Colony ships

About how many people exactly? I would ask the experts to answer that. Depdning on what scenario I am playing I put around 100 to 300 on the bar in the colony ship at the start of the game. That way i dont totally drain the main world and the others get a decent start.

Taking all the population off the world doesnt de-colonize (if thats what you mean). When you move people off you can move them right back in another ship, but losing population takes away from production values etc.

At the beginning of the game, I usually put 150 on my colony ships. This is a good balance between keeping as many as possible on earth (so I don't lower production), and not putting too many in a brand new colony.

I use the mini-colony ship exclusively. If I know I'm going to a good quality planet (19 or higher) I'll put up to 300 or 400 on it. For unknown or known 15-18 I'll usually load up between 100 to 200. For class 14 and the rare 13 that I colonize I'll only load up 50 to 75. I'm sure others have their own rules of thumb, this is what has worked for me.

Once you colonize a system with fewer than 200, beware of building more colony ships from that system too fast - if you drain the population too much you'll kill the productivity of the system. It was a long time ago when I made that mistake, but believe the voice of experience.

~SDC~

111 mil. Always.

I always leave it set to where it is before I launch. I use Icho Tolot Mods in all my games.. I will use his long range colony ships maxed out later in the games.

Looks like according to the experts I am putting to many on the ships.

Wow DF, thats sucking half your population everytime you build a colony ship then!! Great start for your colony but it just cut your production/economy in half too probably, heh.

And it also has the bad effect of immediately having a high population on a world with no morale improvements. To each his own though. If you are having fun and not struggling with this tactic, keep on going. As many a wise person has said, "Rule #1, have fun!"

During the initial colony rush it's not a big deal, except for the colony ships built in Sol. Taking half the population from one of your new colonies just gives you two planets with about the right amount for a new colony. It's what I do for systems other than Sol.

When colonising a new world 9-12 quality or higher I always put around 1000 and even higher l;ater in the game up to 2500 this means the new planet can build quickly and saves money paying for things to be built quicker.

I won't even touch a planet unless its pq14+ ..my +5% pq bonus jacks the 14's to a 16 after your basic soil enhancement. I can't even imagine the added expense of a pq9 ..!!!! SE+HI=pq11?? Not. I'd just use a SB to extend the range (if thats what you were using the pq9's for).

...wow, I actually sounded like I knew wth I was talking about there for a moment, heh.

I am not sure to understand you: Are you meaning that you colonize PQ 9-12?

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Is that 1000 Million like in one Billon? Where do you get that much population? I have never had more than 1.2-1.3 B at the time when I built my first colony ship. And by the time I have 1 B "to spare" there are no 14+ planets left to colonize.

Me either Martin. I put about 100 million on the colony ships, but thats all a matter of choice really ..later in the game if you find a 14+ world somewheres you may have the extra pop to spare.

I played a Gigantic galaxy once. You'd be surprised how long it takes to find all the yellow stars in one of those.

A very long time if you are not playing tight/rare or tight occassional. Ahh, but those are the fun games though.

This was actually scattered/abundant. It was a fun game, but moving all those ships...

I assume you stack them all up and move as one???

I just turned off follow-autopilot-ships and set them on auto-pilot into enemy territory. But it took so long for them to get there, and then the Dreadnaughts had to wait for the Combat Transports to show up. Towards the end I started just putting massive amounts of money into destabilization in the hopes that they would flip to the I-League instead of building ships to send to their worlds.

It will still take a long time but you might want to stack your transports w/ you attack ships. They are less vulnerable that way.

I like to create huge fleets (100 or more ships) and send them as a single fleet (One click) to the target destination, then stop one tile away from where I want to attack and then diband the fleet by moving the non-combatants out of the fleet and either attacking or invading with 2 fleets. One fleet of transports/combat transports, and one fleet of warships. This technique has saved me tons of time when invading.