Confusion with sending installations & specialised planets

[Rich.h (OP)]

I'm only just starting to stratch the surface of Aurora so do not know if I have clearly missed something or not.  But I cannot see where it makes any sense to specialise planets?

To give an example that is causing my confusion.  I start on earth and plod along merrily until one day I decide to colonize Mars, this was for no other reason that "I did it because I could" and rpg thinking.  At the time Mars was lacking any real quantities of minerals, this lead me to think I would designate Mars as my research hub to get some use of it.  However I am making discoveries quite happily back on Earth and fail to see what point there is in spending time and effort sending the lot to Mars and loosing some research time in the transition.  To some extent the same goes for a high colony cost mining outpost, why not just build a bunch of automines and let the robots do the job? They are faster to build anyhow.

So unless I come across an earthlike planet is there really any point to settle other worlds? Why should I not just have lots of robot miners and let Earth be a super powerhouse?

The only reason I can see is that if attacked it could be a bad case of eggs and baskets, but is there anything else I have missed? Am I limited by population as to my workers and if so how do I read it to find out the details?

[Erik L]

At a certain point, 1000 pop I believe, your growth drops to 1-2% instead of 10%. So population grows slower on high population worlds. The more population you have, the more protection they want. This leads to an increase in garrison ships (as opposed to foreign legions and exploration).

Another reason to spread out are governors. If you've got a governor with a ship building bonus on Earth, but no research bonus your research obviously does not get a bonus. However, if you have a potential governor with a research bonus and plop him on Mars with all of those RC, Mars gets the bonus, Earth gets the ship building bonus, and so on.

It's a matter of maximizing your resources.

[telegraph]

Without an extra colony civilians will not launch ships.  Civilian ships are a great help for transporting stuff from asteroid to asteroid.  One more thing is trade.  Two planets trading will generate you more tax income then one with double population.  It is also stated that service industry will claim more workers on overpopulated worlds, this, together with growth rate, effectively setting some high limit to the maximum useful population of one planet.

[madmarcus]

I find that it makes sense to specialize some of my colony worlds in mining, construction, shipyard, or naval base (maintenance) worlds because otherwise I tend to not have enough workers. On the other hand I know I don't move population as quickly and efficiently as I could so perhaps others don't have labor shortages.

As you say I've never seen a need other then roleplaying to move research labs anywhere but Earth or to build research labs anywhere but Earth.

[Zook]

Automines are more expensive than normal mines.

More people pay more taxes, and at some point you're going to *need* that.

Also, you need people to work in maintenance facilities on fleet bases.

[Nathan_]

Automines are currently really good, you have to factor in all the other costs of colonization into the cost of a normal mine. still, if you have population sitting there then that is a good use of your existing mines.

Another reason to colonize planets is that 5M people on earth will only give you 1M new manufacturing workers, but on a new colony they'll give you 2-4M new manufacturing workers, which lets you operate more overall industry. There is no time limit in the game if you don't have invaders on(or a second player), so you can plod along on earth as you please.

[Bouchart]

If you build everything on earth it's difficult to move that stuff on earth to far flung planets that are a number of jumps away/

[TheDeadlyShoe]

You could turn on a solar disaster. Then you'd have plenty of reason to leave earth

[Erik L]

Consider this situation.

You encounter an enemy 10 jumps from Earth. Earth is safe. So you send a fleet out to take care of the BEMs. The BEMs savage your fleet and only a few ships manage to escape. They've got 10 jumps to head to the nearest repair facility. However, if you had a fleet base only 3-4 jumps away, they'd get to a repair yard faster.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Oh yes! Alien ruins and mineral sources are rarely as convenient as one might hope for.  Ruins and wrecks aren't mandatory, but TN mineral sources kind of are...  Especially if you are competing for them with alien species or other human factions.