[Bio-Tech] Template for Female Space Colonists

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by scc

If polygamy develops from the described gender in-balance free child care might be a product of the household, one of the mothers can mind the children while the others are available for work, a lot better system then was used traditionally.

You generally want to pick up the right upbringing/education tradition before you start out, not hope that it will spontaneously emerge before the colony perishes.

Originally Posted by scc

@Angle, what makes you think that? Those machines still need raw materials, still need maintenance, in fact the whole set up is likely to require more spare parts due to more machines, and that ignores the theory that a certain population is required to support certain industries/products.

Which is why you want TL9 Fabricators and 3D-Factories. Sure, they're not as efficient as TL9 assembly lines and arguably even TL8 ones, but they give you a big thing that TL8 just doesn't provide:
They allow you to dodge infrastructure requirement due to their flexibility, so instead of having a {no production; no production; enough production to fulfil all the colony's needs; needs fulfilled, so now the assembly line is shut down and we need to build another one for a different type of production}, you get to always build whatever you need, and once a need is fulfilled, you just switch to building the other thing you need. And you use facs to build more facs if you can spare the resources and workhours (and you should, otherwise there's no hope for the colony to develop).

Originally Posted by scc

If children are a larger portion of the population the cost of educating them would be higher, thanks for pointing that out, but if TL is lower they don't need as much education.

The need for children is me figuring that populations above certain sizes are required for higher TL's, and before that's achieved there's no interstellar trade.

Thing is, you're more interested in keeping TL at 9 if you want to get interstellar in a reasonable amount of time.
With 100,000 worth of people and life support, you can actually support that, sort of. Depending on the environment. If the planet is ecologically hostile, you'll need TL9 just to survive there anyway. If it's friendly, your job is much easier, and now you can afford to carry whatever stuff you need to keep a gradually-growing TL9 mini-arcology or the like. Assuming that one human is actually 1 tonne worth of life support and other equipment carried by the colony ships, you might actually want to reduce the starting population if it increases your ability to maintain TL9. For maintaining TL9, you'll want enough fabricators, computers, AIs and other software to compensate for a lack of specialists.
It is important that a return on 'investment' into a fabricator or a similar universal construction device is around 0.1% per hour. The actual number will be somewhat lower, because you need to deal with processing 'minerals' into the level of production that lies between 'minerals' and 'final product'. But it's still quite good, because you can essentially double your production in around 2-4 months.

TL9 education is a priority, and has no substitutes: you can't afford to wait 200 years or the like to get back to TL9 from 'scratch' (actually TL5-7), as by that point the home civilisation will likely advance enough to send cheaper ships with more colonists.