Engineering (Civil) - Good for planning?

[GodBeastX]

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?

[Humabout]

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.

[Anaraxes]

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.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

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.

[whswhs]

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. . . .

[jason taylor]

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.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Aside from everything else that has been discussed, you'll want to start out with Finance, to raise the funds for construction.

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

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

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

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

[GodBeastX]

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:

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

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.

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

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

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

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.