An old hand with some new questions

[Droplede]

Hey, all. Been a few years, but it's nice to have a new Space Empires to amaze and confuse me.

Well, parts of it are nice. I'm agreeing with the SE4 vets' line that the potential is there, but distant at the moment. That, and I'd give a kidney for a one-click selection of components / actions / menus without having to confirm every move. But I digress ... on to the questions!

Is it just me, or does migration actually make it preferable to colonize a planet without pop loaded aboard your colonizer?

Just like the old days, I'd been loading extra cargo capacity on my colonizers so I could land 16 million people (or more) at the get go. So I accidentally did a pop-less colonization, and was amazed to find that the next turn I had 34m people in the colony -- far outstripping the growth rate of the other colonies who started 16m ahead. The advantage continued a few turns down the road -- the older and initially populated colonies hadn't even come close to catching up with the once-empty one. Anybody do a study of this, 'cause anecdotally, the migration-gain rate doesn't seem even close to proportionate.

Second question: any evidence at all that damage is directional? I've only confused myself by reading past postings on this topic. In other words: is there any gain to putting armor on, say, the sides to protect a certain axis of inner components, or will all your armor boil away before any of the outer/inner components are hit, regardless of facing?

Sorry if I'm rehashing. Anyway, looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and helping make SE5 the game it so obviously could and should be.

Best,
-doug