What is the effect of population size?

[markgame]

I know that this might be a obvious question to some, but I am having trouble finding an answer...

What is the effect of population size in the game? For instance, if I have a planet with only 10m people out of a max population of 200m, what is the effect? I seem to still be able to build the maximum number of facilities. Is there some other effect?

[SirDarwin]

I believe you recieve a bonus when your population is 4000M+, so it really only effect large planets. Also it gives you a higher score I think

I'd like to see your ships manned with people, I mean a Starbase would need a really large population to run it effectivly

[Cyrien]

More people = build faster.

That's about it. But I could be missing something.

[markgame]

I found the answer in the HTML manual, to quote "The population of the planet operates the facilities and their happiness and size modifies the production of the facilities." So I woould expect that a population of 20m on a planet with a max population of 200m will be able to produce only 10% of the possible maximum resource output.

[LintMan]

> "So I woould expect that a population of 20m on a planet with a max population of 200m will be able to produce only 10% of the possible maximum resource output"

I don't know what the numbers really are, but I'm certain it's nowhere near that dramatic an impact. For example, my fully loaded homeworld with 4.8 billion can make a colony ship in 3 turns, while a small colony with only 30 million might take 5 turns to make the ship.

You can see a the production rate for a planet or base ship yard by looking at the top of the production queue window.

[Instar]

Hey guys, check the abilities tab on your planet description! The very left most one!
You should find stuff about everything there