Weird colony issue in SEIV Deluxe
 

Because SEV has a few bugs I'm hitting, I decided to purchase SEIV Deluxe and play that for the time being. I have played the demo at work quite a bit, but now I'm hitting a weird issue.

Immediately at start I moved a colonizer out to another sector and colonized a rock (domed) planet. Then I setup a queue of a Resupply Base, a Space Port, and then a Space Yard. Anyways, the time left on these queue items are always on Never, because my population is at 0! After reading the planet description, it said there's no vegetation, which I thought might be the case, so I colonized its neighbour. Same thing.

Is this normal? I looked at the colonizer ship details and it has a Rock Colony item in there, which should have people in it right?

I'm a little confused. Yes I did the tutorial about a week ago when I was first learning about Space Empires.

Thanks for your help!

Re: Weird colony issue in SEIV Deluxe
 

Se5 is a bit different now. In se4 if you give a colony ship orders to colonise, it will not automatically place people on board, unless you are using the colonise planet order in the planets menu. You have to manually place colonists. Nice that in SE5 now it will do it for you when you tell your new ship to colonsie a nearby planet.

Re: Weird colony issue in SEIV Deluxe
 

Actually, in SE4, any time you use the colonize order while orbiting a planet, population will be loaded. There is no need to use the planets screen for this to happen.

Jeku:
If your colony ship is orbiting a planet and you issue a colonize order directly, SE4 will add a "load population" order just before the movement order. If you move the ship out of orbit though, no population will be loaded. This is what is happening. Make sure to transfer population to the colony ships before sending them out. To fix the 0 pop planets, you can just send a colony ship with population on it to them, then use the transfer cargo order to transfer 1 million (or more) pop to the planet.

Re: Weird colony issue in SEIV Deluxe
 

wow, really, and all this time I've been loading population manually when I build colony ships.

Re: Weird colony issue in SEIV Deluxe
 

Ahhhhhh thanks. That would explain why other planets in my homeworld sector were properly populated, as I was issuing colonize orders while the colonizers were orbiting the homeworld. But the planets in the other sectors were colonized upon the colonizer discovering them, so by that time the ships didn't have a colony on it.

Thanks for the info http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

P.S. - Nice to hear some music in the retail version of SEIV---- the demo didn't have any at all.

Re: Weird colony issue in SEIV Deluxe
 

I had a problem like this, but I'm familiar with the no population issue from se4. I know I put people on the planet because a space yard and resupply depot were both built. However, somehow the population went to zero. There was no plague. My only conclusion is the harsh conditions led people to migrate.

Perhaps someone with more experience can enlighten us?

PS: this was with the demo.

Re: Weird colony issue in SEIV Deluxe
 

In the SEV demo, I think if you build a colony ship at a planet with a small population, it can load the entire population from the planet when you order the ship to colonize, leaving your planet empty.

Re: Weird colony issue in SEIV Deluxe
 

I think that is correct. IIRC in SEIV a basic Colony ship with a colonizer and 1 Cargo component holds 34M colonists. The same configuration in SEV holds at least twice that much so it is possible to strip off lots of population with colonize orders in SEV.

Re: Weird colony issue in SEIV Deluxe
 

You should read the FAQ for SE IV. You will find a lot of very helpful information in there including a section dealing with the old ZERO colony population problem.

Believe it or not, this is one of the most common questions that new players post about. Why doesn't my colony have any population or why does is say NEVER when I put things into the que. It has gotten us all at one point or another. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Weird colony issue in SEIV Deluxe
 

I myself once made a sacrifice play with almost all of my navy to get a colony ship through two neutral systems in CBmod (Neutrals are very tough customers in CB, often having more warships than the normals since they don't waste them in wars)

I got to the far side with very heavy casualties, only to discover that I'd forgotten to bring colonists!

Fortunately, nobody else took the opportunity to smash through my warppoint bases before I was able to start rebuilding my navy.