Colonizing (SEIV)
Contents
Colonizing
Set up race to build a colonizer on Home world in 2 turns. This may mean stripping out half the engines and the cargo hold (good for a local colony ship). You have to boost your races construction rate by ? (5 %to 10%?) oops. (Wardad)
Colonize your system fast. The extra research, resource, and shipyards early on are an advantage. Green star planets are your atmosphere type . Red star have different atmosphere and are domed, so the build space is limited. (Wardad)
Put people on your colony ships. The colony module gives the ships some cargo space, use transfer cargo to put people on the ship so that your colony gets some population, otherwise the new colony won't build anything (Saying "Never" on construction time). (Suicide Junkie)
If the colony ship is currently at a planet with population, it will automatically load pop for you if you use the Colonize (C) order, or the Send Colony Ship button under Planets (F4). The latter button will not always work if the colony ship has moved. (capnq)
An exception to this is if you manually load population onto a colonizer, it will not load any more population when it gets the "Colonize" order, even if it has extra cargo room. This is useful in not draining a planet of population while building colonizers.
Colonies with 0 population have the "dome" symbol even if it is a planet with a breathable atmosphere, the symbol disappears when you populate the colony. (Rdouglass, Suicide Junkie) 4.2.6. Domed worlds have 1/5 facilities of non-domed. Domed Sphereworlds have 1/2, domed Ringworlds have 1/5.
Colony Type. If you manage the colony itself, it makes no difference on what type of colony you choose (i.e. mining, refining, research etc)(except to remind you) but if a minister manages it, he will build facilities according to what type of colony it is using the appropriate data text files. (Silent Sorrow, Derek)
Anything in the cargo storage of your colonizer will be deposited in the cargo of the planet when it is colonized i.e. Weapon Platforms, etc. Any colonists or cargo beyond the capacity of the planet will be lost, however.
When colonizing ruin planets you do not need population to get the tech bonus. (Suicide Junkie)
Before colonizing a 'ruin planet' make sure that your research queue is filled. If it is - there's a good chance that you might get some of the queue finished for you from the discovered ruins. (Elowan) [editor's note: The ruin tech is determined at the time of map generation. Research queue does not affect ruins tech.]
Opinions differ on the value of colonizing moons. They can add to the overall strength of a sector. Cargo can be transferred readily between a planet and its moons. Colonizing moons keeps the AI or any other empire from colonizing them (a nasty habit). But it does cost you a colonizer, so you should not do it until you have colonized all the major planets in the area unless you have special circumstances. Exception: if your native population breaths an atmosphere of "none", those moons are all tiny planets of your native atmosphere (green star)!
You can colonize the moons by clicking on the main planet. If the main planet has moons, another window will pop up showing all planets & moons in the sector and you can select the one you want.
Q: When you first start a game do you expand like mad or concentrate on your own system and then expand? A(Atrocities): Expand like mad. Try to move population from your home system to other breathable planets to speed up the rate of expansion. Remember, the faster you expand, the less space for your enemies, and less space for your enemies, the faster you can exterminate them.
You can tell a planet's atmosphere by the planet's color, and a little practice. You can also tell if a planet is Rock, Ice or Gas by the way it looks.
You can sort the planets by min, org, or rad values simply by clicking on the word "Values" above each in the Planets Window. The window you use to send colony ships. This is a very useful tip if your running low on minerals, you can sort prospective planet by mineral value and then deploy your colony ship to that planet. The same goes for Orgs and rads. (Atrocities)
You can protect your colonizers by fleeting them with warships. Then you can give the (C)olonize order to your fleet. Here's the neat part: if you have multiple colonizers in your fleet, even for different colony types, the fleet will move to the right place and one of the correct colonizers will unfleet itself to colonize the planet while the fleet guards in orbit. Leave the fleet there until it's safe or protected with units, then move on. (Slick)
I have found it useful to not use the "Send Colony Ship". Its good for new players since it won't forget to load up with population first. But (at least in solo play) I like to send my colony ships to the planet and then decide whether or not to colonize there. By then I have many times learned something which makes me prefer to change the orders. Along the same line (again solo play) I have often found it useful to send a ship to the warp point just BEFORE where it is supposed to end up. Again I might have learned something new. In many cases I will wait one turn to make sure it has full movement before I enter the warp. This gives me options to try and jump quick to the planet if there is company there. Or to jump back into the warp and try somewhere else. (Gandalf Parker)
To colonize moons/planets in the same sector, you can build a really cheap colonizer. A colonizer needs to have at least one movement point in order to colonize so you can build a bare-bones colonizer with just the cheapest engine (ion engine III) and use it to colonize moons/planets in the same sector as the spaceyard. Once this is done, you can move any number of population between planets in the same sector using the Transfer Cargo order. (Slick)
On your home worlds build troops, weapon platforms, satellites, mines, fighters, and weapons platforms. Design a colony ship using a larger hull size and add lots of cargo components. Transfer a small amount of population to the new colony ship along with some troops, fighters, weapons platforms, mines, and satellites. When the ship colonizes the planet, presto, you have instant fortifications. I normally only use this TIP in the earily part of the game when I know there are hostiles about. (Atrocities)
| Preceded by: Exploring |
Manual (SEIV) Section 4.2 |
Followed by: Facilities |
