In your "no bonus" AAR, you wrote "I decided to settle the PQ16 in Sol system with my colony ship." It seems like this almost cost you one of the most valuable planets in your cluster.
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On the contrary.
Let's say there are only five planets. There's Earth and a second planet at Sol, PQ16. There's a yellow world halfway between, and two yellows in the distant sector. Now let's do the math.
Each sector is twelve tiles across, so six turns to travel a whole sector. Let's say ten turns to reach the most distant planet, from Sol, eight turns to reach the other distant yellow, and five turns to reach the middle planet. Remember, we MUST settle the middle planet before we can have the range to reach the distant ones.
CASE 1: Send the starting colony ship to middle planet.
a) Five turns to get there, five turns while there to build a colony ship, three more turns to reach second yellow, total 13 turns.
Three turns for Earth to build next colony ship, ten turns to travel to most distant star, total 13 turns.
C) Three more turns to build ship to settle second planet in Sol system.
CASE 2: Settle Sol second planet with starting colony ship.
a) three turns for Earth to build its first colony ship, ten turns to travel to most distant star, 13 total.
five turns for second Sol to build colony ship, eight turns travel, 13 total.
c) six total turns for Earth to build its second colony ship, travels to middle planet in five turns, extends range just as first colony ship needs it.
Total time? 13 turns either way. So what IS the difference? A couple of things.
A) All ships being built out of Sol means all can have 150 to 200 colonists onboard. Ships built at Earth and Sol second planet are treated the same, and draw from both planets to board the ships.
If done the other way, the ship being built out of the middle planet will have only about 140 colonists to choose from, meaning sending only 40 on the ship, or shortchanging the middle planet. Either way, at least one of the yellows starts with a low pop.
C) Pop is growing, and production is being spent, from turn one, if second Sol is settled right away. That gives me more production in to build additional colony ships to settle the PQ14's sitting around. I complete my total colony ship production sooner, perhaps buying me AN ENTIRE TURN OR TWO for the rest of the game. Compare to the five turns the colonists spend in space, doing nothing, not growing, not working. It's a minor difference, but such is the stuff of increasing your game.
With full spoilers, I wouldn't do anything differently except to send fewer colonists on the third ship, the one that ended up settling the middle planet for me.
I don't usually settle a second Sol planet on the first turn. If there is a yellow in my starting sector, I'll grab that instead. But I do usually want to settle quickly. An exception may come if I have a major breathing down my neck right at the start. Then it's a pure race to grab what you can, and reaching out as far as you can with the first ship may be best.
The starting colony ship, with only 100 colonists, will spawn only 30 to 40 mil per ship off the planet it lands on. That's great for grabbing up PQ14's, or maybe 15's, while all the ships from Earth will have 200. This makes for uneven settling, and is bad if you are playing abundant. You end up with a lot of yellows with low pop. Better to put about 150 on each ship so that more worlds get going stronger sooner, and not have any low pop ships until the second or third generation.
You have to play the map you're dealt. There is no one best answer for everything. When I started, I would always skip additional Sol planets, thinking I needed to race to reach out. Then I came to see that settling faster gets me more total colony ship production faster, which in many cases beats sending the ship out into uncertainty and possibly NOT finding a yellow in the direction you choose. Depends on the habitability and other factors.
But no, I would have "almost lost" that planet no matter what I did. There were only two ways to get all the planets, and both took 13 turns. The way I did it made sure both distant planets started with strong pop, though, and also completed my totality of colony ship production a little sooner.
In your AAR your freighter bypassed the Torian homeworld to create a longer trade route with them. I guess that means that distance is more important than the economic power of the destination
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They are both important. I prioritize building my colony ships from my best worlds, often all from Earth or my econ capital, occasionally from other planets if the need to get trade going quickly is dire, for relations purposes. I prefer to send the ships to different routes than all the "best" route, because spreading them around a bit makes them less vulnerable, as a totality, if I end up in war.
Longer routes are worth more only in the latter stages, but they take longer to recycle, so the totality is worth more. Yet routes to higher pop systems are worth more than lower pop.
In my OPC, the Torian worlds were all about the same size and population. So going to the farther one was a no brainer. If they had had a system with two or more planets in it, though, that's where I would have gone.
Like the colony issues above, trade strategy has a lot of subtleties. There's the diplomacy of whom to trade with, the military aspect of whom to trade with, the econimics, the security of the routes, and more.
Pay attention to the values you get from the routes, and you can learn to eyeball when you get more value from distance vs population. Try to remember that the longer route will still be paying out high when the shorter one recycles, so a small loss per turn on a longer route is worth it over time, but a large one wouldn't be.
- Sirian
Stardock Forums
Three turns for Earth to build next colony ship, ten turns to travel to most distant star, total 13 turns.