Establishing a colony at TL8
 

I have a campaign idea I was hoping to get get advice from the hive-mind for. The premise of the campaign is that earth is attacked by mysterious aliens and overwhelm within a month or so due to the Alien's superior technology. Before final defeat the Government uses an interplanetary gateway (essentially a stargate) to transport a group of soldiers, academics (scientists, historians, sociologists, etc) and officials along with supplies to a distant planet to establish a colony in the hopes of humanity surviving. What I'm trying to work out is the process of establishing the colony, how long it would take, what is the minimum supplies needed and what sort of populations it could support strait off. After the colony is established there's not going to be any contact from earth but I'm not averse to the colonists using the gateway system to try and find supplies. Any ideas would be welcome.

Re: Establishing a colony at TL8
 

How habitable is the planet? Is this a soft science setting where humans will be able to eat alien plants and animals?

Re: Establishing a colony at TL8
 

My idea is: send farmers, craftsmen, physicians rather than academicians and paper-shufflers.
I suppose this is an Infinite-Worlds-style alternate Earth?

Re: Establishing a colony at TL8
 

Realistically speaking, a month wouldn't even be enough to properly survey the area, check for hostile creatures, bacteria, see if anything is edible etc.

The next step would probably be building a highly isolated colony, some kind of "bio-dome" with as little contact to the other planet's resources as possible. This would probably result in a "Dr. Strangelove" scenario, where this is the refugee point for the elite. If the planet is otherwise habitable (well, seems to be), they might let hordes of "normals" through, who have to live in worse conditions and see if they can fend for themselves and survive the strange flora, fauna and micro-fauna. Probably first escorting them far off by people with big guns (and hazard suits), so it's less likely that they can easily attack the repopulation colony. Of course this is going to be much easier if the "stargate" has different destination points on the same planet, i.e. I can let the norms out half a planet away.

Otherwise the population is limited by military superiority, so that the elite won't be overwhelmed. A ratio of something between 10:1 and 100:1, I'd say. Then maybe a ratio of 2:1 for civilians to military.

Re: Establishing a colony at TL8
 

It will quickly return to something like TL 5/8; it will be a long time before they can find and refine petrolium, if any exists, let alone build microchip factories and just-in-time logistics. I would expect thousands to tens of thousands of people, with a mountain of wildly varied supplies with some odd gaps. ("Where are the can openers?")

Have a look at the first English colonies in Virginia for what happens when you try to found a colony with soldiers and urbanites who can't or won't farm. Moving into an area already inhabited by humans, with a similar climate to their own, just across an ocean, it took on the order of a century for the English colonists to be able to support TL 4 (with printing press and gunpowder factories).

It would be more plausible if you assumed that scientific work had been done on this planet for a few decades, establishing that it seemed livable with one or two interesting anomalies.

Re: Establishing a colony at TL8
 

mhd has a valid point - if the colony appears to be a refuge, it will rapidly fill up with the rich and useless and then, as Polydamas notes, go the way of all colonies established by the workshy.

Your best bet is probably to start with survey teams of university field scientists, some of whom may decide to settle there once it's proven safe. Sadly the next wave might well be large corporations contracting to bring back whatever is valuable on the other side of the gate.

With only a month ... if the government really wanted a colony that could survive, they do best to send survival trained special ops troops, plus the most robust field scientists they could find and technical personnel, probably drawn from the oil industry or some other group used to working in remote locations. That list would probably come up light on women - who would normally only be found amongst the scientists ... you might want to add a medical team heavy on the nurses (still a mostly female profession) and additional bioscience people (probably the scientific sector in which women are best represented if you exclude the medical sciences).
Human groups tend to function best at around 120, sociologically speaking, so you might want to send several parties.
Logically, start by sending the operators through the gate to recce and secure the area, followed by field science to survey and engineering and technical to set up the service and industrial units. 3D printers, prototyping machines and state of the art milling equipment, plus vast libraries of blueprints would be useful.
If the biosphere on the other end is non-hostile and provides viable food you're in with a fighting chance. If not ... you've not got long enough to terraform it and everyone will die.

Re: Establishing a colony at TL8
 

Re: Establishing a colony at TL8
 

I would also add power sources.
I would expect the government to raid and confiscate material from factories and such to quickly ship it and probably some of the personal from those factories. Some of whom would be useless but persuasive and others actually have useful skills.
Military leadership is probably essential, at least at first and their unlikely to give it up and trust the civilians to run things.

I would try to get a large stock of wind turbines, solar panels, portable generators and any other portable power supply.
Even if the fuel runs out quickly on them they will help a lot towards getting an early good start.
Seed crops and such I would probably bring as well though they may flourish or perish.
I also agree that with the rush a lot of things are going to get left out. Your likely to have a lot of people toss in things just becasue there available and many may be useless but you never know. Also at least you might be able to recycle some stuff. And I would raid fringe elements like the SCA and hobbiests for people with anachronistic skills like blacksmithing, microbrewing.

Re: Establishing a colony at TL8
 

Are you aiming for a dystopian/grimdark, balanced/realistic, or eutopian/optimistic feel?

The dystopian one is probably like the darker episodes of BSG, but without the Adamas and Helo prevent humans from falling further (also minus the ultra-tech).
The balanced one might look closer to Original War, minus the largely idealistic human-human conflicts.
The eutopian . . . the final episode of BSG?

Re: Establishing a colony at TL8
 

This is going to be highly dependent on how well you want the colony to run. You want it to run well? Power provided by stargate abuse (magnets falling through wire create current). No strains of deadly bacteria. Megafauna that cannot stand against humans provides food for the first bit. Earth organisms do well in the soil to start.

If you do not want things to turn out well make power harder to come by, no abusing stargates, no convient water falls, no oil, make bacteria more deadly, cause crop failures ect.