TiLT - As I mentioned, you can run the many endeavors you need for upgrades as background endeavors. The book has a specific subsection on oursourcing parts of the 'Colony Endeavor', not the subsequent upgrades. Those would be covered by the normal Background Endeavor rules from Into the Storm. Unfortunately, they are less likely to succeed and can have negative consequences beyond simply not getting the infastructure you need. The colony does get a +10 on your check to see if the Background Endeavor succeeds if the colony leader is managing it though. Note that this is one way to make use of your colony leadership benifits outside of the colony as long as the colony leader could reasonable oversee them. For instance, establishing other endeavors in the system (such as asteroid mining, minor research, or even mines that aren't actually part of the colony) to generate PF.

The limits on harvesting resources are a reasonable roleplaying limtiation that I would provide to my players as a way to setting a fair expectation of what they can get away with without risking their control of the colony. You will note that they did not provide a specific roll required, simply 'convince their lackeys that this was all for the best.' To this GM, that means a series of social tests and some roleplaying. In order to do these tests 'they must put in an appearance at their colony' as well. As GM I would make it relatively easy to convince the colony once a year to provide such a tribute, but have the difficulty raise itself every subsequent attempt as the people get more and more disgruntled with having their efforts and resources taken without getting anything back. As a GM, I try to give the players a fair idea of what they can accomplish (and how much risk they have of failure) up front. You will note that the Imperium has had more than a few cases of rebellion over working conditions and poor treatment.

The way the system is written, the players have to at their colony every 90 days and convince the colonists to hand over the majority of the fruits of their labors in stripmining (and it it stripmining, as even a small colony can deplete a plentiful resource in a few years) their world and be happy about it. They must 'put in an appearance at their colony', they can not delegate this responsibility or run it by astropath. If they fail to convince the colony, the colony's Complacency decreases by 1d5. Note that 0 Comlacency will probably destroy a small colony (-1d5 Order/Productivity until you raise Complacency again, and 0 Order means complete anarchy and NO PF as your colony kills itself off 1 size per 90 days). So while you could just tell them to hand over the resources and suck it up, they would probably try to poison you and you would lose all the work you have put into the colony in quick order. The rules for colonies can be pretty unforgiving, as any time a stat drops to 0 you are in danger of the colony cascading into oblivion. Also, raising Complacency requires a Lesser Endeavor to install some sort of upgrade. So every time you fail to convince your colony you need to run 1d5 Lesser Endeavors to make up for the loss of Complacency. Note that you do not get PF for them, and that you are limited to a number of Support Upgrades equal to the colony size. Even failing to convince them two or three times could cause irrevovable damage to the colony. It is because the consequences of failure in this are so severe that I provide the players with a guideline of what they can expect to do reasonably safely. The colony should be profitable over the long term, but expecting to pull 3 PF every 90 days out of the colony immediately on founding (and for many years) seems excessive. What motivation is there to do anything else if you can just stripmine a colony for a few years and earn 60+ PF (on top of the base colony PF)?

TiLT said:

May the Omnissiah bless you with kind machine-spirits and keep of any malign scrapcodes from entering thy hallow computations on this thrice blessed endeavour.

Hopefully you see this through.

Let's just say that the colony is located in the Primary Biosphere of a system. That means that it takes 4 weeks to move from this world to a safe jump point. If your other location is similarly in the Primary Biosphere of another system, and your Warp travel only takes 1 week (and with no time dilation) that means running even a single colony on a 90 day (12 week) rotation is pretty unrealistic.

Start at 'Home'

<<<1 week to unload>>>

<<<4 weeks to jump point>>>

<<<1 week in the Warp>>>

<<<4 weeks from jump point>>

At Colony

<<<1 week to load>>>

<<<4 weeks to jump point>>>

<<<1 week in the Warp>>>

<<<4 weeks from jump point>>

Back at 'Home'

If you can't delegate the harvest to others, it's not likely you can really pull this off more than every 20 weeks. And that's if you're doing nothing else (except for fighting off boredom with a macrocannon).

I noticed the same thing. I'm not sure if they've actually balanced it to work this way, intending for the colony to grow on its own while the players are doing other things, and provide resources to them only if they actually show up. I guess it depends on what you want the system do do. If your players get stuck in the Warp for a while, say, 150 days, that is on average 1800 days for the colony or 20 resource extractions/chances to grow. The colony is likely to have collapsed before you have a chance to interact with them. I'm probably going to use 90 days as a baseline, then adjust it during play to keep it reasonable. In other words, make growth happen at the speed of plot.

The possible growth every 90 days is definitely going to be something I plan to manage carefully. RAW you could have your colony collapse after only 2 cycles if it grew each time. Each growth lowers your complacency 1, so easily hit 0. That can easily drop your order to 0, which will wipe a young colony very quickly. I am thinking of limiting colony growth to once per year, with the colony not needing to roll again for the rest of the year. That way, if you colony grows you don't have to worry about a bad roll dropping your size. If I do, I will probably limit shrinking to once per year as well. This will keep a level of volatility, but allow the PCs to respond to changes in their colony rather than just find out that it bred itself into extinction. The colony would be very likely for size to change over a year, just not as drastically. I am also considering just making it a once a year roll, which seems more realistic. I may even just change all the 90 day cycles to yearly, but am still trying to figure out all the effects of the change. I will have to reduce the resource depletion rates, but I was thinking of doing so anyways. The present rates can burn out the largest possible resources in less than a decade in a small colony.

WilliamAsher said:

I would probably disallow growth in a colony that is already asking for a colony upgrade from its last growth. This means that growth won't continue in an unchecked spiral towards disaster if the players can't interfere in time, and it will eliminate your first concern. Then again, new colonies are supposed to be at great risk. This is the most volatile part of the colonization process, after all.

As for resource abundance, you're forgetting that planets worth extracting resources from can have hundreds of them. I'm seeing this in my system generation tool during testing. Even a simple asteroid field can have 200+ abundance in its resources in some cases. Worthwhile planets to settle on would probably have at least 150 total abundance in resources to extract, possibly a lot more. With average rolls, a small colony would have to spend exactly two decades to completely strip those 150 resources. The idea is that a planet can be stripped "quickly", but that when this happens, it should have grown large and powerful enough that it no longer needs those resources to be a very important location in the Koronus Expanse. Successful colonies may start out very different (research station vs industrial colony vs agricultural colony, to name a few examples), but once it grows big enough, the original purpose will be of little concern or consequence, and different types of colonies will all appear very similar to each other.