Is there a way to uncolonize your planets?

Yes just go in to the planet screen and click the 'Details' tab. There is an option there to destroy colony (bottom right).

Drengin

The unfortunate thing about this (or perhaps even fortunate) is that after destroying/abandoning a colony, its PQ is reduced to zero.

Wow, I'll have to try that when I get home. I can see how destroying planets could prove stategic in certain circumstances.

The unfortunate thing about this (or perhaps even fortunate) is that after destroying/abandoning a colony, its PQ is reduced to zero.

Really? Whenever I do it, it only descreases it. Lets say I have a PQ8 planet, and I do that, it will go down to a class 2, which is still colonizable.

You're on an older version.

There's another way to skin that cat. You can use transports and colony ships to rapidly depopulate a planet without abandoning it. Never tried, since I refuse on principle to abandon planets, but I've had some colony rushes where a planet's ability to produce ships has outpaced its ability to produce people. In theory, I could have pulled everyone out and moved on.

There's another way to skin that cat. You can use transports and colony ships to rapidly depopulate a planet without abandoning it. Never tried, since I refuse on principle to abandon planets, but I've had some colony rushes where a planet's ability to produce ships has outpaced its ability to produce people. In theory, I could have pulled everyone out and moved on.

Actually, if you move everyone off of a planet, it will be colonized with a population of 0, which will still be affected by population growth, so I guess the people are created out of thin air or something. A better question would be: Is there a way to uncolonize your planets without destroying them?

I destroyed a pq3 planet after capture in my last game... just trying it out... where does the population go? Did I destroy people as well?

where does the population go? Did I destroy people as well?

Yes.

Destroying the colony prevents the AI from retaking it.
It also may stop a drain on your economy since captured
colonies generally produce a negative bc's.

There's also decommisionning everything on the planet- doesn't destroy it, but it doesn't leave much for the enemy to take.

You're on an older version.

Ah. Yes. I was on 1.31... Forgot to upgrade to 1.4...

Well, I haven't personally bothered to use the Destroy Colony button, so I don't know. I just know I've seen it mentioned every time someone says something about it, and I think it's often a Dev or an established forum member.

Ok. Even after updating, it STILL only decreases it.
In my game, a precoursour event happened that increased the PQ of all uncolonized planets by 9, 2 parsects away (yay me...). So I was going to launch a bunch of colony ships to destory the planets. The first one I tried went from class 9... to class 6...