Colonizing a Planet

The basic rules:

- You cannot colonize a planet in the central, beginning cluster.

- You need to have passengers to drop off at a planet, to begin colonizing it.

- You need to have an uninhabited planet with natural resources (the more the better!) and a habitable atmosphere, to drop your passengers off at.

- You will need to supply everything the population needs to support life (food, water, medical supplies), until they have the resources and credits to build and maintain their own supplies... or they will die off, or just leave.

- Planets and colonials need credits to build their facilities.  You will need to transfer credits to them as needed, or they cannot do anything!

- When you drop off supplies to a planet you own, you will not be paid.  Likewise, if your planet makes a surplus, you can take from it whatever you wish without paying.

The main thing to remember:

This is a planet YOU are choosing to colonize!  YOU will need to do everything for the people you drop off, until they can do it on their own!  And you will need to PAY for everything for them, until they can make enough to pay for things on their own.  It's not cheap to run a country... so you certainly can't expect taking over an entire planet that's never supported life before to be cheap either!! 

Step 1: Finding people to colonize your planet

You will need to go to the Planet List, and find a planet that has population wanting to leave.  Once you've found them, like above, you can then "Plot Course" to that planet with a ship with open cargo holds, go to that planet's trade menu and pick them up, just like you do any other resource.

The population number is listed by thousand.  So if there are 29 listed... that equals 29,000 people.

Taking too many people to your newly populated planet, before you have facilities built, will make it nearly impossible to bring enough supplies and food to support them.  It's best to start out with a small number to get your planet ready, and then bring in more people after you are making your own resources.

Step 2: Getting your people to a planet to colonize

Once you've loaded your fleeing passengers, you will need to use the Planet List again to find an uninhabited planet, that has a habitable atmosphere, to drop your passengers onto.

You will not see the "Set Passengers on Planet" menu option unless you have passengers.

They will also automatically die, if you try to drop them off on a planet with an uninhabitable atmosphere, at this point.

Step 3: Getting to the management windows

Once you've dropped off your population at a habitable planet, you have now taken ownership of that planet, and need to manage it.

The management menu will automatically pop up when you drop them off, but you can always reopen it to manage, by clicking the "Planet Mgt" button.  This option will only appear if you own the planet you are opening the main menu of, like below.

You can also always find the planets you own, in the Planet List menu.

They will show up in green when you own them.  You will also see the "Manage this Planet" button at the bottom of this menu, so that you can open the management menu at any time, without needing to be at that planet.

Now begins the real work of planet ownership... managing it!