gigabytemon wrote:

More specifically, how does an empire generate/create Manpower?

Via food production. Certain percentage of manpower is devoted to manpower creation, although certain buildings and laws can increase this percentage.

gigabytemon wrote:

And what are the effects of having too much/too little Manpower in an Empire? 

Too little manpower means your planet will lack troops to defend itself when invasion occurred. Too little manpower also hampers the manpower refill of your fleet; your fleet can't invade another planet if it runs out of manpower. Once the manpower pool is filled there is no effects as far as I know.

gigabytemon wrote:

How does one increase the maximum Manpower an empire can have?

Generally by having more planets, although certain techs and faction perks can increase the manpower limits.

Hello, 

I just wanted to add a note. 

Yesterday, I tried the new Riftborn class. And when I tried to invade my neighbours, I realized that my glorious battleships were totally empty.

For the Riftborn, I think you must build your manpower, instead of just letting it grow through food.

Yeah, iirc riftborn are the exception and use infinite-production thingies to create manpower/turn. Normally 10% of your food goes to manpower, and the main techs for increasing that are linked to upgraded small hulls. Once I get the upgraded small support ship and the +20% food to manpower (which triples manpower production...), I never lack manpower after that. 

Hello again,

I've noticed something yesterday and I don't know if it's a bug or if I misunderstood something. When I inspect ships orbiting around one of my systems, the manpower value is +X PM +X PM/turn (eg. 25MP + 25MP/turn). On next turn, this value becomes +Y PM +Y PM/turn. Why the value of manpower/turn change and why is it always equals than the total manpower in my ship ?

Can we get a bit more detailed response as I am also suffering from lack of production.

I main cravers and am always creating all possible food/farm buildings but am always sacrificing population to fill up the ships. I won a match in hard yesterday medium size with 6 AIs in 95 turns but only because they dont invade me as my man power is always aprox. 6 /3000...

Im guessing that any player could easily conquere back systems I dont have a fleet over...

Manpower is your ability to fill your ships with soldiers. As far as I can tell, this has absolutely no effect on space battles. However as you may have noticed, they have huge impact on invasions.

Now I don't know EXACTLY how everything works but here's what I noticed:

 You don't really produce much manpower with any faction (maybe horatio, haven't tried them), however you have technology for this.
  - N-Way Fusion / Chain gang program (in military), easy and simple,  it converts one population (in the case of Vodiany it's 300 Eseence, other races may have some other oddities) into 300 manpower. However this is not a great way, it's a fast way, but it costs population.

  - Agri Drugs / Patriot Pills Plant (Empire development), This is the first small ship specialization, 20% of all food surplus (I think, may be base food) is converted to manpower growth instead of population growth. This also eats into population but it's a better source of constant manpower growth AND it has little to no penalty on full systems.

  - Extreme Composits / Exotic Rations (Empire development), This is the second small ship specialization. It's slightly worse, gives only 10% food conversion, but also gives increases max manpower for empire (I think).

ETC

There are a few quirks. For example:

  - You start an invasion, all manpower actually leaves the ship and goes on the planet. Thus if you leave the system, you don't save your troops from a loosing battle, you must have ships with enough space in orbit and after a battle select "retreat" (I thing that's what it's called).

  - It seems that FIRST manpower has to grow (turn 1) and only after that will it fill ships (turn 2). An example: (turn 1) use chain gangs to make 300 manpower / (turn 2) Manpower has grown / (turn 3) Ships get manpower. Not 100% on this but that's what I think I noticed.

FYI if you research tanks for example, you need to go  into fleet management, then on the left go to manpower manager (middle left), then on the left select the % of troops / tanks / planes, then VALIDATE (bottom right).