I'd like people to please take a look at this and tell me what you think. What changes need to be made? Underpowered? Overpowered? Too slow to get going? Too powerful when it gets going?

Civilized Colony

It's a rare case when a planet is intentionally developed into a 'Civilized World'. However, some rare Rogue Traders, not intent on forcing a particular type of exploitation on their colonies, opt to try to guide their colonies on a more balanced path, also trading short term gain for extremely long term, extended profit. Of course, this can be helped by the fact that most colonies are technically registered as 'Frontier Worlds' by the Administratum. Civilized Worlds generally must be relatively (GM's definition of how far 'relatively' is, or what can mitigate this) close to human ideal. Human Ideal is defined as Normal Gravity, Moderate Pure Atmosphere, Verdant Ecosystem. The further they are from this ideal, the more exotic Mechanicum terraforming will be required, increasing startup costs. Further, as these colonies have more independence in what they are supposed to be doing, the people start relatively happy, improving Complacency and Order. This colony type is not particularly adept at exploiting any one type of resource, however it is more adept at reducing it's own environmental damage and finding hidden resources. This colony type never develops proper hives. Instead of developing into metropolis, if there is space on elsewhere in the colony world, (low mass or small allows 1, large allows 2, vast allow 4), as one new Settlement is founded at no cost elsewhere in the world. Every time that the city would grow to metropolis, the overflow instead goes to the other settlement(s), increasing their size. Only when the number of settlements are maxxed out on the world, can the cities on the world increase to Metropolis size, but never to Hive. Roll seperately for each settlement for all factors. Only other Civilized Colonies can be placed on this world, never any other type. This colony doesn't produce profit factor from colony size until freehold, and from then until Holding, they are at a -2 profit factor from size. From Holding to Dominion, they are at -1 profit factor from size. Once they hit 'Territory' they hit their stride and these issues are removed.'

Require 1d5+3 profit factor investment, or 1d5+5 if extra terraforming is needed (DM arbitrates this).

Starting stats (note, these are balanced with the errataed starting settlement stats):
Complacency 2
Size 1
Productivity 1
Order 2
Piety 1

As this colony doesn't force certain types of development, it is more resilient to calamity and more likely to have fortuitious events. Further, it seems like this colony type -- or perhaps the long vision of a noble life for his citizens -- may perhaps be blessed by the Emperor. The GM must roll twice for both types of events and allow the players to choose which event happens.

I can think of one serious problem with this colony type. It grants you free colonies. As each of these starting colonies is going to give you 1-4 PF as soon as they are founded, that comes across as pretty unballanced. Normally you have to lose PF to found a colony, so you are instead gaining 5-12 PF every time your colony spawns a new one (1d5+3 saved from founding cost, 1-4 from starting colony PF). Then those colonies will grow as well. That is going to unballance your game very quickly. The ballancing part of colonies is that they cost permanent PF, and you risk losing that if your colony flops. In addition, starting a colony is an Endeavor that is not allowed to run as a Background Endeavor (The players MUST be involved in setting up a colony). The special ability is ok, depending on how you determine if a colony has a good/bad event (I use a d10 every year, on a 1 it is good and a 10 it is bad). Instead of free colonies, just consider that the colony grows to cover more of the world. A Hive sized colony can be a single city only 100 km across, or can be 10 Billion people spread over the entire world. That may be a little hard on a small world, but should be fine for a Medium or Vast world.

For my game, I look at the population of the planet vs the ecosystem and size to determine how crowded/poluted a world grows. My players are taking the careful approach, and placed a single Agro colony on their first world. They plan on that being the only colony on a large world, so I expect them to be able to manage the environmental damage. They are also being careful about harvesting the resources of the world. Even if the population of a world is kept low, if you are pulling resources out of the world constantly and building Endeavors around all the resources, you are going to have polution issues. As long as my players keep their harvesting reasonable, and put the extra effort in to minimize impact, I allow the enviornment to stay stable. My players solution is to set up colonies on marginal worlds with lots of resources and turn them into mini-Forge Worlds. Those worlds have sealed habs and Aboratoriums for the population, but stripmine and build up factories. This way they ballance healthy ecosystems for agriworlds and 'standard' Imperial worlds, and Forge Worlds for production thier system needs. They make a 'standard' Imperial world by combining Agricultural Colonies and Religious or Rearch Colonies. They keep the Industrial colonies for their Forge Worlds. I also allow them to socially engineer a colony to a maxium size. They can accomplish this by shipping off extras to other colonies and positions, birth control, or even by altering social norms for family sizes to smaller but better provided for families.

WilliamAsher said:

No, they don't -- in case I forgot to write it, the colonies don't give you any pf until they get to a certain size, and then they are at a penalty to the pf they give you, and only when they get MUCH bigger does the penalty go away. Further, the whole system is bad at exploiting *particular* resources…

"This colony doesn't produce profit factor from colony size until freehold, and from then until Holding, they are at a -2 profit factor from size. From Holding to Dominion, they are at -1 profit factor from size. Once they hit 'Territory' they hit their stride and these issues are removed."

So it's basically a money sink, as you will have to provide things like infrastrucure and such, until they get to 'holding'.

