Is there any real point in designating a colony as 'mining', etc?

[Elowan]

It doesn't seem to do anything to production or whatever.

[TerranC]

All it does is,

If you turned on your Facility Construction Minister, It tells it that you want this planet to make minerals.

Same with Farming Colony, Refining Colony, and others.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Elowan:
It doesn't seem to do anything to production or whatever.

Look at Default_AI_Construction_Facilities in the \AI directory under your SE IV directory. This files tells the AI ministers what sorts of facilities to build on what sorts of colonies. There's one for every AI empire, too.

Like TerranC said, selecting a colony type just lets your minister know how to treat that world.

[Marvin Kosh]

Does this mean we can make our own files, so the ministers are actualy useful?

i.e. we could designate our own 'blueprint' for a farming colony design, if we really don't need much organics and would rather use the space for a heckuva lot of research facilities or storage. Then we just have to actually select it. In simultaneous games I get annoyed that the AI picks the wildest sort of function for my colonies. Maybe I want to designate my new colonies myself, at the start of the turn they were colonised.... kinda hard to pick them out when they already have one set....

[dmm]

You could call your designs MyFarm, MyMineral, etc. Then it would be easy to pick out the new colonies.

[Rollo]

Originally posted by Marvin Kosh:
Does this mean we can make our own files, so the ministers are actualy useful?

i.e. we could designate our own 'blueprint' for a farming colony design, if we really don't need much organics and would rather use the space for a heckuva lot of research facilities or storage. Then we just have to actually select it. In simultaneous games I get annoyed that the AI picks the wildest sort of function for my colonies. Maybe I want to designate my new colonies myself, at the start of the turn they were colonised.... kinda hard to pick them out when they already have one set....

Yes, you can do that. What is being built on a planet you can set in the ..._AI_construction_facilities.txt, the designation of new colonies is governed by the ..._AI_PLanet_types.txt. Rather than editing one or more of the races you could make a new folder under SE4/AI (that's the folder that has the folders .../aggressive, ../neutral, ../defensive in it). Call it SE4/AI/mystyle or whatever. When you create your empire you can then choose "mystyle" for the minister.
BTW, if you don't like the choice of the minister about a new colony, you can set a new type in the planets screen. there is a button "change colony type" or some such.

Hope that helps,
Rollo