because if all of your population is located on your planets then who runs the starbases and your warships?

Robots.

What if races want to build space stations the size of New York? Hell, I bet the Economic and Influence starbases could be quite capable of being floating cities. It'd make my tendency to find a system called Epsilon, build an Influence Starbase around its third planet and calling it Babylon 5 even more accurate, as the original station has a quarter of a million people living on it, and I'm fairly sure that is an accountable value.

Epsilon Exists, so you can pritty much do that now Pali

People in ships, starbases, cargo, colony and troop vessels as well as construction ships are enlisted personell. For all intents and purposes they do not exist.

The planetary population represents the number of taxpaying citizens. Those assigned to ships and starbases presumably have a home planet and thus could be considered to be taxpaying citizens of that planet.

Perhaps those assigned to ships are tax exempt. How else are you going to get colonists and troops to board ships not knowing their fates.

Epsilon Exists, so you can pritty much do that now Pali

My point is that I do. I just would like it to be home to a substantial population, as well.

And people in a colony ship wouldn't be enlisted. Who uses military personnel as colonists? The Americas weren't colonized by military. They were colonized by civilians - often persecuted religious groups.

I suppose India was colonized using military, but it wasn't really colonized by the British so much as 'under their control' ... the military just occupied it, and the natives served the Commonwealth... unless I'm mistaken, here, and my memory of history is a bit fuzzy...


I liked how, sometimes, planets would be 'naturally' colonized in Master of Orion 3. Had to be one of the best features of the game. Didn't even need to send colonists to some planets, they made their way on their own. And often by a member-race of my empire that liked that kind of planet the best.

EDIT: Also, there seems to be absolutely no difference between military personnel and civilians in this game, anyway, as the population of a planet does all the fighting if said planet is invaded, and the troops on a troop transport just become taxpayers once they're on the ground and they've won the day.