The Legend : Colonization pre-FTL (Fast Than Light)

[Dark_star]

In the pre-FTL era a method of colonization to the far away stars was developed.
Because of the vast energy requirement to move any mass to a fraction of light speed,
a colony ship was little more than the digitized colonists in protected storage,
which was the vast water (energy) tanks for a fusion drive. Everything else was to be built on the colony.
A much smaller ship of little mass was sent ahead to find & develop worlds suitable for colonization.
This is why the Pathfinder was created, a single adventurous digitized individual with just a replicator,
who was to find, adapt to and survive on these new worlds. If he/she was able to develop a technical level
for a colony to have a good chance of survival, a communication would be sent to the colony ship AI by the ROCET defense system.
The Rocket Defense is a misnomer, it stands for Ranged Oscillating Communication using EnTanglement ( Quantum ),
as a defense against colonization failure. Because only a very simple message could be sent.
The message itself signals that a level of technological has been reached to support colonization.
The repeating message reaches the colony ship immediately (Quantum Entanglement),
telling the AI it could start de-acceleration at the point necessary to put the ship in orbit around the planet,
( de-acceleration could take months to years). If No message was received by the AI, it would assume the attempt had failed and it would
continue in the direction of another Pathfinder.
The Pathfinder would use the post message time period to expand the colony's living area.
A larger area allows more people, which means a better chance of colony survival and more importantly, quicker growth.
The Pathfinder's reward could either become a leading citizen of the new colony or as most chose,
continue to find, adapt and survive because they are solitary adventurous individuals.
On rare occasions, several Pathfinders would find the same desirable world and work together to develop it.
This colonization method became so popular, that many different groups of people supported a colony ship and hired Pathfinders for their ship.
These groups were of various types, even corporations.
This could cause conflicts between Pathfinders trying to develop the same world for different colony ships.
Much of the methodology is still with us in the FLT era. So today,
let us salute the Pathfinders and the Colonists who longed for a world to call their home.

[Gammro]

Nice interpretation of the game's backstory

[Dark_star]

Thanks