Need a bit more help after the Tutorials - Actually colonizing another planet?

[JohnnyR (OP)]

Can anyone give me some step-by step instructions on what is needed to do this? For example, if I wanted to colonize mars (using infrastructure?) I would:

- add a colony to mars via the system information screen
- build a colony ship with Cryogenic Transport Modules

After that, I'm a bit confused. 
Do I launch the ship and give it orders to load colonists?

Then once that's done, how do I tell the ship to unload the colonists on mars? And how do I make sure they don't die?
How do I build infrastructure on the planet so that the population CAN survive?

Thanks!

[xeryon]

Once you have declared mars as a colony you will need to transport some infrastructure to the planet (since it is not a colony cost 0 yet, I assume)  You can then transfer colonists to it and they won't die off.  The fun part here is that once you transfer one (1) infrastructure to the planet the civilian companies take that as their queue to get to work.  Make sure you have ship designs that civilians can build and they will start building cargo ships and colony ships and begin building your colony for you.  You can build your own ships and do it yourself as well.

[JohnnyR (OP)]

Awesome, that makes sense then.   Would you mind going into a bit more detail of how I transport infrastructure to another planet? For example, what type of ship (Freighter?) How do I tell it to load infrastucture? How do I tell it to drop it off at mars?

[Thiosk]

Freighters have cargo holds, engines, and fuel.  The typical freighter includes 5 cargo spaces, enabling it to move a single mine or factory.  Once the freighters are constructed and in a task group, order the task group to load infrastructure earth and unload infrastructure mars, all from the F12 task group orders menu. 

Civilians also produce freighters and colony ships that you have designed.  Because they want monies.  And it pays big bucks to drop off civilians and infrastructure on other planets.

[JohnnyR (OP)]

Freighters have cargo holds, engines, and fuel.   The typical freighter includes 5 cargo spaces, enabling it to move a single mine or factory.   Once the freighters are constructed and in a task group, order the task group to load infrastructure earth and unload infrastructure mars, all from the F12 task group orders menu.  

Civilians also produce freighters and colony ships that you have designed.   Because they want monies.   And it pays big bucks to drop off civilians and infrastructure on other planets.

Ok, I will give that a try.  Should I be creating civilian contracts for these jobs instead? Is there a reason I would do contracts vs.  manually ordering the task groups around?

[Marthnn]

The minimum to colonize a non-ideal world is :

-Add a colony to a suitable body
-Send infrastructure installations to the colony, either using a freighter you control or civilian contracts (supply on Earth, demand on Mars)

After that point :

If you have civilian shipping lines with colony ships, they will take colonists from a source world (Earth) to send to a destination world (Mars).
If you have civilian shipping lines with freighters, they will take infrastructure trade goods where available to send where needed, up to the quantity needed to support 125% of current colony population.

Depending on how big your private sector is (civilian shipping lines), this can be too slow for your tastes. You can build your own colony ships and freighters to send colonists and preexisting infrastructure (not trade goods, so you need to build them with your industries).

In any case, it is generally a good idea to kickstart a colony by sending a lot of infrastructure, using your own freighters or civilian contracts.


Many players prefer to colonize ideal worlds only (so terraforming first). When population exceeds the current maximum supported by infrastructure, unrest rises. This happens often when colonist transportation is good, but infrastructure doesn't follow. You can limit colonists by setting your source world to stable instead, to let infrastructure catch up.


For freighter design, you should aim for at least 5 cargo holds (if more, use multiples of 5), at least one cargo handling module, and 25 to 35% of its total size in engines (you can see that in the Component Summary tab in Class Design). At Nuclear Thermal tech level, that's about 800 km/s.

To load infrastructures, first build them with your industries. Then give a task group order to load infrastructures, and unload at colony.


About contracts, those are assigned to civvies, not ships you control. If you built freighters yourself, you have to give load/unload orders for them to do anything. If your civvies don't have many freighters themselves, they are quite unreliable...

[Thiosk]

That being said, in my most recent game I built a single freighter, and that was the only transport I needed for the next 40 years.  Don't worry about that though as a new player: have a team of freighters and colony ships to supplement anything the civvies poop out.  Later, when you familiarize yourself with the mechanics, you can BEND THEM TO THY WILL, SIRE

[Marthnn]

That being said, in my most recent game I built a single freighter, and that was the only transport I needed for the next 40 years.  Don't worry about that though as a new player: have a team of freighters and colony ships to supplement anything the civvies poop out.  Later, when you familiarize yourself with the mechanics, you can BEND THEM TO THY WILL, SIRE

Totally. You can colonize a world without any ship yourself. Use contracts to send the first infrastructures, and set worlds as Source/Stable to control colonist arrival. No task group hassle.

[JohnnyR (OP)]

Wow! Awesome! Thank you very much for the information guys! Slowly but surely I am learning this amazing game.  =)

[JohnnyR (OP)]

One last question, how can I figure out how much space something takes up (for example, infrastructure)?

[xeryon]

By perusing the wiki!  If you follow this link http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Installations it takes you to the section on installations and there is some information in there about the size of individual stuff you build.

The super short reply, one infrastructure uses .5 cargo hold.

[JohnnyR (OP)]

Awesome! I'm thinking I will put this info into a spreadsheet and convert it to PDF. Would anyone be interested in something like that?

[Erik L]

Awesome! I'm thinking I will put this info into a spreadsheet and convert it to PDF. Would anyone be interested in something like that?

If you do, you can put it in the downloads section. Look at the bar at the top.

[JohnnyR (OP)]

Will do! What happened to the rest of your tutorials? I only see 2 stickied

[Steven Kodaly]

A number of tutorial threads are located in the Tutorials subforum, under New Players.   Sadly, due to my low post-count, I cannot post a direct link.