how do you transfer population to an already settled planet?

use a colony ship... or troop transport

i can't get it off the starbase without sending pop with it.

Reduce the amount to 1.

And how do you get population to a planet if it doesn't have a starport yet?

You don't need a starport for people to land/take off. You only need it to build new ships.

-Neb

Build a specially equipped "People Mover" ship with a few advanced troop transport modules (these take up less room and carry more people, but be careful, because your neighbors might see it as a hostile act) and max out the rest of the space in engines. Then you just build it wherever, send it to your most populous planet (take 1 troop from the planet it was built on, then fill out the rest when you get to your most populous planet), then take the people to your colony.

Shuttling people around helps immensely. Try and get every colony to at least 1 billion pop as soon as possible. Just doing this much will improve most players games by 20% if they aren't doing this now. Doing this will increase the overall population and give a player a much larger tax base. The technique has already been outlined, use colony ships or transports, send them out full to get people off a planet, return them empty (1 person) to get another batch.

I think the question should be what do you do with the transport once you move it where it needs to be....is there some kind of "unload" button that I am missing here?

Ooops...never mind. I just figured it out with the post above.

I would add that "useless" colony ships/transports that are "empty" (1 population) can be upgraded to constructors when you don't need them anymore.

It's definitely helpful, particularly since I tend to end up with 1-2 excess colony ships anyway ,so you might as well use it for something.

Shuttling people around helps immensely. Try and get every colony to at least 1 billion pop as soon as possible. Just doing this much will improve most players games by 20% if they aren't doing this now. Doing this will increase the overall population and give a player a much larger tax base.

I have heard this statement before and there are a few things I don't understand. Moving people from a full colony is obviously beneficial. For this to be beneficial on a non-full colony, there has be to point at which the increase in population of a world starts slowing down. If this is so, you need to start pulling people when you reach this level in order to keep your population growth maximized. What is the level that you should start pulling people from a colony?

Another possible benefit is that production is affected by population. Is this true?

I realize that population increases tax base so maximizing population maximizes taxes.

Start pulling people off when it starts to impact approval or when the food limit is reached. There are pop bonuses at 75% and 100%. If approval drops below 40% (I think it is 40%) there is a penalty. If it is single digits people start to die off.

The pop formula is an odd one vs. other games, so there are no arcane calculations. Just have at least 1 billion (it might even be 2 billion) to get full growth. Growth is capped by the food supply, but does not slow down until very close to the limit. Keep approval high and the rabbits will multiply.

As long as your colony is at 100% approval, you will be at the maximum possible rate of growth. Growth is a percentage of the people on the planet, so the more there are, the bigger the gain each turn.

At about 1 billion, there is no morale hit, but as population rises a morale penalty is charged which counters population growth. At about 3billion it's maybe -3%, and at 5billion it's about -10%, and at 10billion it's about 25%. As morale drops below 100%, population growth slows. It slows even more at around 75-80%, and again until it completely stalls, and then starts dropping away. Once enough people have died, it settles back to stalled, and equilibrium is established -- a miserable but stable population. However, that long process is easily altered by changing the tax setting, and by building morale improvements on the planet.

To answer your question more directly: A colony can support up to 5 billion without requiring a farm. So one can start building factories and research until nearing that cap. By then there will be about a -10% morale hit, which can be compensated for with one morale building. Moving extra people onto the planet will give not only the extra people, but the larger steps forward.

My earliest major people mover is with Impulse-II and Enhanced Miniturization (2nd level). With this I can build a double-colonizer with speed-5, that will start a planet out with 1 billion people.