Question about new colonies.

[Skirmisher]

Once your colony ship turns a vacant world into a colony,
I'm have trouble building any facilities.
If I make a research colony,I'll build a research center first,or rather try to but it says "never" on the completion time... What am I doing wrong? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Randallw]

Sounds to me like you neglected to place any colonists on your colony ship. Another reason might be rioting, but my moneys on lack of population.

[Combat Wombat]

Yep a classic mistake everyone has made at least once, always remember to load population onto colony ships or use the panets screen to order your colony ships.

[Skirmisher]

Thanks,now what do I do about it. I've been ordering all ships from the planet screen,but I don't see any option for adding colonists to the colony ships. I satify the list of requirements (bridge,colony pod,etc) while designing,so why isn't it in that list?

[douglas]

If you order a colony ship to (M)ove somewhere (or warp somewhere), it will just go without taking any special action. You need to either (L)oad population onto the ship or (T)ransfer cargo to move population on board.

If you order a colony ship that has no population loaded to (C)olonize a planet, it will attempt to load population from its present location before moving. The Send Colony Ship button in the Planets screen uses the Colonize order, so it's usually not a problem if you do this. However, the attempt to load population will fail if the colony ship sent has nowhere to get the population from - this typically happens with colony ships that explored a warp point without loading population first, or when two colony ships are departing from the same location and the first one takes all the available population.

The only way to fix this once you have a 0 pop colony is to have a ship load population from somewhere and drop it off on the empty colony. You can do this with a colony ship before sending it to colonize somewhere, you can build a dedicated transport design and use that, or you can stick a cargo bay on a warship and let it do something besides fight for you. All you really need is something with cargo space (the colony module gives 20kt of cargo space, enough for 4M population).

[Skirmisher]

Thank You.The load cargo button works wonders.

[Atrocities]

Some planets have less facility slots on them. The planets that have the green * are ideal planets and can have facility slots ranging from 5 to 30. The red ones are not ideal and are limited in facility slots.. Later in the game you can use Atmospheric Convert to change the planet to a breathable one and use Value Improvement and other facilities to improve the planets condition and value.

[Suicide Junkie]

Whenever I forget and end up with a 0-pop colony, I divert a second colony ship which is travelling nearby.

Orders:
1) Drop population on the empty colony
2) Load population from the empty colony
3) Move To/Colonize the original destination

Since you can't remove the last 1M pop, the above orders will result in a colony with 1M pop, and a colony ship with one less than max population continuing on to colonize.
This works great in simultaneous games, but is also quite handy for sequential when the trip is long. You can set and forget the orders.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Hello and welcome to the forum. Cheese?

(The classic greeting!)

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Narf (http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?Narf%20the%20zombie%20mouse)

[Arkcon]

If you're bored enough, you can check out this page here: {clicky} (http://www.invirtuo.cc/phpwiki/index.php/empty%20colony) and click around on other topics as well. But you have to be able to ignore random php errors.

[Atrocities]

Suicide Junkie said:
Whenever I forget and end up with a 0-pop colony, I divert a second colony ship which is travelling nearby.

Orders:
1) Drop population on the empty colony
2) Load population from the empty colony
3) Move To/Colonize the original destination

Since you can't remove the last 1M pop, the above orders will result in a colony with 1M pop, and a colony ship with one less than max population continuing on to colonize.
This works great in simultaneous games, but is also quite handy for sequential when the trip is long. You can set and forget the orders.



I will have to use this. This is a good method for dealing with a colony that dies off. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif