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[wierd]

It's hard to research xenobiology without xenobiology to study.

Asking us if the microbes are dangerous, without letting us study them, is silly-- no?

(for all we know, they make the finest cheese in the galaxy-- OR-- could be used to make inexpensive bioplastic.)

[VoidSlayer]

Sure sure study them!

But lets not move in.

[King Zultan]

Militant
Let the scientists study the planet, and I think we're all in agreement that we don't want to live on it so when their done lets go find a better one.

[mightymushroom]

Cultural

After playing the source game, I'd say this planet actually looks pretty good. We rolled a natural six in two out of five categories, and it has decent resources (4) to overcome the rest. Maybe it's not high score material, but we can (and I expect we will) do worse while needing significant luck to find better.

There is obviously an argument to be made that being merely tolerable across the board is better than dealing with any extreme; notwithstanding, I am willing to be a lone vote to stay. My constituency is eager to tackle any challenge.

[Glass]

Cultural

After playing the source game, I'd say this planet actually looks pretty good. We rolled a natural six in two out of five categories, and it has decent resources (4) to overcome the rest. Maybe it's not high score material, but we can (and I expect we will) do worse while needing significant luck to find better.

There is obviously an argument to be made that being merely tolerable across the board is better than dealing with any extreme; notwithstanding, I am willing to be a lone vote to stay. My constituency is eager to tackle any challenge.

Based on also having played the same game, my personal opinion, broken down by stat:
Gravity: Great. While some heaviness or lightness can be dealt with, I think this is the only stat that we can't actually deal with by technology.
Temperature: Good, but we've generally got leeway with this so long as our tech is up to snuff.
Atmosphere: If it were unbreathable, that would be one thing, but a toxic atmosphere basically means everything needs to be completely airtight. If there were geological oddities, we could send a surface probe to see if there's airtight caverns, but I'm going to say probably not worth it for this alone. Bad air is hard.
Biosphere: Meh.
Resources: This looks like it translates into "poor"; unless there's a moon with a lot of resources (also a surface probe check thing), then this would hit our tech hard. Which would in turn hit our ability to deal with the atmosphere hard. And that would be bad.
Overall: We basically need a place with a lot of resources and good gravity. Once that's found, we can make further judgments. And remember: there can be bad stuff that we find on the surface, like dangerous animals (fuck those), an unstable moon (goodbye 40% tech) and other things that can make a planet unusable even if it has good base stats.

My personal opinion: unless there's surface probe qualities that can make up for a red stat, it's generally better to just move on.

[mightymushroom]

Well, I'm not saying that it's exactly like the inspiration. This one is multiplayer-ish, for instance.

Resources: This looks like it translates into "poor"; unless there's a moon with a lot of resources (also a surface probe check thing), then this would hit our tech hard. Which would in turn hit our ability to deal with the atmosphere hard. And that would be bad.

Respectfully disagree, we appeared to have rolled 4 on a d6. Which becomes:

All necessary resources, in small amounts.*

Emphasis added to emphasize the "All necessary" part. We may not be able to make a large colony, but with perseverance we should be able to craft a successful small one.

With (presumably) three worse possibilities than what we see here, the next planet may well be missing a few, many, or all essential ingredients for constructing our desired technology.

[helmacon]

Holy crap guys, I didn't expect this to pick up nearly as much interest as this has. I'll try to check back a little more often from now on.

Update

The current population ration of the colony ship is divided as:

2/9 Scientific
3/9 Cultural
4/9 Militant

If I have missed anyone, please let me know.

You colony has a minority majority militant culture. As earth fell and the survival of the species became a matter of global (and national) security, much of the authority in the planning and the execution of the colony ship program fell to militaries of the surviving nations. An extensive crew of academics and technicians were provided for on grounds of necessity but after military personnel this was seen as a humanitarian mission. After all, physics will stay the same. Textbooks can be re-written, but the cultures and history of earth left behind would be lost forever.
Many of them have been, but some few have been saved here.


The council is currently deliberating on the feasibility of a surface mission. The colony ship itself is not made to escape a gravity well. Once it has landed on a planet it can not move again, however, there are a few shuttles and supplies for surface expeditions. These shuttles and rovers are highly specialized, and not easy to come by. You have no easy way to manufacture more should they break down, and expeditions to alien planets are sure to cause at least a few problems along the way.

Depending on what you choose to study, a ground expedition here has the potential to increase our understanding of either atmospherics or alien biology, and the information could be used better predict planets with good conditions for these. The toxic atmosphere will increase the amount of supplies needed for a safe expedition. The militant culture of the colony will decrease the likelihood of losing supplies and equipment.

You presently have 100 tons of expedition equipment on-board. An expedition here requires 20 tons of equipment, though barring catastrophe, most of it should be re-usable. 

The options are:
A: Send an expedition to study the biosphere
B: Send an expedition to study the atmosphere
C: Do not send an expedition to this planet, and save supplies.

Additionally:

A: Colonize this planet
B: Do not colonize this planet

[Naturegirl1999]

A
Let’s wait on colonization decision until we know what lives here

[ZBridges]

AB

[Shadowclaw777]

BB

We ain’t going to colonize this world because it would be nearly difficult to survive with the toxic atmosphere constantly causing havoc to the new colony, more so because the only biosphere are microorganisms so we would have to rely on hydroponics and farm to survive here.

[Glass]

BB.

