Newbie question, please help

[Vorque]

Okay, I just started a new game and colonized two green-asterisk planets in my home system. But for some reason, whenever I send a colony ship to a red-asterisk planet in my home system OR an any-asterisk planet (green or red) not in my home system, the colony created has zero population and cannot do anything. What gives?

I am not using any mods except the "eye candy" mod which isn't supposed to change any data anyway.

[Phoenix-D]

Are you loading population onto the colony ships? If you don't use the colonize order from above an inhabited planet, you have to manually load population. Otherwise, no people. No people = no work.

Phoenix-D

[Vorque]

bingo, thanks

[Atrocities]

Believe it or not, this is the most asked newbie question. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Gryphin]

I and other experianced players also make this mistake at 1AM and later. I used to do it when under the glare of my X's eyes.