Bonus points for using ground force construction capacity.
Holy smeg you're a genius! How could I not think about it before and have no one suggest it before? Why bother with tugging so damn many habitats if I can make them directly at destination?
I only need to things to make it happen: minerals and construction capacity.
Minerals I can transport.
Construction capacity I can get from "Automated Construction Factories" aka ground construction units indeed.
No population required.
Fast to build.
No tugging micromanagement and endless waiting for it to complete.
This is brilliant.
I tried doing this a while back, but it didn't turn out the way I expected. You need a spaceport to build orbital habitats with construction facilities. Spaceports require population. It
is in theory possible to do this and avoid stabilizing JP's or building enormous jump drives, but you do need
some initial population to man the spaceport to get started.
Perhaps it is possible with commercial jump drives and two of the smallest orbital habitats.
There is also another solution, but I never got so far as to try it. Find a worthless body in the same system that is easy to colonize. Get 1.000.000 population there and get a spaceport up and running. Build your first habitats, tug them to the target, move all facilities there, and shut down operations on the inital colony. It is a bit more micromanagement, but perhaps more doable than researching and building a jump drive that can handle 500.000 tons.