I don't think that it really ballances out. You are getting free colonies, even if you have to delay getting the PF from them. Eventually, you will have a great deal of PF from them, without having paid the Permanent PF loss that you otherwise would have. You also avoid the endeavors to start the colonies in the first place. If you weight that against getting a 30% chance to avoid colony shrink, there is an obvious and huge difference in return. Also, the free colony can be making PF from the start. You are only limiting the PF from size, not the bonus PF from stats exceeding the size. Those colonies could also harvest resources for PF and you could ignore the possibility of stat loss. Worst case, you keep exploiting the colony to harvest resources for your PF until it falls apart. Then the next time your main colony grows you get another one for free. I know players that would do exactly that. They would be happy to turn those free colonies into stripmining operations for whole worlds, only taking care of the original colony for seed stock. There are plenty of RTs in canon who would do the same as well. Even if they don't, a RT that builds one on a Vast world and lets them mature will have 3d5+9 higher PF (because he didn't spend the PF to found the 3 free colonies) than one who built 4 colonies himself…and will have run 3 less Endeavors to set up those colonies (which could earn him 9+ more PF). The only difference is your lucky colonies are more likely to have gotten free upgrades, and less likely to have had bad things happen. This is probably good for saving a few more lesser endeavors. I personally think that just the lucky characteristic is enough of a bonus for your colonies. It is about as good as the bonus for the other colonies, and is relatively easy to run. The free colonies are going to be a lot more of a problem. If you want an Imperial World, build an Agricultural Colony followed by a Religious Colony. You will have a pleasant world inhabited by the faithful.

Infrastructure upgrades are not actually all that hard to come by. Most players are going to have a character in the group (usually the RT) who has a 60+ Command skill pretty quick (79 in our group, at rank 3). They are going to be able to run the Infrastructure upgrade endeavors as Background Endeavors, with the colony administrator giving them +10 bonus as well. If they are smart, they will buy up the things they need for several upgrades and go do their own thing. While they are gone, the colony admin will follow their instructions and do the upgrades. You can pretty easily end up with a 90% success rate on those endeavors. So, those upgrades come down to a couple acquisitions and a command check. It isn't even that unrealistic. They provide the colony with the major materials and let the colony administrators do their jobs.

So if I changed it to 'anything other than exploiting resources', like size, bonus whatever, etc., is also negated until that point, being all funneled back into the colony, would that help?

And what would be a good clause to close that exploit loop? Maybe something that simply REDUCES the cost of adding another colony of the same type on the planet? It's 1d5 rather than 1d5+3? Or it's 1d4+1?

Gavinfoxx said:

"While under 'Freehold' Size, a Colony doesn't gain bonus profit factor from 'Placated' status, 'Orderly', 'Productive', or from size itself. From Freehold to Holding, the profit bonuses from the combination of Placated/Orderly/Productive' is also added together and then reduced by one, to a minimum of 0 (no negatives), due to these improvements being automatically re-invested in growing the colony outward, and at that point they are also at a -1 profit factor from size. From Holding to Dominion, the penalty to profit factor from size is lessened to -1, and the penalty to the combination of 'Placated/Orderly/Productive' is also removed entirely. From Territory upward, the colony hits it's stride, and all tehse issues are removed."

"Instead of developing into metropolis, if there is space on elsewhere in the colony world, (low mass or small allows 1, large allows 2, vast allow 4), the Rogue Trader can use the existing population to found another Civilized World settlement where there is room on the world. This is done at a significantly discounted Profit Factor cost, being only 1d4+1. due to people moving from one built-up continent to spread out."

How about that?

Maybe something along the lines of "This is an Endeavor, but can explicitely be a background Endeavor" for adding the extra colonies?

By the time you make those adjustments I feel that you would be better off just starting a new colony. If they have to do an Endeavor, and they aren't getting PF from the new one, why does the mechanic exist? A mechanic that is that complicated, and ultimately so rewarding, is probably not going to stand up in game. The luck ability alone, combined with a 2 Complancency, 2 Order, 2 Piety, 1 Productivity base stats would make a good colony that would be allowed in my game and the players might actually build.

I understand the desire to show a more ballance world with lower population density. You can achieve the same thing with the RAW. An Agricultural Colony and a Religious Colony covers everything that you are talking about with your colony type (and describes a typical 'Imperial World'). The relative size of the Agricultural vs Religious Colony shows how the population is distributed. Population density is set by the number and size of colonies on a world. A size 10 (Hive) colony can be a 100km across city spewing out toxins and mass manufacturing lasguns, or a agricultural world where the people are spread out in ecologically managed towns. Both are well within the RAW. If I was going to include the colony type, I would scrap the free colonies and just go with the higher starting stats and luck mechanic.

How about,

"It is easy to add secondary colonies of the same type to a planet with a Civilized Colony on it. This can only be done to the maximum number of colonies a planet can have; a rule of thumb is low mass allows 1, small allows 2, large allows 3, and vast allow 4. Further, this price reduction only happens when the main colony reaches at least City size. The discount is that it can explicitely be done as a background Endeavor, and it only costs 1d5+1 profit factor to set up."

Also, they don't have 2 piety, and the stats they DO have are based on the errataed stats of the other places.