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...

Colonization

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

See also: Colony cost and Terraforming

Whether or not an actual population can easily survive on your 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. The amount of infrastructure required to support the population is measure by 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 subsequently its colony cost can be improved over time by terraforming, by utilizing terraforming installation on the planet or terraforming modules in orbit.

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.

Population and Workforce

Population affect..

Different populations can co-exist on a planet. They could be aliens, or a genetically modified species under your control. Infrastructure so our colonists can survive the hostile environment.

Agriculture and Environmental, Service Industries and Manufacturing

Colonies with high Colony cost require higher percentage of the population to be employed in agriculture to feed the rest of the population and maintain any environmental infrastructure.

Manufacturing sector provide the work force for all factories, mines, shipyards, etc. Each point of radiation decreases industrial production by 0.01%. The most likely cause of radiation is recent bombardment of the planet.

The higher population the more trade goods and wealth it generates. Planet with 10,000+ population for the purposes of crew morale

Other

Most aspects are managed from the Population and Production interface.

Ruins, and minerals survey.

Government, occupation Political_Status and Independence. If you select a colony and press this, the colony will become a new independent state. For the moment, this can only be done for player races and the new state will also be a player race.

See Also

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