I just started my campaign and I am trying to drop colonists on Mars... But, I am getting a Loading Problem Error message... It says: "1st Colony Group failed to load colonists Barrayar. Any additional orders will be on hold until the problem is resoved. In the F9 window I had selected Mars and said add colony... The F9 also says for Mars that the Colony cost is N/A... Does this mean that I have to drop infastructure off first before adding colonists? Help....
The first thing to check is that the colony fleet isn't already carrying colonists and that is why it can't load. If you have tried to set up a cycle order to Mars and the colonists couldn't unload, then when you return to Earth there won't be any room for more colonists - this is just a guess though
. What is Barrayar? Is that the name of a planet or a species?
N/A means the planet can't be colonised by actual colonists, although you could place sensors, automated mines, troops, PDCs. etc. Mars has a gravity of 0.38 so the reason is probably that your 'human' species in this game has a minimum gravity tolerance higher than 0.38G. Species tolerance can be set at game start and will influence how many habitable or partly habitable planets you are likely to find. Each race you encounter or create will have different tolerances for gravity, oxygen content, temperature and maximum pressure, with the midpoint of each tolerance being equal to the environment of the planet on which they were created. You can check those tolerances on the top right of the F9 window. Bear in mind that if you have different species in your Empire, perhaps because you conquered an NPR, each species will view each planet differently. What might be ideal for one could be totally uninhabitable for the other. You can choose to view the F9 window or the Galactic Map through the eyes of different species by changing the species dropdown in the top right of the system view (F9) and the top left of the Galactic Map (F11)
Steve