Colony Ships and Population

[Dinkelsen]

Another thing I would not call a bug, its more a feature or an issue. Nevertheless:

When building a colony ship it is filled with 1 population unit of the most numerous race on the planet. This population unit comes from nowhere, the planet still has its original population living there. Shouldn't this one unit be missing from the population? Or maybe the colonists are all cloned with the cloning costs factored into the cost of the ship?

Regards,
Stephan

[sven]

When building a colony ship it is filled with 1 population unit of the most numerous race on the planet. This population unit comes from nowhere, the planet still has its original population living there. Shouldn't this one unit be missing from the population? Or maybe the colonists are all cloned with the cloning costs factored into the cost of the ship?

My thinking is that volunteers are probably being sent up to the colony ship over the course of its construction. In most situations, I think natural population growth is probably sufficient to explain where the extra bodies are coming from. The theory here is that population growth on the home planet is constrained primarily by the availability of housing / developed resources-- not the maximum possible biological growth rate.

That said, if you buy a colony ship on a 1 population world, and thus complete it it just one turn, the "volunteers from the home planet" explanation does get a little strained. In that case, I think we perhaps do need to assume they're using cloning vats or something

[Arioch]

Another thing I would not call a bug, its more a feature or an issue. Nevertheless:

When building a colony ship it is filled with 1 population unit of the most numerous race on the planet. This population unit comes from nowhere, the planet still has its original population living there. Shouldn't this one unit be missing from the population? Or maybe the colonists are all cloned with the cloning costs factored into the cost of the ship?

Yes, it's deliberate and not a bug. At this point in development, we don't want players to have to worry about a reduction in population due to building a colony ship. We may eventually change this down the road.

[Gyrfalcon]

Yes, it's deliberate and not a bug. At this point in development, we don't want players to have to worry about a reduction in population due to building a colony ship. We may eventually change this down the road.

Although it does seem a bit strange that you could cram 1/12 of an entire planet's population into a single spaceship, along with all the infrastructure they need to live without additional support. I think it would be more realistic if colonies started smaller, although it might not be as much fun.

[Dinkelsen]

I think it would be more realistic if colonies started smaller, although it might not be as much fun.

You could start a colony with zero people, just the infrastructure and some work crews. A colony ship could just build a colony. Then a transporter could ferry over some people. Hm, we still have the problem of ferrying 1/12th of a planetary population in a single ship... Well, this one transporter is of course just an abstraction for a whole fleet of transporters that specialize in transporting passangers. Yes.

Regards, Stephan

[Gyrfalcon]

Or we could decide that a single colony ship is an abstraction of a whole fleet of various colonizing vessels working over several years.

[enpi]

I like the system as it is. You build a colony ship which is quite expensive, so its balanced when also an extra colonist comes with it.

[Sziklamester]

zero not but 10k population. It seems to me that's the minimum reduction which could grow but slower than a million people. For the more realism the population should be only 10-100k which possible to transport in one ship because then a colony ship should be very huge to keep a million life on the borad.