new colonies?

[renlegunvrs]

I was thinking about new colonies and wondering why people were only focusing on shipping crates, reworked escape pods, and metal from the landing ships? would the colonist not use the local fauna as construction materials? They could then create frontier forts like in the 1700`s in north America too keep themselves safe. It would be much cheaper monetarily and safer, creating small walled-in communities on far flung planets. This would give a wooden fort type appearance on the outside with some wooden buildings inside and a few cargo containers on the inside of the fort.

I would very much like peoples feedback as i am thinking of doing up a blue moon fort wilderness in this theme.

[papabees]

You might look to the Terra Nova TV show for some inspiration as they had a mix of high tech and low tech defenses.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1641349/

[peabody]

Good point. There would be a 'core' of materials and habitations landed to kick-start a colony, but beyond that it would make sense that local materials would be used to build.

You might hope that the planet in question was chosen for its hospitable conditions and reasonably abundant materials.

Construction techniques and architecture could reference or exploit past periods of a culture's development depending on the availability of materials and the age of the colony. I think the excellent TV show, Firefly, was trying to suggest just that with its sci-fi Western look.

I would count on a colony's military to at least manage some good quality revetments and strong-points in line with a Vietnam, or current era fire-support base.