COLONIZING PLANETS (CONT.)

Factories: Each factory must be operated by people and the number of factories that can be controlled by colonists is limited by the player’s level of robotic technology. The better the robot controls the more factories that can be operated by each colonist. You must be careful not to build too many factories without the technology to either clean up the resulting industrial waste or reduce the amount produced by each factory. Otherwise, you will be spending a considerable amount of your resources just removing the pollution and keeping your populations from dying off.

Industrial Waste: Waste reduces the habitability of a planet and may actually kill colonists if the amount grows too large. Each factory produces roughly one unit of waste, modified by the amount of waste already present on the planet. The amount of waste each factory generates can be reduced by advanced construction technology while the cost of cleaning up existing waste can be decreased with advanced planetology tech.

Planetary Missile Bases: Missile bases are marvelous for planetary defense. Although they are immobile, bases are per unit the cheapest military unit. Unlike starships, missile bases are always equipped with the best available technology: missiles, force fields, ECM jammers, and battle computers. Note that missile bases do require maintenance, and although they are not as costly to maintain as starships, they nevertheless can be expensive if too many are built.

Population: Colonists provide two functions: generating production to build starships, missile bases, technology etc., and operating industrial factories to provide even more production. Generally, the larger the population, the more the colony can build in a single year.

Population Growth: Each year your colonies will grow an amount that depends on the current number of colonists, the maximum planetary population (including industrial waste), and the planet’s environment. You grow the most people when the planet’s population is at half of its maximum size. Should the population maximum ever fall below the current population, the growth rate goes negative and colonists begin to die off. Hostile environments (barren, tundra, dead, inferno, toxic, and radiated) slow population growth while fertile and gaia environments increase it. Technology will eventually allow you to convert hostile environments to standard environments and standard environments to fertile and gaia environments.

Orbital Fleets: The ships shown circling the planet represent the space fleet currently in control of the planet. The count shown to the lower right indicates how many of each type of ship are in that group.