Timing of colony planting.

[Elowan]

My questions are: how soon do you start to colonize the NBR planets within your borders?

1) When do you start shipping pop and to what level?

2) In terms of HW's - what percentage can you drop your pop (by transplanting population) before it affects production?

What I've been doing;

I fill up all my breathable planets ASAP. I then send out pop transports to augment the population in those planets choosing the larger planets first.

I have 3 colony ship types/atmosphere:

1) LR (long range) - holds an extra supply pod
2) SR (short range) - holds an extra cargo pod - used to colonize and jump-start breathable colomies.
3) SR-nbr - no cargo pod - used to populate non-breathable planets.

Also - I keep a CS or two mothballed for contingencies - setting up outPosts and the like.

Comments?

[ August 18, 2002, 18:38: Message edited by: Elowan ]

[capnq]

In the early game, I tend to choose colonies based on their potential resource production. If a non-breathable can produce more of a resource that I need, it gets colonized before breathables that are poor in that resource. Colonizable worlds with ruins are a priority regardless of atmosphere or production capacity.

Later on, when I've met other races, I'll start colonizing marginal worlds just to keep others from claiming them.

[Edit] You're not supposed to edit the question while I'm typing a reply.

I typically don't start building population shuttles until I've run out of good candidates for colonization.

Production bonuses from population are based on fixed numbers, not percentages. If your homeworld maxes out at a boundary, production will drop every time you move pop off it.

The values of the boundaries are listed in Settings.txt, and the current effective bonus is listed on the planet's Abilities tab.

[ August 18, 2002, 18:58: Message edited by: capnq ]

[Fyron]

Personally, I find it best to colonize everything in sight ASAP. Even if a single planet isn't very useful by itself, 5 of them are as good as a planet of your atmosphere.

I usually use Advanced Storage Techniques. So, I build a population transport as soon as each HW fills up. No sense in wasting any potential population.