No problem Jim - everyone gets frustrated by the AI at somepoint. We just keep plugging away to make sure those variables that we CAN control get maximized. Thanks for trying the ModPack.
-TG
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No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
-General George S. Patton
Yes the colonization minister is sometimes quite an idiot. I have seen the AI ignoring huge planets with breathable atmosphere just one sector (not system!) away from its homeworld and sending colonizer to small and tiny planets with incompatible atmosphere just because they had a high resource value. The AI could not even make use of this high resource value because the first facilities were of course resupply depot and space port and then there was no more space left on the planets!
That's something quite high on my wishlist for a future patch: make the behaviour of the colonization minister editable or at least give breathable and larger planets a higher priority.