[Slick]

Hey, I just realized this tonight:

You can protect your colonizers by fleeting them with warships. Simple, yes, I know, but I never did that before tonight. Then you can give the (C)olonize order to your fleet. Here's the neat part: if you have multiple colonizers in your fleet, even for different colony types, the fleet will move to the right place and one of the correct colonizers will unfleet itself to colonize the planet while the fleet guards in orbit. Leave the fleet there until it's safe or protected with units, then move on. I bet everyone knew this one except me, but just in case, I posted it here.

edit: Additionally, you can use your colonizing fleet with attack ships to attack and colonize an enemy planet in a single turn. The colonizers will stay out of combat with "don't get hurt" orders while your attack ships glass the planet then a colonizer in the fleet will colonize the planet on the next "movement day" during that turn, assuming it still has movement points left.


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That also reminds me of a little trick I use to colonize moons/planets in the same sector. A colonizer needs to have at least one movement point in order to colonize so you can build a bare-bones colonizer with just the cheapest engine (ion engine III) and use it to colonize moons/planets in the same sector as the spaceyard. Once this is done, you can move any number of population between planets in the same sector using the Transfer Cargo order.