I did a search of the forums, but I'm amazed that nobody has mentioned this at all. So I'll start from the beginning. One of the biggest problems my friends and I have noticed with the current colony ship system is that it does not let you choose which planet your colony ships pull population from. It automatically draws from the right most planet in a system. This can mean the difference between a fast or a slow early-mid game which ultimately plays a huge factor in the later stages of the game. This is due to the fact that a much better planet could be situated all the way on the right, but you have a worse planet that has more than 1 population to the left. It would be logical to use the worse planet since it will hurt your economy less when you lose 1 population from that planet. I suggest that the colony ship mechanic be changed so that it allows you to choose, or have it automatically calculate which planet is best to pull the 1 population from.

I personally don't like the micro of it, and generally you can also move populations across planets by dragging them, so the choice to draw from doesn't really matter too much.

I agree with the automatic calculation, as that would make the process more smooth, but what Igncom1 holds true, you can always drag populations from one planet to another.

Igncom1 wrote:
I personally don't like the micro of it, and generally you can also move populations across planets by dragging them, so the choice to draw from doesn't really matter too much.

If the game automatically calculates what planet to take from, there wouldn't be any micro for you at all.

The game also doesn't ask you to micro which planet gains the new population when the population increases. It's decided automatically. I believe the default focus is on Food - meaning, the game will assign the new population to the planet with the most Food production per person, and will not further populate any other planets until that one is full (and I believe you can adjust which FIDS is set to be the focus). The colony ship production is in the opposite order - as in, if Food is the focus of the system, the population will be removed from the planet with the lowest Food output per person.



So in a way, you can already micro what planet loses population. I doubt you'll ever want to be in a position where you want to take population from the planet with the highest FIDS output.

Shouldn't it take the population from the planet with the highest food production? Or am I just misunderstanding it.

T41 wrote:
Shouldn't it take the population from the planet with the highest food production? Or am I just misunderstanding it.

It would make more sense to me since it's the planet that will replace that lost population the fastest.

I don't think you guys understand food production. Most planets have food production per person. And this is spread throughout a solar system. If you want faster food production, you want to stack as much population on the planet that gives you the most food per person bonus (see in-game tool tips for which one). You can zoom in and rearrange people throughout a solar system by clicking on the blue people icons, or lower to move more, and shift them to other planets. I have seen the game automatically shift populations depending if I am losing Dust or if I need more production for an improvement. Usually it set food as priority 1 because you want to gain high populations to effectively have a stronger production/science/dust economy.

Igncom1 wrote:
I personally don't like the micro of it, and generally you can also move populations across planets by dragging them, so the choice to draw from doesn't really matter too much.

If you don't like the micro why wouldn't you want the automatic calculation system? I'll admit I didn't know about the shifting of populations, but I still find it ridiculous that the game automatically chooses the right most planet for population drain which forces me to micro populations around my systems.

armeg wrote:
If you don't like the micro why wouldn't you want the automatic calculation system? I'll admit I didn't know about the shifting of populations, but I still find it ridiculous that the game automatically chooses the right most planet for population drain which forces me to micro populations around my systems.

Because then you are still choosing a planet from which to draw from.

armeg wrote:
If you don't like the micro why wouldn't you want the automatic calculation system? I'll admit I didn't know about the shifting of populations, but I still find it ridiculous that the game automatically chooses the right most planet for population drain which forces me to micro populations around my systems.

It doesn't. Look at my previous post. It removes the population from the planet with the lowest Food output per person (or Industy/Dust/Science, depending on what the system's focus is; the default is Food).

Fenrakk101 wrote:
It doesn't. Look at my previous post. It removes the population from the planet with the lowest Food output per person (or Industy/Dust/Science, depending on what the system's focus is; the default is Food).

I'm gonna have to look at that, because I have always seen it draw from my right-most planet for colony ships.

armeg wrote:
I'm gonna have to look at that, because I have always seen it draw from my right-most planet for colony ships.

Test it with a system where the right-most planet has the highest Food output per person.