[Puke]

BAH! of course it is. its not viable right off, since it takes some time to research troops and get effective weapons on them.

however once you can put men on the ground, it is very valueable.

now dont get me wrong, capturing small colonies with under 20M and about 2 facilities is DUMB. homewolds on the other hand:

Give you a base of population to put on like-atmosphere planets. give you the production bonus from the higher initial population. and the facilities. lets say you recolonize it and have to rebuild all the facilities, it costs you resources for about 2-5 years while you build your 20 or so facilities back with your low initial population, then you can start doing things with the planet. On the other hand, not only do you not have to spend those resources and population rebuilding the planet (if you have people for the right atmosphere type even), but you GET all of the resource / research production from the planet AND you can use it to build other things.

definitly worth it. there is a cutover point though, i probably would not bother for less than about 75M and 10 facilities, unless I was hard pressed for a spaceyard that they had.