How do you transfer a Colony between two races?

[MAT934123 (OP)]

I have a number of PC-controlled races and want to merge two of them, I found the transfer alien button on the ground forces.  but I could see no way to transfer ships, populations, and races.  if there is how and where is the button, I have searched everywhere in space master for it.  I have been reading an old message on the forums that say there is a button to transfer both ships and colonies but I can't find it.  is it not in C# or do I need the database password to do it?

[nuclearslurpee]

Not in C#. Ship transfers will be added in v1.14/2.0.

Colonies can be "transferred" by occupying them with ground forces of the new owner race, probably followed by editing the colony occupation status in the DB if you care about that. Otherwise you can make a copy of the colony under the new owner race and delete the old colony if it is not too big or complex of a colony. Presently ground units cannot be transferred.

There is no functionality to merge two races. You will have to manually transfer or re-create the desired colonies, ships, etc. to the single remaining race.

[Zap0]

The workaround for ship transfers I've used is to SM in boarding ships and troops and board, but that'll slaughter the experienced crew and officers and put the ship into a 1 month "overhaul aborted" penalty. You couldn't take the officers along to the new race anyway. You do get the blueprint of the ship this way, but keep in mind that in order to build new versions of it you need to either conquer all race-designed components or DB-edit them to also belong to the other race.

There's also a mechanic that ships in the orbit of a colony will surrender to the other side if the planet is conquered, but I'm not sure if there's limitations that make this only apply to civilian/commercial ships.

For conquest as a way of colony transfer, be aware that in order to attack you need to set the entire race hostile. So if you want to trade a few components on the seventh moon of some forsaken system but both also have populations on Earth, total war will break out there.