Self-Sufficient Colony Ship

[Borealis4x (OP)]

I want to make a colony ship that can carry enough infrastructure with it to support the amount of colonists it carries. So I took my first Superfreighter design...

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Europa class Superfreighter      599,899 tons       1,130 Crew       5,879.6 BP       TCS 11,998    TH 12,800    EM 0
1066 km/s      Armour 1-633       Shields 0-0       HTK 186      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 6    Max Repair 400.0000 MSP
Cargo 500,000    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 210   
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

Roscosmos Heavy Internal Fusion Drive  C. HS160 EP1600 (8)    Power 12800.0    Fuel Use 1.77%    Signature 1600.00    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 10,000,000 Litres    Range 169.6 billion km (1841 days at full power)

...And made this ship

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Rubicon class Colony Ship      600,285 tons       2,090 Crew       15,766.9 BP       TCS 12,006    TH 12,800    EM 0
1066 km/s      Armour 1-633       Shields 0-0       HTK 308      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 1      PPV 0
MSP 16    Max Repair 400.0000 MSP
Cargo 250,000    Cryogenic Berths 1,000,000    Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 200   
Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   

Roscosmos Heavy Internal Fusion Drive  C. HS160 EP1600 (8)    Power 12800.0    Fuel Use 1.77%    Signature 1600.00    Explosion 5%
Fuel Capacity 10,000,000 Litres    Range 169.6 billion km (1841 days at full power)

The ship has enough space to carry 1 million colonists and 100 infrastructure. Would that be enough for most colonizable worlds?

[liveware]

I think the answer is 'it depends'. In this case it depends on the colony cost of the target world.

IIRC, colony cost 2 worlds require 200 infrastructure to support 1 million population.

This seems correct for my Alpha Centauri colony which has colony cost of 1.9 and each 1 million population is supported by 190 infrastructure.

[Ri0Rdian]

As mentioned, depends on cost. No way you can make a ship that will fit more than a single cost world (though it might fit lower cost worlds too).

But thank you for the idea, never occured to me to try this. I still most likely won't, since it is kinda inefficient because my cargo ships are mostly not doing much anyway, so I can easily miss at least a single dedicated cargo or supercargo ship. But there might be time for some RP and this will surely come in handy! 

[DFNewb]

Just to correct you, your ship holds 1000 Infrastructure not 100 so on an almost perfect planet you can have 5 million people on it.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Just to correct you, your ship holds 1000 Infrastructure not 100 so on an almost perfect planet you can have 5 million people on it.

One unit of infrastructure is 2500 tons, not 250.

This ship either doesn't carry enough infrastructure or it carries too many colonists.  Or both.  I would bring 4 infrastructure for every 10k colonists so that it could target any world less than cost 4.0.  I say 'less than' because you need a little head space if you can't unload in less than one production tick.  I don't think civilian colonizers take player colonizers into account either.

Colony cost 2.0 is the minimum for a non-breathable atmosphere.  Cold worlds max out at 10.0.  There does not appear to be an upper limit for hot or high pressure worlds.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

It's probably more practical to pair a freighter with a colony ship to go colonize a planet in tandem tbh. Especially if you build them so they can be built out of the same shipyard.

And they both benefit primarily from Logistics officers, so thats nice too.

[xenoscepter]

I heard on the Discord that Infrastructure had changed from 2,500 tons per to 2,00 tons per, but that is subject to testing and I cannot confirm it personally as of this writing.

In my experience, 1 Infrastructure per 100 Colonists is sufficient to colonize everything from Mercury to Venus to Titan w/o issue and I've found it to be the surest ratio. So 5,000 (or 4,000 if the claim made on Discord holds true) tons of cargo to 200 Colonist capacity (50 tons) is "self sufficient" I use just such a design as a "slow growth" colony ship, plopping down a large quantity of colonies and letting them grow over time as they produce their own infrastructure. I usually find 10 trips or 20 Infrastructure and 2,000 colonists is enough to get things going quite well.

Civilian Industry is key to that strategy, but more key still is a generous amount of troop transports to keep that unrest down... It takes a while for them to get going, but hoooo boy that snowball when they do...

[Borealis4x (OP)]

I heard on the Discord that Infrastructure had changed from 2,500 tons per to 2,00 tons per, but that is subject to testing and I cannot confirm it personally as of this writing.

In my experience, 1 Infrastructure per 100 Colonists is sufficient to colonize everything from Mercury to Venus to Titan w/o issue and I've found it to be the surest ratio. So 5,000 (or 4,000 if the claim made on Discord holds true) tons of cargo to 200 Colonist capacity (50 tons) is "self sufficient" I use just such a design as a "slow growth" colony ship, plopping down a large quantity of colonies and letting them grow over time as they produce their own infrastructure. I usually find 10 trips or 20 Infrastructure and 2,000 colonists is enough to get things going quite well.

Civilian Industry is key to that strategy, but more key still is a generous amount of troop transports to keep that unrest down... It takes a while for them to get going, but hoooo boy that snowball when they do...

Tell me more about the snowball? What do pops need to build their own infrastructure?

