Thomas replied to me:
> Say the colony ship carried biotech terraforming gear. They got
> into engine trouble, and had to find an alternative destination.
> The crew now faces a terrible choice -- terraform an inhabited
> planet, or let their colonists die.
Given that the terraforming has to be done in a reasonable amount of
time after the ships arrival. That means that the "biotech terraforming
gear" has to be prepared (meaning "preproduced") in advance in order to
be available in significant amounts on arrival. But this gear has to be
shaped for the target, otherwise it would not work (at least not work as
expected).
Nobody said it would be easy or a sure success. There must be
jobs for heroes and villains, not just accountants.
The beauty of biological systems is exponential growth until
the capacity of the world is reached. Just one breeding pair
of something nasty could transform the local ecology, if it
breeds fast enough. Of course they would use more than one
pair to make it faster and more certain ...
And if the terraforming works not quite as expected, so what?
It will be better for the colonists than no terraforming, and
still a disaster for the locals.
So after a misjump (or what else lead to the disaster you are
talking about) the scientists (given there are some aboard) will need a
decent amount of time to create new biotech terraforming gear - AFTER
first collecting enough information about the starting conditions -
before the colonists can even begin with the terraforming process.
So the colonizer transport hides in the outer system for a
year or a decade.
From this point onwards various problems may arise:
* if the locals' TL is high enough, they would be able to defend
themselves - and the colonists' ship is a non-moving target ...
Or a moving target, if it retains STL engines. But sufficiently
advanced locals could help to repair the FTL drive, so there is
no need to terraform their world against their will.
* if the colonists were transported in a form of stasis (cryogenic
sleep, for example) it is possible that this could not be
maintained after arrival ...
Then the colonists are dead and the story is over. So assume
that they can be maintained some more, but not indefinitely.
The crew has to do something relatively soon.
* it is also possible that the resources of the colonists' ship are
not sufficient to produce enough "gear"
In Turtledove's Worldwar series (a technological invasion, not
a biological one, mostly) the aliens thought they had not just
enough stuff but also vastly overengineered gear for the task.
They were wrong, but just barely, which turned it onto an
eight-volume story rather than a short novella.
* due to the short time (in relation to the time spent for the
originally intended destination) there is a good chance that the
world resists from being biotechnically terraformed - perhaps with
a little help from the locals...
As a conclusion I doubt that a lost colony ship with only biotechnical
terraforming gear is able to successfully take over another world as the
intended colony world. Now one may argue that this is only a matter of a
high enough Techlevel, but with TLs above 13 or 14 ships do not longer
get lost in such a way - and the need for colony SHIPS has also gone.
Depends on the TL difference and the tech rules. A TL11 colony
ship with reactionless thrusters should be able to evade TL9
warships indefinitely, and TL11 shuttles can play tag with
TL9 interceptors. Against TL8 locals, they might even get
something done while they do the evading. Against TL7 or less,
they have space superiority if they can rig just a one laser
drill in a shuttle.
And if the GM wants ships to get lost/shipwrecked, there are
always options. For example, assume that there can be only
one FTL drive per ship, since even 'cold' backups would
interfere with the technobabble.
When I write vehicles, my gut reaction is to make them 'safe'
against the failure of any one (or any two or three) gadgets
by adding redundancy. But as a GM, I prefer ships which can
fail in interesting, non-lethal ways. So don't take a backup
jump drive, take a workshop and survival gear instead, the GM
should provide a challenging planet where the 'muscle' of the
crew can fend off natives while the 'techies' repair the ship
and all get a chance to rescue an exotic alien princess on
the way out.
By the way: how long do you think it will take to terraform a hostile
world into a garden Eden, with biotech only? How many stages would be
necessary? Would it be possible to do it with just one single "gear",
induced just once in the beginning of the process?
Depends on the initial hostility. Starting with a Mars or a
Venus, the answer is millenia, and several stages.
Starting with Earth and adding a new DNA base pair or new
isomeres of sugar or starch would be easier, and it might
be enough to make the locals allergic to their world.
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