This has happened to me several times. A planet that has 2 races, minor race that is bigger because the buggers reproduce faster and main race, starts to build a colony ship. Happy that it is ready I send it on its way only to realize (when colonizing) that I forgot to switch out the minor race in the colony ship and I end up with the furry bears settling a planet. Te same happens when I build a colony in system. Is it possible to fix this mechanic so that the main race is the default?

The problem with always using the faction's primary race is that it can deplete the planet of that race, sometimes leading to morale problems, especially in the early game. Another option is to have a distinct colony ship build option in the build menu for each available race, but this can really clutter up the build menu on planets where you have a lot of different races.

What is the selection of the colonists would take place in a sub-menu visible above the colony ship button.

For each colony ship design you would still have a single big button like now, but each available colonist type (more then 1 unit of pop available on the planet) would be represented as a smaller button within them - clicking on that small button would not only issue build command but also specify the pop displayed visually on the button instead of default pop

Arioch wrote:The problem with always using the faction's primary race is that it can deplete the planet of that race, sometimes leading to morale problems, especially in the early game. Another option is to have a distinct colony ship build option in the build menu for each available race, but this can really clutter up the build menu on planets where you have a lot of different races.

I suppose it should not be hard to add an option (in settings) to keep colony ships empty by default.

user12334 wrote:

Arioch wrote:The problem with always using the faction's primary race is that it can deplete the planet of that race, sometimes leading to morale problems, especially in the early game. Another option is to have a distinct colony ship build option in the build menu for each available race, but this can really clutter up the build menu on planets where you have a lot of different races.

I suppose it should not be hard to add an option (in settings) to keep colony ships empty by default.

So that when you forget to load your favored colonists, the ship gets sent out empty instead? I think that's demonstrably worse.

I think zolobolo solution would be the best. When you order a colony ship/planet colonization into the build que, a submeny pops up that demands that you choose race. Simple and effective.

I was thinking in something along the lines of below image: Clicking on a specific faction icon within the colony ship button would automatically assign that pop, while clicking on the colony ship button itself would link into current behaviour

Obviously it would be the most convenient way for the player to chose the intended colonists withouth blowing up the ship selection screen but it does come with inherited limitations:
1. Technical: if sub-areas can be defined within an existing button to begin with withouth having to redesign the GUI. Maybe as overlapping links that have their own area above the default area of the button?
2. Amount of space avaialble is limited: I could easily find a still manageable size for mouse pointers that enable the fitting off all mayjor races and native races that can colonise in the bottom two (max three) rows. It must be noted though that the third row could be exploded if slave vairants come into play. If the concept would be utilized, it would be necessary to exlude slaves from the selection list even if the probablity of any player having a single planet with at least 1M pop of all major races + native races that can colonise is quite low. Not counting any additional races and variations that might crop up in DLC
3. Superpositioning: the icon width of various races is not standardised (height seems to be) and thus calculation of when to start the second or third raw could be tricky

Considering the limitation, a pop-up for colonists selection would probabyl be more feasable but it is a trade-off for more clicks - it could of course be deactivated if only a single type of pop is avaialble for sleection, but this is almost never the case from mid-game onward

zolobolo wrote:I was thinking in something along the lines of below image: Clicking on a specific faction icon within the colony ship button would automatically assign that pop, while clicking on the colony ship button itself would link into current behaviour

Obviously it would be the most convenient way for the player to chose the intended colonists withouth blowing up the ship selection screen but it does come with inherited limitations:
1. Technical: if sub-areas can be defined within an existing button to begin with withouth having to redesign the GUI. Maybe as overlapping links that have their own area above the default area of the button?
2. Amount of space avaialble is limited: I could easily find a still manageable size for mouse pointers that enable the fitting off all mayjor races and native races that can colonise in the bottom two (max three) rows. It must be noted though that the third row could be exploded if slave vairants come into play. If the concept would be utilized, it would be necessary to exlude slaves from the selection list even if the probablity of any player having a single planet with at least 1M pop of all major races + native races that can colonise is quite low. Not counting any additional races and variations that might crop up in DLC
3. Superpositioning: the icon width of various races is not standardised (height seems to be) and thus calculation of when to start the second or third raw could be tricky

Considering the limitation, a pop-up for colonists selection would probabyl be more feasable but it is a trade-off for more clicks - it could of course be deactivated if only a single type of pop is avaialble for sleection, but this is almost never the case from mid-game onward

Looks great. Dont forget that the same icons should be available ofr in-system planet colonization also.

Yes, once implemented it could be used for planet colonisation as well - goess this goes for any solution chosen

Arioch wrote:The problem with always using the faction's primary race is that it can deplete the planet of that race, sometimes leading to morale problems, especially in the early game. Another option is to have a distinct colony ship build option in the build menu for each available race, but this can really clutter up the build menu on planets where you have a lot of different races.

Couldn't they be made to just function like transports? Then you could load them with whichever pop you like.

To keep the process streamlined for the player you could have the colony ships auto-load a pop when built (imitating the current behavior), while allowing the player to swap out the carried pop if they like.

Then when founding a colony the ship could just use whatever pop is being carried.

And it would be easy to implement since you'd be able to leverage the existing mechanics and UI for loading/disembarking pops from ships.

harpy eagle wrote:

Arioch wrote:The problem with always using the faction's primary race is that it can deplete the planet of that race, sometimes leading to morale problems, especially in the early game. Another option is to have a distinct colony ship build option in the build menu for each available race, but this can really clutter up the build menu on planets where you have a lot of different races.

Couldn't they be made to just function like transports? Then you could load them with whichever pop you like.

To keep the process streamlined for the player you could have the colony ships auto-load a pop when built (imitating the current behavior), while allowing the player to swap out the carried pop if they like.

Then when founding a colony the ship could just use whatever pop is being carried.

And it would be easy to implement since you'd be able to leverage the existing mechanics and UI for loading/disembarking pops from ships.

That's actually how they work now.

Aha, didn't read the OP close enough. Thought the problem was that he couldn't switch out the race, not that he forgot to. Well, fair enough I guess.

Though it would take some coding work it seems to me the simplest solution for the player would be to have colony ships build empty, but if one tries to set a destination with an empty colony ship have a pop-up warning telling the player the ship won't be able to found a colony unless a unit of population is loaded. This would also make it clearer to new players that colony ships are taking population from the building planet, which I didn't figure out until I played several games. A couple of extra enhancements would be nice, one would be an option in the settings menu to autoload a population unit onto colony ships by default. Another would be an option to transfer a population unit from a transport directly to an empty colony ship, or even swap population units between them, to give a little extra flexibility in getting colonists to their destination.

This is how it's done in the Polaris Sector (unfortunately abandoned now). Warnings are easily ignored (specially by the modern society). If you care enough to manually load colonists into every Colony Ship you can as well check and reload if necessary.
However, I remember the related problem I've had once. The planet that was building Colony Ships had main race and some (very useful) "primitives" - the main race got depleted, and at some moment I couldn't select Colony Ship building project any more (it was grayed out) because I've had less than 2 of the main race present. I don't remember if I could even sent in some colonists (the planet was near full). If the game allowed me to build an empty ship I'd just sent it to another planet and load colonists there.

If you've got less than 2 units of any population that's not either Primitive or Sessile, you probably shouldn't be building a colony ship on that planet anyway.

It doesn't take any more time to transport eligible colonists to that planet than it does to send an empty colony ship to a planet with eligible colonists.

These seem like solutions in search of a problem.