Option for Civs to ship infrastructure but not Colonists

[Therewolfmb (OP)]

Pretty simple, I am colonizing various systems and find that there’s a point where the colony is large enough that I am done sending colonists, so I click the “stable colony” button.

However, this also changes the infrastructure demand for the colony down to just enough to support the current population, effectively preventing the colony from naturally growing beyond the minimal trade good infrastructure production.

I think it would be nice to have an additional option between “destination for colonists” and “stable colony” where the infrastructure demand is set to enough to support the annual growth rate of the colony.

For example, for a colony with 30m with a 10% growth rate, the infrastructure demand would be enough to sustain 33m colonists. 

This will create a slight excess of infrastructure so the population can naturally grow without the player having to manually build and move infrastructure.  It also won’t suck up a ton of infrastructure for your slowly grownups colonies that would otherwise go to newer ones.

Thanks for reading

[nuclearslurpee]

You can do this easily by setting a contract for civilians to transport infrastructure to the desired amount, and also setting the target colony as Stable. This isn't the automated way we might want, but given how precious and scarce of a resource Infrastructure usually is I think that's probably better than letting the Civilians run wild transporting it without my benevolent oversight.

[Therewolfmb (OP)]

But that would use player built infrastructure instead of trade good infrastructure, right? And cost the player wealth instead of generating tax income.

Unless contracts for infrastructure work differently than other items? Sorry if I'm misunderstood how that mechanic works, I'm still learning.

[nuclearslurpee]

But that would use player built infrastructure instead of trade good infrastructure, right? And cost the player wealth instead of generating tax income.

Unless contracts for infrastructure work differently than other items? Sorry if I'm misunderstood how that mechanic works, I'm still learning.

I suppose so, but in practice I've never seen trade good infrastructure be produced quickly enough to meet my voracious demands for colony expansion, so I make liberal use of player-built infrastructure until my terraforming corps comes into its own.

In any case, it's usually a good thing to give the civilians some shipping contracts, because this helps them grow their fleets faster which means you will have a larger civilian shipping sector to take advantage of later in the game (until you kill them all horribly to stop the lag, at least).

[Garfunkel]

Also note that civilian-built infrastructure becomes government infrastructure once the body is terraformed to colony cost 0. You can then have civilian ship it via contracts elsewhere. That's what I usually do and it's a way to get infra for free, basically.

[Therewolfmb (OP)]

Fair enough, I am probably just in a funky spot where my Terraformers haven't broken the 2. 00 colony cost on any of my colonies, so I'm not getting that free infrastructure, and the civilian fleets aren't shipping infrastructure to the farthest colonies fast enough to use up my homeworld's trade good production.  So this specific game would benefit from the feature I'm requesting but most people wouldn't use it.

[kyonkundenwa]

Also note that civilian-built infrastructure becomes government infrastructure once the body is terraformed to colony cost 0.

I understand what you mean but it's important to note for people like OP that trade-good infrastructure becomes government infrastructure the moment it is offloaded at the destination by a civilian freighter. The Moon is a great infrastructure launderer in the early years before you terraform it, just take what you want and the civvies will fill it back up in a heartbeat. If you take too much just grab a colony fleet to shift some people back to Earth while you're at it, the civilians will quickly haul them right back again once the infrastructure is back in place.

[Therewolfmb (OP)]

Thinking about it, I appreciate the suggestion of infrastructure laundering with Luna or whatever non-zero CC colony is available.  But I still wish there was a less exploity way to do it.  Like I could setup an train of colony and cargo ships to constantly move infrastructure back to earth in order to max out Civ deliveries of colonists and infrastructure to Luna, but the artificial trade demand feels kinda meh.

Other option would be if we could buy Infrastructure from the civil sector, but really getting access to that natural trade flow would feel best for me.