"Slow Growth" colonies that I just send a colony ship at once and then leave to the civilian market are how I want to expand as well. In fact, I want to get to a point where I can leave most of the day-to-day logistics to civilians and focus on military matters.

[YABG]

I build my colony ships with the same idea - just smaller. Currently I carry 20000 colonists for 20000 tons of cargo (or 8 infrastructure). This is more than enough for col cost 2 worlds and gives leeway for when the civilian people traffickers colony ships start shipping people over.

Tell me more about the snowball? What do pops need to build their own infrastructure?

"Slow Growth" colonies that I just send a colony ship at once and then leave to the civilian market are how I want to expand as well. In fact, I want to get to a point where I can leave most of the day-to-day logistics to civilians and focus on military matters.

I don't know the exact numbers, though I'm sure someone will know, but the civilian sector will start shipping free infrastructure to colonized worlds since infrastructure is a trade good. Because of this, I've heard this I've heard of people who leave Luna unterraformed because the civilians will quickly generate free infrastructure for you which you can then steal and send elsewhere.

[UberWaffe]

...

I don't know the exact numbers, though I'm sure someone will know, but the civilian sector will start shipping free infrastructure to colonized worlds since infrastructure is a trade good. Because of this, I've heard this I've heard of people who leave Luna unterraformed because the civilians will quickly generate free infrastructure for you which you can then steal and send elsewhere.

Even if you play without the civilian traders, you can still do this, just slower and later on.
A population living on a world with colony cost > 0 will generate infrastructure for free over time.
I'm not sure about what exactly affects how quickly they create new free infrastructure, but I believe larger populations generate it quicker.

So I usually leave two or three of my larger colonies not entirely terraformed, so that colony cost is low, but not 0.
Then I pick up excess Infrastructure and ship elsewhere.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

I build my colony ships with the same idea - just smaller. Currently I carry 20000 colonists for 20000 tons of cargo (or 8 infrastructure). This is more than enough for col cost 2 worlds and gives leeway for when the civilian people traffickers colony ships start shipping people over.

Tell me more about the snowball? What do pops need to build their own infrastructure?

"Slow Growth" colonies that I just send a colony ship at once and then leave to the civilian market are how I want to expand as well. In fact, I want to get to a point where I can leave most of the day-to-day logistics to civilians and focus on military matters.

I don't know the exact numbers, though I'm sure someone will know, but the civilian sector will start shipping free infrastructure to colonized worlds since infrastructure is a trade good. Because of this, I've heard this I've heard of people who leave Luna unterraformed because the civilians will quickly generate free infrastructure for you which you can then steal and send elsewhere.

I don't think civilians make Low Gravity Infrastructure tho.

[Second Foundationer]

I don't think civilians make Low Gravity Infrastructure tho.

They are supposed to, and I think they do, at least they produce it. In my current universe, with an Earth start, and Human grav tolerance >0.2, Luna needs LG infra. It has been terraformed, so colony cost is LG 1.0 (or now 0.95). The Wealth tab tells me that its 62+ million inhabitants produce 171.8 LG Infra without a governor, with a 30% Wealth bonus governor,  it's 224.5.

Of course, LG worlds always need some infra even if terraformed, and you don't have a home world pool. So you may still need to produce LG infra from time to time.
My Luna is an important mining site for the time being and needs the population, actually even a little more. But, I could set Luna as a source for colonists, and the surplus should then be enough that civilian traders would be able to trade LG infra to other worlds. Or I might just tell my colony ships to move some people to Earth to make sure there is a surplus of infra.

As for trading: Right now, all my civilians are fully busy with long-distance government contracts. But I'm quite sure I've seen them trade LG infra to my "Utopia Correctional Facility" on Ceres before.
With civilian traders disabled, it should still produce infra, so you could still move colonists away to use the surplus elsewhere.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

I build my colony ships with the same idea - just smaller. Currently I carry 20000 colonists for 20000 tons of cargo (or 8 infrastructure). This is more than enough for col cost 2 worlds and gives leeway for when the civilian people traffickers colony ships start shipping people over.

Tell me more about the snowball? What do pops need to build their own infrastructure?

"Slow Growth" colonies that I just send a colony ship at once and then leave to the civilian market are how I want to expand as well. In fact, I want to get to a point where I can leave most of the day-to-day logistics to civilians and focus on military matters.

I don't know the exact numbers, though I'm sure someone will know, but the civilian sector will start shipping free infrastructure to colonized worlds since infrastructure is a trade good. Because of this, I've heard this I've heard of people who leave Luna unterraformed because the civilians will quickly generate free infrastructure for you which you can then steal and send elsewhere.

I don't think civilians make Low Gravity Infrastructure tho.

Only LG worlds generate LG Infrastructure.  It takes a long time to bootstrap from that.

What I do is move 100 infrastructure and 100k population to Luna to get the civilians going, or 1/10 that if conventional start, and then scrap my colonizer.  All other colony seeding is done by moving infrastructure by civilian contracts.  In the time it takes to terraform Luna it should have several thousand infrastructure which is enough to seed around a hundred new colonies.  By the time that all gets used up, Mercury or Mars should be ready.