So I recently dived back into ES2. Love the game, beautiful... all I ever wanted from since I was a kid.

I have now noticed the brown "Disapproval" bands on each planet, which handily point out if I overcolonise a planet that it will result in angry population, which lead me to ask one question, that then snowballed into several questions....:

1) Can I prevent a particular planet from allowing growth into that band?

Basically, I would like to individually 'lock out' a particular population slot, or number of slots, artificially limiting the population slots available for natural growth/immigration. In some cases, I'd also like to set a turn limit on that so I'm purely holding it for an inbound civilian ship that's transporting population from elsewhere.

2) Can I switch population growth into producing some other resource on a per-system basis without resorting to a "production" choice mechanic?

Population growth should be able to be stopped in an entire system, as sometimes I may need to produce other improvements or ships, and to boost FDSI. (I'm returning from an earlier version, so if someone can clarify this it'd be great). But to put population "into training by "locking out" a population slot on a planet as a permanent military camp to auto-convert 100% of system population growth into military manpower, that'd be one way to start. Other ideas would be locking out a slot to change a small percentage of Dust, or Political Influence. I would be happy with a very minor Happiness negative value if it were deemed appropriate.

3) Can new or excess population be "auto-moved" to a new system elsewhere, instead of having to micro-manage each system every turn?

In other words, have a setting that I can toggle to make any new population to automatically be assigned to a colony ship. I would also think that setting a specific faction population to be turfed out to a system that needs them would allow the player to be proactive for population distribution, instead of tediously checking back.

4) Can civilian immigration ships be controlled a little better?

Can they be put into a Low Planet Orbit so they are visible on the system screen, and then placed from there into ships in the, uh, "population slot shipyard" on the bottom left? Maybe they cost food to have there in the meantime or whatever.

Expansion disapproval is a hot topic on other forums - a quick internet search on the mechanic showed a lot of people dislike it. Some people like to build "tall" rather than "wide", and in older games I used to try the same idea with the expectation that if I minimise my expenditure on expansion I could concentrate on researching and building up higher teired designs and roll out a small but powerful armada to destroy my opponents.

Clearly with ES/ES2 there is a distinct requirement to expand to some extent. It is extremely difficult to build only a few systems up and have a competitive economy that enables you to purchase enough Luxury and Strategic resources along with all the other uses you have for your limited FIDSI, unless you have extremely fortuitous starting system and surrounding location. 

Simply put, you're an empire reaching for the stars, you're not working from home. People who say "You're not trying to paint the map" are basically saying that the strategy they prefer means that the conquest path is therefore invalid, and I have seen people say "ES2 is not the game for you" when someone criticises the expansion disapproval; that I find to be divisive and unhelpful. If you can potentially expand, you should be able to, even if there is additional cost mechanic.

Personally I like to expand enough to create a somewhat defensible border and enclose a reasonable number of systems that contain resources for me to go ahead and build up as the beating heart of my industry and research. This means I usually hit the disapproval cap early, so further expansion due to conquest or opportunity is mostly unavailable until I've unlocked some serious tech levels. Then the game simply turns into "Suck up to the people" in an effort to keep them happy, and your whole empire can be brought down if you're balanced on a knife edge halfway through a war.

1) Can there be a 'decay' system in place?

It makes sense that over time population 'gets used' to the size of the empire. Overcrowding and disapproval from other sources is certainly more static in these mechanics, but expansion is something that is designed to slow down the 'rushing' players and leave systems available for the slower developing players. This is quite fair; fast expansion initially has to stop for a while in order to research techs and build improvements to overcome the happiness nosedive and that gives other players a chance to catch up - but let's not stop them indefiniately, eh?

2) Can there be a mechanic that takes a look at the size of the map? 

On a small map, the expansion disapproval is an excellent preventative measure to stop one empire locking out everyone else. Contrary, on the largest maps, it prevents some empires from ever seeing each other, let alone interacting.

3) Can a mechanic be made that allows for a production option to have the system in question NOT count towards the total?

For example, if I select a higher tech tier production item that sets "Expansion Disapproval From This System" to zero, the Empire no longer counts that system in the calculations towards expansion disapproval. There should also be a different type of production included, so it should convert 10% of production to Dust, plus 10% of production to Science, etc to cover all FIDSI. The drawback is that if you turn this off on several systems to fuel your war machine or start fast-tracking other FIDSI, then you're going to quickly send your empire into anarchy - once you've set this in the production queue you'd be very wary to get rid of it if you've expanded quite a lot.

4) Conquest is hamstrung by this mechanic.

If I'm going for conquest, I'm going to eventually blow right through the cap and out the other side. Even small, mostly useless looking systems have value to me. It's hard enough dealing with cranky citizens that just got told they belong to me now, without having the double whammy of everyone back home getting upset for, let's face it, no good reason other than I've got new stepchildren. Perhaps expansion disapproval could be tied to the conquered unhappiness - as it decays over time when population gets assimilated, the expansion disapproval for this system then creeps in to be counted, instead of being counted at maximum from day 1? That way, the initial system disapproval you're dealing with will eventually be passed onto the rest of your empire unless counteracted by the means already in the game, or new ones as outlined above.

I understand that adding the mechanic is not the only hurdle, that AI has to be written to take advantage of it, but this sort of thing is what makes the game even more accessible to different kinds of 4X/5X players.

Thanks for reading the wall of text.