Hey, crappy planets, like say, MARS, don't even generate income (just a little research). The only reason to own them is SPITE, I don't like the aliens in my neighborhood. "NOT IN MY HOUSE !!!"

If you don't have a starport on the planet then there's no reason to have factories. Research is probably the best thing to put on small planets because research output isn't dependent on population and there's no real advantage for it to be concentrated on any one planet.

For my PQ4's I build 3 research buildings and that's it. For PQ5's I might put three factories and a starport and use them to produce constructors or small fighters, but they're not much use for producing capital ships unless they have major manufacturing bonus tiles. With no manufacturing bonus tiles I'll most likely just put 4 research buildings on my PQ5's.

With no starport you could also fill the planet with stock markets but that's not real effective because of the population limits on small PQ planets. The one case where I did this was on a PQ5 captured from an AI that had their economic capital on it. Since I couldn't demolish or upgrade the economic capital to anything else the only reall thing I could do with it was to add 3 stock exchanges.

Well, the starport on Mars would take so long to build a colonyship the entire galaxy would already be settled. As for BUY a colonyship, nah, waste of bc's. However, I do build starports on other crappy planets in my empire to make "defender" type ships to block any early invasions. Then build empty hulls with these crappy planets and upgrade them later.

By the way the max pop of a class 4 planet is not 2.5B and is not 4.5B for a class 5 planet.
Those are just the population where the population growth stops.
So why not put down a farm and 3 stock markets and import the population?

Myself I like to crank out transports with 2K troops ; so a starport and 3 factories works just fine on a class 5 planet.
A class 4 planet, I just import pop up to 5B and crank out some constructors with a starport and 2 factories.

Hi!

what's the use of planets without starports except that they generate income and research points?

In my games no other use. Because I rarely decrease research slider below max, there's alway lots of founds going to research, so those tiny planets got all research buildings and focus on research. In late game, when pop on bigger planets hits the food limit, I fill the smallest to their food limit to increase revenue. Oh, and on the conquered Wisp I just half-built-half-bought Harmony Crystals.

BR, Iztok

Sorry Agashak, what I ment is a Mars type planet will acually lose money because the maintenance cost exceed the income generated. A little too much rant and not enough facts, my fault.

Again thanks for the replies!

No hard feelings Byram