Simply put, having a breathable atmosphere is likely to be more important than the biosphere being particularly impressive.

[VoidSlayer]

A
B

Finding alien life is something we need to investigate.  Whether such things may be beneficial or harmful.

[IronyOwl]

AB

Biosphere is more relevant to our interests. I'd rather have a lush toxic world than a barren (or hostile) breathable one.

[wierd]

[science]

AB

Proposed action:

Send robotic sample collection mission to the surface to collect samples for return.

Analysis of the the microbiota will give insight into the chemistry of the atmosphere and hydrosphere via analysis of the lifeforms and their metabolic mechanism and byproducts.

Colony ship can meaningfully contribute to scientific collection without entering atmosphere:

Temporary re-calibration of the ship's ventral proximity sensors (those already facing the planet) to function as ground penetrating radar can provide useful data on the planet's lithosphere.

Visual imaging sensors can be used, in conjunction with the above, to generate a complete topological feature map of the planet.

It will take several orbits worth of time to conduct the robotic sample collection mission. We should use that time to collect as much data as possible on this planet.


Rationale:

This world was the "best candidate" old earth could provide us with, despite many decades of astrometric observations looking for potentially habitable worlds.  Combined with the fact that repair of existing telemetry instrumentation will become increasingly difficult the longer our voyage is extended, it is entirely possible that in the future we may be driven to come back to this world out of desperation.  At such a time, it is also entirely possible that our instruments will no longer be functional.  Collecting this data now in this fashion costs us very little, but could be very profitable should we fail to locate a more suitable colony site. Ground penetrating radar can be used to locate useful material assets, or potential natural habitats (such as extinct magma chambers or tubes) that would accelerate colonization on this hostile planet, should such a return be necessitated.

Collection and study of the indigenous lifeforms could better inform a colonial effort should this worst-case scenario occur. Additionally, study of the xenobiological organisms may prove useful to our understanding of planetary ecology in general, should we find a more suitable planet, given that these lifeforms are well-adapted extremophiles, adapted to extremely hostile conditions.

Additionally, the collection and analysis of this data will completely occupy the scientific demographic of the ship's population, easing administrative burdens on ship police forces.  The data collected can likewise be used to generate simulated views of the planet's surface, which can stimulate the activity of the cultural demographic populations.

There is always the potential for military application of the collected xenobiologicals. While most likely not suited to continued activity inside terrestrial organisms, comparative anatomy and metabolic pathway evaluation could yeild strange fruit if combined with genetic/proteomic engineering.

There appears to be little risk for potentially great gain from performing at leas this level of investigation of colony candidate Alpha at this time.

[helmacon]

Update

The decision is made. An expedition will be mounted to explore the surface of the planet and it's atmosphere.

A shuttle is prepared and a team selected. These will be the first ever to touch down on the world of an alien star. They are kitted out with bulky environmental suits and survey equipment, a handful of scientists commanded by officers drawn from the military forces among the colony ship.

The sensors track the shuttles decent as long as they can until they disappear into the thick red clouds of the planet below and the signal stutters out. It's up to the ground team now. We hope to hear back soon.

...


...


...


Three days from expedition launch, the colony ship picks up a new signal from the planet. It's the expedition team!

They have completed their atmospheric survey and are requesting coordinates for rendezvous back to the colony ship. As the technicians handle their finer proceedings of docking maneuvers and decontamination, the council receives a report on the results of the survey.

The expedition was a resounding success! The planets toxic clouds consist of a variety of compounds incompatible with human life. Understanding the conditions that led to the proliferation of these compounds in atmosphere will allow you to predict similar conditions on other planets before traveling there, and rule them out as possible candidates.
You will now receive a small bonus to atmosphere rolls when arriving at a new system.

Thanks to the dedicated and vigilant efforts of your expedition team, no irreplaceable supplies were lost during this expedition. *

Small samples of the microorganisms are exciting to the biologists on board, but are not enough to turn up anything useful at this point.

The population of the colony grows restless. People do not like to be so near a world while not allowed to settle. If this is not the new colony, many of these people will not live long enough to see the next system. Having decided that this world is not suitable for settlement, the council decides that it would be best to move on before people begin to question this judgment.


You watch through the outboard cameras as the rainbow radiation wash begins to spread over the developing drive bubble. You are headed back into deep space, well beyond the speed of light, but even so it will be many years before you reach the next system.

The ever valued members of the council are returned to their cryo pods to be awoken when the next difficult decision is to be made, and the rest of the colony return to their daily lives; contenting themselves to watch recordings of the expedition, images of wading through red fog in an endless wasteland, and writing novels of what monsters might lurk in that mist. It is not this generation that will see a new world settled. While disappointing, they trust the judgment of the experts on the council... and the many guns of their enforcers. 


The council has been awoken mid voyage! A dilemma has arisen. Several micro meteorites seem to have struck the drive bubble at just the right angle to avoid bouncing off, and have impacted on the casings of the cultural histories data server. While no real damage was done, the casing is somewhat comprised and many of the citizens are concerned. There has been a suggestion put forth that the casing be swapped with that of another data server, as they all use the same casings, to move the risk to something less valuable.

The options are:
A: Move the damaged casing to the scientific data servers
B: Move the damaged casing to the ships auto nav servers (note: manual control is always an option if this is damaged down the line)
C: Leave the damaged casing where it is

Moving the casing will involve an external EVA that while mostly routine, is not entirely without risks.