Colony Beacons

[Prospective]

Are colony beacons "used" when you do a COLB at a planet? Or do they launch a "colony" on the planet, but remain as part of the ship? I'm not entirely clear on this.

 

How does that work in a practical sense?

 

Let's say I build the most basic of in-system colony ship's. That would consist of one engine and one colony beacon. However, when I orbit the ship around the destination, and issue a COLB order, will the colony beacon on the ship disappear?

 

Or, rather, would the most basic in-system colony ship consist of an engine plus enough cargo holds to house a colony beacon? Then, when I do a COLB order, the ship will remain, but the colony beacon will disappear?

[Prospective]

OK, nevermind.

 

A colony beacon is stored inside a cargo hold, as per the rules. So, conceivably, I could create a 1 engine, 1 cargo hold design, then load it with a colony beacon, and send it on it's merry way. Of course there will be no pops or industries, but what the heck, at least I'd have a pop center available for later...

[ShadowKitsune]

Two flaws to your design:

 

Flaw 1: Cargo Bays hold 1 ton per Bay and Colony Beacons weigh more than one ton.

 

Flaw 2: Your design would only work 'in' system, since you need Fuel and a Jump Drive to travel to another system.

 

FWIW,

-SK

[Krelnett_of_Kraan]

We've found it useful to put jump drives (but no fuel tankage) on even our 'in-system' craft, as sooner or later we'll need to send them out-system and they can be grouped with a tanker for the transit.