Colony Ship Designs

What level are you playing?

At higher levels - colony rushes get intensive (the world types are a nice wrinkle, though... some opponents get truly hosed by this).

My colony ships are always single module ships -- and I only build 1 model with extended range (and then - build only when necessary and then only 1 to extend range for my 'regular' colony ships).

I'm fanatical about the slight engine/miniaturization upgrades - every new engine type or mini advance that allows me to tack another parsec/turn to a colony ship gets used.... I hate losing out by a single turn to acquire a high PQ planet - and by ensuring my colony ships are faster than everyone else's, I rarely do.

I can see the advantage to colonizing with 1000 rather than 500 (or less) -- but also remember that those 1000 are deducted from the originating planet. Early in the game - only my capital could even dream of providing 1000 colonists -- so I would wonder if you aren't robbing peter to pay paul so to speak (i.e., your new world gets off to a great start - but at the expense of an already established world).

While I load capital produced colony ships with the 'full load' of 500 -- I load very small contingents on colony ships from other worlds (once non-capital worlds reach a minimum of 1 billion, I try to never let them fall below this number).

Map size certainly has a lot to do with this -- on a smaller map with less worlds, a 1000 colonizing strategy might pay dividends quicker... on a larger map, though - I would still prefer to have more worlds under my control.

In general, I try to send my 'full boat' colony ships to planets I KNOW I want (i.e., a visible PQ 12+ world). I send short-staffed colonizers to mystery worlds where I don't know the disposition of the planets in the system.

Well am playing a battle of the Gods. Its interesting there no colony rush by the other AI's.

Infact I have seen AI surrender because the Yor or Dregin looked mean at them.

But by the time my second 1000 colonist capital ship is ready I have built my population back (I take Mil production to 0) and am working on my Economic Capital or Aphrodisiacs. Yeah I take a pretty big hicky and in the red for a while on the capital but my colonies start being profitable alot quicker.

And it seems that they will initally build improvents much faster. And yeah the second galatic wonder I build is the orbital terraformer.

Those class one worlds really rock then too.

Duh

I couldn't keep up the rate of colonization if I tried to put 1 bil in every colony ship. The taxes produced from my main world keep me from totaly going under at the start of the game. In my games the computer colonizes maybe not overly quickly, be certainly not slowly.

I could see how that would work for smaller games. Get those other worlds up and producing quickly. I will have to try it on my next game.

I always use my custom race, and make sure I have a jump start in engine tech. That way I can get as many worlds as fast as I can. I also only use one module (500 million colonists), this way, by the time the next ship is built my capital has recovered.

Plus, I noticed that with blind exploration on, the AI is far less aggressive in the colony rush.

I just use one colony module. Sicne I play at challenging difficulty on in a huge galaxy the AI is always expanding as rapdily as possible. I tend to load anywhere between 200 - 500 million people on my colonizers depending on the population of the originating planet.

Even though I rush production of some colonizers, it is kinda hard to expand and solidify my territories since I go for higher PQ planets first, then go back and pick off what's left.

The most important component on a colonizer other than the colony module is the engine.

I'm playing challenging / huge too, and totally agree. Give the Korath the stupid PQ4 worlds and then flip them!

I really prefer the epic quality of the huge universe, and it is really amazing how the stratagies differ from small to large universes. What I have learned to do would probably result in a swift and forgetable death in a small universe.

I play on small or tiny right now, so you can get one, maybe two other planets initally, especially on rare habitible's, so I almost never worry about colony ships.

That's interesting with the 2-colony-modules idea. The reason I haven't done it is because colonizing the planet sucks up the ship, meaning you just paid for both modules and now they're gone. I'd rather save the multiple-module ships for ferry boats. But now that you mention it, that may deserve some revisiting....

The default colony ship design has too much life support and neglects *sensors*.

First priority of course is two engines, no matter WHAT you have to take out (first thing to go is the two life support modules... each colony extends your range further toward the next one).

After that, put in sensors. At least two if you can fit them. Your colony ships will be doing your exploring... no use building scout ships, because they won't be faster than the colony ships and won't be able to get out ahead of them.

The # of engines, life support, & sensors you need is very highly dependent on the galaxy settings. You can't generalize it.

I was about to say "What game are you playing?" In my games, I have a hard time keeping up with the AI in the rush to get planets. I've given myself the fastest ship possible and go for Ion Drive early so I can add yet another engine onto it. My Colony Ships are the fastest out there, yet I still lose out sometimes by 1 turn.

Why would you want sensors? If you've sent out a bunch of scout ships beforehand, they'll locate all your planets for you. All that's necessary is to get the Colony Ships to the planet. And in those early stages, it's not likely that anyone's going to be at war with you, so you don't have to worry about getting ambushed either. Even if they are being nasty, they're not going to have any ships to cause your colonists any trouble. You're much better off using that space to squeeze as many engines as possible. Besides, with more engines, you can always outrun any of the early ships.

