. Stop sign here, stop lights there, businesses here... this will maximize the space and keep traffic low, while not bothering these people with high speed collisions that kill kids..." etc.

The skill for that.

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

In some ways its city planning...

And yet I know the class on how to plan traffic was in the civil engineering department at my alma mater.

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

That's why I started the thread asking if it was Civil Engineering. These touch on subjects I'm not all that familiar with. I know enough to know I don't know enough =)

Re: Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?
 

Sounds like Engineering to me too. Engineering isn't just about "how can I build X", it definitely includes a considerable piece of the previous step "given problem Y, what kind of things X might solve it".

Probably engineering -- in a tech level high enough to have space colonies
 

-- as a lot of the technical details, nuts & bolts of "if the overhead lights are here & here, the wiring has to go . . . and what about the conflict with the toilet outflow pipe . . . " are going to be done by expert software plugged into the office computers.

Said widgets will be able to run a few thousand possible permutations of such designs to come up with the "best" solution (which will probably NOT cause short circuits, explosions, sewage leaking into the reception room, &c.)

You'd have to hire a high-quality professional to go over the plans to ensure that the computer didn't have a hiccup, but that's a lot cheaper than having humans do all the work.

Re: Probably engineering -- in a tech level high enough to have space colonies
 

Hueristical search, noice.

However, what about in pre-computing ERAs? That seems like an equipment bonus to me.