How do I convert an outpost into a colony? Do I have to do it manually or does it happen on its own after a certain period of time or after some conditions are met (if so what conditions????). I was looking for an answer on the web and there is no explanation whatsoever. Endless space massively fails in the tutorial department for me. The most ridiculous are the description in the tech tree that explain nothing about the gains of particular research. You only get some gibberish that is maybe cool for the lore but useless as an actual explanation of how it impacts the gameplay

30 rounds after the taking an outpost it will become a colony These questions are kinda covered in the FAQ.

is there any kind of countdown or something that shows when the conversion will happen? In the last game I wasn't paying attention to it but I'm sure that I had several systems for more than 30 rounds and they were still only outposts (meaning they didn't have a border)

Yes, you can see it in the sytem view on the top left (there is a countdown).

pogonoforysci wrote:
is there any kind of countdown or something that shows when the conversion will happen? In the last game I wasn't paying attention to it but I'm sure that I had several systems for more than 30 rounds and they were still only outposts (meaning they didn't have a border)

In the planet view, under the planet name there should be something along the lines of "Outpost - X Turns until growth" or something like that. I haven't looked in a while, but I'm fairly certain what you're looking for is there.



As for the tech tree, the descriptions for the nodes themselves are just flavor text. Hover your mouse over the icons within the node you're researching for information about what you're unlocking.