Missed that part. That's certainly not the way I do things. I rush build 5 scouts before I even think of building a Colony Ship. They may not be as fast, but you can make alot more of them so they cover more ground. If you use the mini-map effectively, you can find far more planets early on than you can colonize, and very quickly. It just wastes time to have the colony ship wandering willy nilly around the galaxy. Send out the scouts so you know exactly where to send it, that's what they're designed for.

My strategy is to set 100% research at the beginning so that I'll reach ion drive in two turns. During those two turns I don't bother with any new ships, because they'd become instantly obsolete. My colony ships are then designed with two ion drives, two sensors, and one life support pod.

Now in order for scouts to be useful they have to at least be able to keep up with this force speed wise... so they need two ion drives. And they have to match its range, so they need a life support module. It would be nice if they had the 1-2 sensors as well...

Problem #1: I don't think the starting game small hull can *hold* this stuff. You can't fit the twin ion engines plus the rest of the equipment so your scouts will fall behind your colony ships.

Problem #2: Your scouts with all this equipment won't be much less expensive than your colony ships. Half the price, maybe? Instead of rush buying five scouts you could rush buy two colony ships.


Don't underestimate how *many* colony ships you can build. And don't underestimate the "outward first" strategy... send your first ships out the *farthest* (unless they happen on a stupendously good planet), to beat the enemy to the planets between your civs and establish a beneficial outward border. Then fill in the gaps in between with your later ships.

It's okay to build too many colony ships, too. They double as scouts and ferry boats. Besides, you can upgrade them.

Don't use the small hull for your scouts, use the cargo hull. A cargo hull full of engines and life support is very fast. It doesn't need any sensors since you already know where the stars are, and the bare hull has enough sensors to see all the planets in a system in one pass-through.

I don't always use scouts. On a map with abundant habitable planets, you'll find good planets wherever you go and you'll need as many colonizers as possible. So you don't need scouts in this situation. But on a big map with sparse planets, the scout's greater speed and range is invaluable. I don't want my slow colony ships blindly wandering, so the scouts zigzag to all the stars while the colony ships move in straight lines away from my homeworld so that they always take the shortest path to their target planet. The scouts show me where the "outer edge" of my territory is. I don't want my colony ship to stumble upon a colonized world, and then have to double back to an empty one.

One problem with using your colonizers as scouts is that as soon as you colonize a planet, you lose your scout. You lose the use of a ship that's far from your homeworld and you'll have to wait for the next one to catch up and take its place.

These scouts are also good for contacting distant aliens and looking at their planets.

But 5 scouts sounds like a lot. Two are usually enough for me.

Yes, I've since changed my approach and now go for colony ships straight away. I can rush two of them and still have enough money left over to rush starports on each colony they create to build yet more colony ships. My initial expansion is going much better now. I'm usually not number one, but I'm right up there. I still need to work on my tech though, I have to trade alot to keep up. I just tried building Markets first on each new colony instead of Factories, and it worked out better for research over all.

You can use your survey flagship to scout, too. With a little micro, you can search out anomalies AND scout places you care about. They have the sensors for it.

Yeah I know, but I prefer to put him on auto-survey and forget about him. I don't even have the found anomaly pop-ups anymore. Though I guess if I took care of him manually, he'd probably get whisked away by wormholes alot less often. I could just avoid them altogether. He always seems to have a knack for ending up on the opposide of the galaxy, doing me no good at all. So yeah, maybe I should give that a try.

Actually, thanks for bringing that to my attention. It's occured to me that I've been ignoring that ship, just turning on the auto-survey right away and forgetting about it. I'm starting my games with Hyperdrive Plus, and I'm using a mod that gives me some points towards minituarization. So I could probably stick another engine on it and maybe an extra regular sensor. I'll have to look into that, it be even more useful than it already is.

Damn, I'm stuck with it. It's a medium hull vessel so I can't make any changes to it until later. Oh well, something to keep in mind later on.

Once you've got colonization underway though, it's not too hard to grab Sensors 1 and build a couple of cargo surveyors. Particularly on the bigger maps, this can really help in getting enough anomalies to fuel your economy effortlessly.

Hey, good idea! I never thought of using a cargo hull that way. It would probably make a good scout vessel too. You could stick tons of sensors and engines on it, plus give it enough range to cross the entire map. It would probably be a bit pricey, but it would certainly get the job done. Thanks for the tip.

Yes Cargo Surverys rock. 3 engines, 2 life support 2 or three sensors and a survey module. And as an added bonus your not stuck with them when the galaxy is explored. Turn them in to basic constructor ships.

Duh

Another nice thing about the cargo-hull scout ships is, in a pinch, you can 'upgrade' them into colony ships when they are sitting next to a distant PQ 20+ world and colonize it with one million colonists.