Hi all,

Just bought this game over the last sale, having great fun so far but came across a star system I couldn't colonise and I have no clue why. I have the right technologies for it, but I just get a "star system cannot be colonised" message with no explanation. I've asked on the steam forums, so far the most plausible explanation is that this is a quest system for another faction so I can't colonise it, although if this is the case the message given on the system is underwhelming at best. Straight after this point in the game I went to a nearby star system and colonised a Savanna planet with no issues, so I definitely had the right technology. See the screenshots for clarity : 

As I'm new to the game I'm aware I might've just missed something, but no-one on the steam forums could say for sure what the issue was and I feel I've been pretty thorough looking at this and it just seems to be an issue with the "star system unavailable" message being pretty useless at describing why I can't colonise this system, feels like this tooltip needs updating. 

Thanks in advance to anyone who looks at this!

Thank you for your reply, makes me feel a bit less mad if other people are running into the same issue! Just started my second playthrough (Vodyani) and ran into the EXACT same issue - a star system which I simply can't colonise. It's quite frustrating that I've only done 2 playthroughs and ran into this issue early in both. Love the game, but would very much like to see this fixed.

Just checked it again now, all it says is "This star system cannot be colonised" in red. Just checked and I have Baryonic shielding so I should at least be able to colonise the Savanna, but nothing:

If needed I can provide screenshots of the tech tree, but I've been playing for a while now and I'm 100000000% sure I have the right tech, just can't colonise this for no discenable reason. Thanks in advance!

shaggydogpoo wrote:

Just checked it again now, all it says is "This star system cannot be colonised" in red. Just checked and I have Baryonic shielding so I should at least be able to colonise the Savanna, but nothing:

No savanna planet on your screenshot visible. Go for desert and/or tundra colonization tech, instead.

Oh sorry, I meant Tundra. Either way, I have both the technologies for Desert and Tundra by this point, so that's not the issue: 

Screenshot shows the same turn count and resources etc. as the previous screenshot, so you can see I have these techs at the time that earlier screenshot was taken. This is still definitely a bug. 

On my screenshot you can see that the gas giant is "inhospitable" and the rest is "unavailable". It is not a tech problem. System can be out of your influence bubble or in - doesn't matter too,

To sum up, systems what are not connected by starlanes are uncolonizable at the moment, right?

Here's the savefile pertaining to the screenshots above, if anyone wants to have a look : 

Savefile cant colonise Nos.sav

In this save all DLC are enabled besides awakening.

Saw this break today.  It’s the Dark Matter quests being bugged; I’m 100% certain of it.  I had a non-starlane system with Sahar off my constellation.  It was initially habitable for the first turns.  As soon as the Dark Matter quests started it bugged out and became a dead system.  This is definitely another DM dlc bug.

Copy & pasted from Steam discussion to this place:

It's obviously the "Death Without a Corpse" quest active on Lumeris end, what came along with the latest Dark Matter DLC, causing this kind of trouble. The quest asks the Lumeris to travel to the systems "Jovanus" and "Othero" ("free space travelling").

Both systems planets are blocked from colonization. To finish the quest won't change anything (I tried to do so). These quest-related systems stay uncolonizable forever (or until the devs will fix it...).

They could've spawn special nodes, or something similar to uncolonizable loadstone systems. Yet they went with this weird setup.

That explanation seems pretty accurate, although I'd like to add there was no issue colonising Jovanus - I just loaded the savefile I posted and could colonise it straight away. I'm guessing you meant Nos instead? 

System names can vary, it seems. In my case it is Byrtus and Gatria. One has Sahar planet.

I've seen this happen twice now. The weird part is that when I first find the system, it is colonizable. After 10 turns or so, the system is unavailable and empty of outposts.

I, too, am certain this is due to the quest "Death Without a Corpse". I was eyeing a disconnected system for its lucrative planets that were marked as colonizable first. I moved my Vine ships in to connect the system to my vine network. However, as I was extending the vines, as soon as this quest started all planets became "Unavailable" and remained so even after I completed the quest. The exact same happened to my friend I was playing with.

Ah, ok, looks like I'm another victim of this bug.

I can confirm it was a system targeted by that "Visit systems without a starlane" Dark Matter quest, and now the system is uncolonizable.

Unique Planet system, right next to my starting system too. Enragement Supreme.

Yeah, that can get frustrating. I had that quest from Academy with colonizing +1 unique planet in limited amount of turns and I thought 'cool, I have one just outside starlanes of my border system'. It went dark the moment my colony ship reached it xD

Thanks for this thread. Just ran into the same issue. Hope they either make it clear why we can colonize them or fix to be able to colonize them eventually.