How many colonist to put in a colony ship and other colony/population questions

I think that at the beginning you should put at least 400 colonists in your ships, maybe 300 if you are competing with a neighbor ... a smaller amount makes the start up of this planet very difficult. But you can imagine putting 100 (as in the first colony ship available) to quickly jump on a promising system...

The amount of population you should leave depends on the planet quality and i have no "magic numbers" yet.

You have to colonize the other planets of a same star system with the same modus operandi, launch the ship, have it re-enter the system and choose the new planet...

When the sol system has more than the Earth as a 15+ planet, I make my colony ship re-enter directly in sol system.

One thing to know is that a colony ship launched from any planet in a star system picks up the colonists from every planet of the system (proportionnaly to the population of each)

The above thread pretty much explains everything, however I usually put 100 into each colony ship so that I can cover useable planets as quickly as possible, the AIs are super amazing at colonizing planets, so speed is probably the first piority in open move.

~SDC~

Is it possible to send additional colonists to your new colonies via some kind of transport method ala MOO1? For example, if I wanted to quickly colonize a planet and just send 100m colonists, there doesn't seem to be any other way of adding additional colonists - unless perhaps it's possible to build another colony ship and land it in the same planet? Even if this were possible, it doesn't seem ideal due to the cost involved.

I usually decide how many colonists to send depending on the class of the planet I'm sending them to, if you send too many to a lower class planet(ie 13,14), you will have moral problems. I usually send ~100 to class 14, ~150-200 for class 15.

> "Is it possible to send additional colonists to your new colonies via some kind of transport method ala MOO1? For example, if I wanted to quickly colonize a planet and just send 100m colonists, there doesn't seem to be any other way of adding additional colonists - unless perhaps it's possible to build another colony ship and land it in the same planet? Even if this were possible, it doesn't seem ideal due to the cost involved."

Actually, in mid-game and late-game, people just build colony ships "for the heck of it". They're mad cheap compared to other late-game stuff. And its imperative to have at least 1 colony ship lying around each of your high-pop. planets in case you need a quick morale boost; evacuate 1-2.5 billion people.

"Is it possible to send additional colonists to your new colonies via some kind of transport method ala MOO1?"

Yes, you can use colony ships for this if you want. Just pretend to be colonizing the already colonized planet (the little ship icon does not appear beside it, though, but it still works). The downside is that you lose the ship in the process. You can also use any transport ship to do it. Whenever a populated transport moves onto one of your colonized stars, it will immediately dump all the carried people evenly on the colonized planets, and you get to keep the ship

~SDC~

You can also buy transports from other races to get a quick population boost if you want

~SDC~

In the early game, I typically buy 5 colony ships. So I try to put about 200 on each. So by the time the 5th is built, Earth will still have 200-400 people. Systems under 100 seem to grow horrbly slow.

could anyone give me the adress to a side galciv site whit FAQ's (and one whit a tehc map) send it to [email protected]

some one mentioned that if there is a 15+ planet in sol system they fill a colony ship leave and re-enter.

you dont have to do that, you can set the population of the colony ship and send it directly to the planet without launching and leaving the system screen.

~SDC~

In #8, a piece of common wisdom was repeated "Systems under 100 seem to grow horrbly slow."
My testing shows this is deceptive - here are two facts that I didn't know until recently:
- at the start, 150 mill pop can bring in about 1 bc/t if in the right place, while a PQ15 brings in 4 and a PQ21 brings in 10. If you want cash at the start, very small pops and more planets are the way to go.
- a PQ 15, for example, will produce the same production points and cash with a pop of 1 or a pop of 201 - there are 'break points' where you get an extra bc/t at particular sizes (try around 110 for most PQ to get started). NB: pop does not significantly impact production under 1000 mill pop (I haven't tested for higher yet)
- those extra 200 will grow at about the same rate whatever planet they are on - PQ 15 or PQ 21 doesn't make any noticable difference - I assume the randomizer in pop growth is far more significant than PQ at these sizes
- the only place pop are worthless is while they are inside colony ships/transports...

(see my thread for more details of the calcs/testing etc if you are interested.)

~SDC~

(That growth was between 5% and 10% per year, regardless of PQ. Morale was constant at 100%. So if you are waiting for the planet to grow to fill a 5000 person combat transport, it will take a very long time from low pops...)

~SDC~

"at the start, 150 mill pop can bring in about 1 bc/t if in the right place, while a PQ15 brings in 4 and a PQ21 brings in 10. If you want cash at the start, very small pops and more planets are the way to go." - What do you mean "if in the right place"? Are you saying that 150 mil pop on a PQ15 brings in 4 while the same pop on a PQ21 brings in 10?
V

Even worse than that, Liquid. Pop 1 on a PQ 15 brings in 4, and Pop 1 on a PQ 21 brings in 10.
Add the 150 mill to the PQ 15, and you still only get 4. Add it to a PQ21, and you get 1 extra (for 11 total).

~SDC~

Jeeze. No wonder I've been having problems with sending people. I tend to send about 1000, even in the early parts of the game. I'm going to have to try sending out lesser populations and see if that'll have an effect.

~SDC~

My strategy w.r.t. how many pop I put on a colonizer mostly depends on what use I want to make of the target colony in the near future. If I just want to grab a system ahead of the AI, around 110 are plenty, I find - but if I want to found a colony that will spawn more colony ships in its turn, then I like to seed that system with about 370..430 which gives me enough population reserve there to keep churning out several more 110 pop colonizers for a few turns.
Once Earth gets population over around 1500 turning out 370 - 380 pop colonizers is about sustainable, I think.

-Peter

~SDC~

Hey Ralegh;
Thanks for the numbers. But if 150 mil work just as well as 1, why do you suggest 110 as a "breakpoint"? How do I find your other thread on this stuff? Thanks,
V

Thread "Working out the Economy" and "Leapfrog - Starting Strategies Part I"
Sort this forum by "From" - I haven't started many threads...

I was using 150 mil as a generalisation - although the number 110 seems to be the magic number for the first extra BC for PQ 16-19, this is probably effected by galactic bonuses... [1 is only as good as 150 at PQ15)


~SDC~