Part 2 — Mastering Master of Orion

GROWING YOUR EMPIRE

Population Growth: The growth of your population depends on the current number of colonists, the maximum planetary population (including industrial waste), and the planet’s environment. The closer to the population maximum the colony is, the smaller the percentage of growth. You grow the most people when the planet’s population is at half of its maximum size. At this point, the growth is about 10% of the current population. Should the population maximum ever fall below the current population, the growth rate goes negative and colonists die off. Hostile environments (barren, tundra, dead, inferno, toxic, and radiated) halve the population growth, fertile environments increase the growth by 50% and gaias double it. Technology will eventually allow you to convert hostile environments to standard environments and standard environments to gaias.

If additional resources are spent on ecology above and beyond those required to clean up a planet’s industrial waste, you are temporarily improving the environment and increasing the population growth rate. Each 20 BC spent on this form of improvement increases growth by one colonist unit. With cloning technology, the cost is reduced to 10 BC per colonist, and with advanced cloning the cost is reduced even further to 5 BC each. Additional growth can never exceed one-fourth the current population per year.

Planetary Production: Planetary production is measured in BC’s (billions of credits) and is a measure of a star system’s resources and building potential. The production can be used to build new ships and missile bases, create new factories, remove industrial pollution, and research new technology. The production is displayed on the right side of the screen in terms of actual and total resources. The total resources are shown inside parentheses. The total represents not only the sum of colonists and factory production, but also the revenues from existing trade routes and funds transferred from the Planetary Reserve. The actual production is the amount of resources remaining after maintenance, trading, tribute, security, espionage, sabotage, and colony transport costs are deducted from the planet’s total production. The actual production are the resources that can actually be used to build ships, bases, and industry.