Part II: The initial unmanned landings

Given what the previous post says, the first Starships will be unmanned, and will be equipped with semi-autonomous robots.

These bots must build out a habitat that the first humans can actually live in. That would opposed to dying in the ships, because the ships are not a place where they'd like to live for the rest of their lives.

Preferably, it would employ the strategy of in-situ resourcing. So, how does this get accomplished? Let's start with the Starships themselves. They each have a lot of interior room, but what if you want much more? You'd have to build something on the surface of Mars, and that means you don't have a lot of materials or machines to work with.

We could still use the Starships. How? Let's keep in mind that Musk wants to bring 1000 ships into service. Therefore, he can spare a bunch for this idea. That idea would be to use the Starships to build out a large space for humans to live in. How many? Let's say less than hundred of them could be used in-situ to make an enclosed area as tall as a Starship, and as thick as its diameter. The Starships would be placed around a circle that would be almost 600 feet in diameter. This would enclose an area of 50k square feet and about 150 feet tall. You can make a super large enclosed structure out of these things. But it would need a roof.

It would also need to have the gaps filled in so that it could be pressurized. It may be a challenge to get a roof on top of it. A blimp like structure that could be inflated could go over the top of the structure, and be attached to it. All gaps would be filled in, and the structure could then be pressurized.

A procedure could be employed that would allow this to be accomplished with as much speed as could be brought to bear. A number of Starships would have to be scrapped and used as metal to fill in the gaps. No more than 40 Starships could be scrapped to fill in the gaps on the outside and inside.

For good measure, an inner liner could go on the inside so that there would definitely not be any leaks.

Over time, the structure could be modified so as to improve its durability and longetivity. Once the interior is built out, then interior could be built out next. You could scavenge the remains of the Starships used for a substantial amount of metal that could used in order to complete the task.

In summary, a hundred Starships could be employed to do the job of adding millions of square feet of potential floorspace for a megabuilding the size of a sports stadium on Earth, but with many floors. It could be built out inside with materials obtained from the Martian environment. Bots could do the work before any people arrived.

A single Starship on Mars.  I forgot about the control surfaces.  They won't fit together tightly, so they'll have to be removed first.  That would complicate things a bit.