Re: Colony Management
 

Whorehouse Colony: a planet with one big facility, a building with beds that give rest and relaxation to crew thus giving combat modifiers. Visiting ships must be careful on re-entry!

Re: Colony Management
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Bwuahahahaha!!

Re: Colony Management
 

I like to create a 'system capital' type colony, where the spaceport, training facilities and system-wide improvement facilities will be located.

Re: Colony Management
 

When I colonize planets I do several things:

Tiny worlds I classify as Storage Depots and place material storage facilities there.

I put a shipyard on any planet with 5 spaces or more, so I have plenty of production and repair areas available.

One planet in the system (preferably breathable) is the system capital, where I keep the Port and Resupply facilites as well as things that affect the entire system (shrines, training facilities, production enhancers, etc.).

If a planet has over 100% in a certain resource I have the planet churn out that resource exclusively. You'll need it at some point, you can convert it, or trade it. If more then one resource is over 100% I always go with minerals, or which ever is higher.

Anything else is research/intel.

Re: Colony Management
 

First priority is always whatever resource I am low on, usually Minerals, after that come the other decisions.

Try to put a Shipyard on every planet. They are cool.

I try to put the System Capital on the most worthless planet I can find in a system.

If can hold a large number of facilities, it gets Research or Intel, as needed. I try to keep heavy Research and Intel worlds to their own systems, so that I don't need both their system-wide facilities.

Sometime late in colonization, when I am ready to start saving, I try to put huge numbers of Resource Storage Facilities on worlds that fit large numbers of Facilities. Sometimes your game will not allow this. If you desperately need other facilities on planets, just put a few Storage Facilities on worlds, here and there.

Any planet with a bunch of moons gets Fleet/Ship Training Facilities on all of them.

If a planet is near, or on, the front the first thing it builds are Weapon Platforms that have been designed to be built in one turn. Have two separate designs, three if you're facing a religious enemy: one with just guns and Shields/Armor, one with Combat Sensors, ECM, Stealth Armor, Scattering Armor, and guns, and a third, just for those planets facing a religious enemy, with the Combat Sensor, guns, and Shields/Armor. Try to keep two 'gun' platforms for every 'other stuff' platform. Remember that the platform with the lowest number of total hit points is likely to be hit first.

Re: Colony Management
 

In terms of helping the colony micromamagement, I like to use the queue list a lot. For instance, I'll build a queue for a medium mineral planet - complete w/ facilities, troops, weapons platforms, everything I need for that planet - and add to list. Next time I colonize a med min planet, I select the item from the queue list and 20-30 click event is now down to 3 clicks.

I put lots of queue lists based on MY "planet type". Speeds things up a lot when you're colonizing 5-10 planets per turn mid-game...