Colonizing too rapidly ...

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, when I played, I'm sure I wasn't going about the population movement in the most efficient way.

I ended up with 90% of my vehicles warping out in the Last 3 months. After that, I think I had no planets for a while, and pushed out the Psy guys to the south to make a home.

The economic struggles were great, though: I had 30 Powerful Dreadnoughts in mothballs, but I could only afford to maintain three for the longest time. I had to use cheap fighters and sats as my primary defense, and used the dreads to soften up the 10-20 baseship fleets the Psy guys were sending in.
I also had to glass the first few planets I was going to colonize, so their value was horrible (glassing damage was increased, I believe)
Eventually I got the value back up, and a few planet captures, and cleared out the rest of the aliens from the system.

[Elowan]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
You can see the way the AI builds facilities on small planets, few resource facilities then one research or intel. There's something to be said for not putting all your eggs in one basket, so spreading out facilities is also a good idea. But then there's less benefit from Computers, at least early on.

Actually - I patterned my build philosophy based on how my planets look when the game starts. I split the research on breathables 50-50 with resources and/or other facilities. That way - I'm less vulnerable if and when. Granted that - at first - I'm over-producing and 'wasting' resources until I build storage. On newer colonies - I'll build research before resources. That changes later if & when I need to boost resource production but by then I'm at III extractors or Monolith's etc.

I almost always build a RD and SY on each breathable (except 6 slot planets). I play Natural Merchant+ and on large planets leave 1-2 slots open for 'laters'.

The only time I build 'all research/intel/whatever - is if the planet lies within my heavily fortified core home system.

However - keep in mind that I only play against the AI (so far). I've too many things on my plate to do else.

[ September 15, 2002, 16:02: Message edited by: Elowan ]

[Gryphin]

Elowan,
I doubt you could deplete a homeworld with < edit > Colony ships /edit with two Cargo IIIs. You would probably run out of Minerals first if you were producing that many ships.
I'm sure you check the "General" list under colonies each turn to check for these things.
In terms of the trade off of moving population, that is your call. It is a long term "Investment" for your race. Do you forgo the advantage of a highly populated homeworld for faster growth in your colonies? In the long run this will pay off. It would require a constantly updated spread sheet with the production on each of your planets to optimize your pop movement.

As the others mentioned, Loaded cargo ships put on Repeat can deplete a homeworld.

[ September 15, 2002, 16:56: Message edited by: Gryphin ]