Here's a question out of the blue... Why doesn't building a colony ship lower the planet population? I am curious what players think as well as if this had been considered and discarded by Devs. Alternatively it could also "boost" population growth rate WHILE building the colony ship, attracting settlers, contracts to build all of those tractors and mobile home units... it just seems like it would be reasonable such an undertaking would spur the economy. This came up recently when I had an overly large planet packed full of citizens and they were not happy about it (morale penalty for overcrowding). My first thought was to build colony ships to take pressure off over crowding, but that's not a game mechanic. This gives me an opportunity to praise the Emigration/ Immigration system added into the game. It took some clicking, and a lot of reading, but the info was there, in game, for me to understand it once my mind was able to grasp the overall concept. Of building freighter fleets I will never see, after freeing up Ship Support Points I didn't have to spare. But NOW I get it and it runs smoothly, keeping planets from "topping off" and spending the SSP is well worth it. But as we know, that doesn't work once the planet is full... and why that is remains a mystery. Also, it gives my citizens no room to complain, or turn around. I can't imagine that a planet with a population of one would EVER finish a colony ship before it grew, but I could see a player breaking the game buying one. AI might get hung in a loop trying to rebuild after getting pummeled, but other issues I can't foresee.
Hi, thanks for your question. It has been a while but I recall that the idea was for expansion to not be penalizing in the sense of losing population in a colony after you build a colony ship, if that was not required for other purposes. When production is allocated to building a colony it is not allocated towards Habitat Control (population doesn't increase as much in the colony) nor towards other colony development activities. So, you can say the penalty is inherent and abstracted in the process, so making a colony lose 1 POP was not found necessary. I'm glad to hear you like the emigration/immigration system! As for the morale penalty for overcrowding, that was necessary for balance reasons, and I actually think it makes sense that after a certain point population pressure will generate some discontent (e.g. less resources available). The counter to that is to try and boost morale through other means.
The quite substatial cost for the coony ship, and the fact that you could use that production for pop growth boosts also, makes it seem very reasonable to leave this as it is.
I want to own up to a bit of updated info. I was wrrrrr.... ummm mistaken. I suspect I couldn't do it when I came to that conclusion due to a lack of freighters, but whatever the case, you CAN set a fully populated planet to "emigrate". It just takes a LOT of freighters when you have several planets with migrating populations.
