Colony

Colonies in Aurora take many forms, such as deep space tracking stations, unmanned mining operations, military bases, and up to a full fledged population and manufacturing centers.

Colonies can be established on the surface of almost any system body, with the exception of gas giants.

Owning a colony can provide a wide range of benefits to a player...

Colonisation

In order to create a colony, a player must first decide on a suitable planet. A number of different factors may influence the decision making process, based off of what you know and what you hope to accomplish. Suitability and Mineral content are one of the most important factors to consider.

Setting Up a New Colony

Colonies can be established on the surface of almost any system body, with the exception of gas giants. The 'system view' F9 and 'potential colonies' Cttl+A views, provided you with pertinent information about known planets. Additional information about the planets mineral deposits and archaeological sites can be made available by conducting surveys.

Once decided either: Right-click the planet on the 'system map', and select "New Colony" from the populations sub-menu; or select the planet from the 'system view' list, and click the "Add Colony" button at the bottom.

Your new colony will now appear in the Population and Production screen F2, although this is initially a purely administrative label. In order to actually have a working economic presence on a world, some installations must be put in place. Cargo ships can be ordered to lift installations from another colony and drop them here.

Note: Colonies can be abandoned at any time. Click the "Abandon Colony" at the bottom of the Population window. Everything you leave behind will be lost and cannot be recovered later.

Planetary Suitability

Whether or not an actual population can easily survive on you colony is a matter that must be considered. While you can put ground bases, troops, sensors etc on any colonize-able world. You will need actual population to run shipyards, factories, etc, for which worlds has to be habitable or at least have enough infrastructure for the inhabitants.

The Suitability of each planet is determined by its gravity, temperature, and atmosphere; and will vary considerably depending on the species tolerances so a world that is ideal for humans may be uninhabitable for some other species and vice versa. All planetary suitability variables are summed up in single variable, colony cost.

A world with inappropriate gravity cannot be settled at all, except through the use of Underground Infrastructure or Orbital Habitats. If a world has zero colony cost, the population is not restricted in any way other than the maximum growth rate. Otherwise, the maximum population is determined by the amount of infrastructure.

Planets suitability and colony cost can be driven down by terraforming, which utilized installations of specialized orbited vessels to alter the planet's atmosphere over time.

Unrest

Unrest is caused when the inhabitants, or local government, of a population are in dispute with the central imperial authority. This can cause anything from mild production problems to rebellion and has several different causes. The most immediate effect of unrest is on the productivity of a population. All factory output, research, shipbuilding, wealth creation, trade creation, etc is reduced by a percentage equal to the number of unrest points. For example, if a population has 25 unrest points, then all production is reduced by 25%. This may be because the factories are producing less due to worker absence or it could be the factories. This is in addition to other modifiers such as manufacturing efficiency or political status modifiers.

Once unrest starts to build up, there are two options to deal with it. If you remove the cause of the unrest, the unrest level will slowly fall by itself based on the determination (or rather, lack of determination) of the population. The alternative is to send in ground troops and forcibly suppress the unrest. Beware, if left unattended, there is a possibility the population might declare independence and break away from the Empire.

Causes of Unrest

Insufficient Local Defence

Populations of at least ten million may require the presence of military forces, such as warships, orbital bases or PDCs. In some cases, such as Imperial Populations, Candidate Population and, to a lesser extent, Subjugated Populations, this is because they desire protection from hostile aliens. In the case of Vanquished populations, it is to remind the population of the orbital bombardment that caused their surrender and in the case of Client Populations, it is to reassure the inhabitants that they made the right decision in joining the Empire. The demand for protection from Client Populations is particularly strong as they no longer have their own military to rely on. The amount of protection required is based on:

Required Protection = Population in millions x Militancy/100 x Political Status Protection Modifier

Other

Most aspects are managed from the Population and Production interface.

Population

Workforce

Government

Trade

See Also

• Colonization for Beginners tutorial.
• Unrest post, by Steve Walmsley, 2010.