Population Questions |
Since the demo didn't come with a manual, I have a couple questions about colony populations.
1. What is population good for?
I notice that when I build a new colony, even if it only has 1M colonists it still has a construction rate of 2000 kt per turn. What are the advantages of increasing the population? My homeworld with 4000 times the population, has a construction rate that's less than twice as good.
2. Why might a population disappear?
I just noticed that one of my colonies in my home sector is now empty, devoid of life. All the colonists are gone. I didn't receive any messages about why this happened. The "abilities" of the colony indicate that it's still getting a 20% boost to productivity due to happiness, so I'm assuming they didn't leave for happiness reasons. Why might they have vanished?
The construction queue is unable to keep producing due to a lack of workers.
I've noticed this happening
I've noticed this happening in my game. I thought it might have been caused my use of the auto colonize feature where I drained the population of the planet building the colony ships.
Another possibility
That is good possibility too. The original poster didn't mention if he was using colonizers from that planet so I hadn't thought about it. Unfortunately the can't remove the last 1M population feature from SE:IV isn't in SE:V yet.
-----
Feature? I think it should
Feature? I think it should just be a warning, not a strict limitation... what if the planet is about to explode and I want to evacuate everybody? I always felt sorry for those last 1M people 
~~~
Mr. Flibble says...
Game over, boys! 
Evacuation
As I remember, the "the last Million People have to stay"-rule applies only for colony ships. If you want to evacuate, you normaly need a transporter.
The cause for the population-loss could also be listed in the planet-screen under "migration"; if more people leave the planet than people are born, the planet will die out ... (this is only a suggestion, I'm not shure, how that works)
You haven't said what the
You haven't said what the planet quality was, it might be that if the planet was hostile that more people where dying than being born.....
Auto Colonize?
There is an Auto Colonize feature? Colonizing when I have secured (but not yet colonized) half the Quadrant is such a hassle.
If you go onto the planets
If you go onto the planets section, you can filter all known planets that can be colonized. There is a button there which says send colony ship. If you have built colony ships without orders that button will automatically dispatch one to colonize that planet.
Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc
Mhm.
Thank you, I've used that - it would be even better if planets with a ship enroute would somehow reflect that (Like in the Planets list in MOO2 when you had sent a ship to auto-colonize there), optimally even letting me filter by that criterion.
BTW, should the minister of a colony ship not find and colonize planets automatically? If not, what would he/she/it be for? Or are they just not working in the Demo?
Ship enroute
The screen does in fact have an optin to show ship enroute (as well as time to arrival). It doesn't show up in the default screen though, you have to switch to one of the other ones. (or, better, make a custom layout).
Why didn't I think of that myself?
Thank you for pointing that out. I've made custom layouts for Colonies and Ships, but somehow I just didn't think of it for the planets list 
Population responses
Population adds production bonuses to construction, research and intelligence generation, and resource gathering.
There seems to be a bug in the demo that will tend to leave a colony on occassion without population. Typical reasons why you might lose population is a natural event, intel project, plague, or enemy bombardment. But all of these will generate a log message...
-----
Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!