Orbital habitats?...

[Zap0]

I think the 'idiots on the planet' (whom I also hate) pay their own bills, labor wise.  It seems to be tracked separately from when I was dealing with that (though I could be wrong).

Unfortunately they don't pay their bills on their own. If you put 20m people on Venus in infrastructure and then put another 5m in habitats on there, the 5m will all go into the service sector.

[Jorgen_CAB]

There should be a flag to force population to only colonise habitats... so if you flag the colony as a habitat colony then ONLY the habitat should be available for colonisation at that location.

It make zero sense that people try to colonise Venus surface for example if you have a few habitats in orbit.

So infrastructure built at that colony should all be exported and never used locally.

[Borealis4x]

I don't understand why you'd move you research labs, which require no special resources except a massive population, to a planet that is so difficult to colonize. Just plop them on a 0 cost world or better yet keep them all on Earth. Do Ancient Constructs boost Research Speed somehow?

So far I've had no incentive to build labs anywhere else except for RP, but even that is a pain since its far easier to manage research when they are all on one planet.

Habs are a Go Big or Go Home affair, I only ever use them on Luna since its so close to Earth that size really doesn't matter and I hyper specialize it to be my Financial District moneymaker. If you are going to make a Hab, make it accommodate 5 million so it can support 100 regular installations. Won't cut it for labs, but again I don't understand why you'd export those to such a hostile planet. 

[Stormtrooper (OP)]

Do Ancient Constructs boost Research Speed

Yes ancient constructs do boost research speed. That's precisely the problem. There's nothing stopping me from keeping them on Earth except need to get that research bonus.

And if anything, making as small habitats as possible is better IMO: if I make a 5 million hab, I can only use one tug that'll either be horribly big, horribly slow or both to some extent.
If I use minimum 500k-sized habs I can have 10 tugs transporting same mass, meaning each one of them is going to do it faster and I don't need them that big.

[Gabrote42]

I don't understand why you'd move you research labs, which require no special resources except a massive population, to a planet that is so difficult to colonize. Just plop them on a 0 cost world or better yet keep them all on Earth. Do Ancient Constructs boost Research Speed somehow?

So far I've had no incentive to build labs anywhere else except for RP, but even that is a pain since its far easier to manage research when they are all on one planet.

From The 1.10.0 Changes List Reply #3:

Ancient Constructs

In v1.10, anomalies will become Ancient Constructs.

For the most part they will continue to function in the same way, adding a bonus to research projects of a specific research field that takes place on the system body.

So that should answer your question.
P.D: Inputting date manually is hard.

[Borealis4x]

Thats good to hear. Always thought that anomalies that give bonuses to specific research should be added to incentivize spreading out labs. Glad to see Steve was one step ahead!

I've played this game for months on end and swear I don't know half of it.

[shepard1707]

One thought that I had had regarding getting habitats into location .  .  .

It might be easier to let the habitats bootstrap themselves up a bit.  What I mean by that is, lay down enough construction factories and resources for the existing, smaller, habitats' population to build bigger and more efficient habitats.

[Gabrote42]

I've played this game for months on end and swear I don't know half of it.

Mine is the opposite. I have never had time to try it out yet I know 80% of the theory and 50% of the practice.

[misanthropope]

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you know for sure that just ain't so"

-apocryphal

[Kylemmie]

I've steered away from using Hab's on worlds I  don't plan on Terraforming if at all possible, due to the pop auto building infra and moving to the surface and causing worker shortages because my Hab peeps now have to work extra hard to support the idiots on the planet.

As Jorgen mentioned and you implied by your quest to find a better way - Unless it's for Role Play it's a pretty straight forward formula.  Is the bonus worth the cost. Since it's not given, I'll assume 100% bonus for now. Your choices seem to be try to just get the 10M (iirc) in orbit for the empire wide bonus, or staff 30 labs to get a bonus 30 labs of RP. Seems a lot of effort unless your current pop is a bottleneck for 30 labs worth of RP.

I think the 'idiots on the planet' (whom I also hate) pay their own bills, labor wise.  It seems to be tracked separately from when I was dealing with that (though I could be wrong).

This was my understanding. OrbHab population is supposed to be exclusively manufacturing, and the pop growth + infra that propagates down to the planet surface is purely extra on top of that which is subject to the usual rules - in which case it's free infra, so...

I thought I experienced something bad and read some posts that verified it, but I may have been mistaken.  At some CC costs, adding pop past a certain point actually reduces available workforce. What I thought I saw happening was that the pop on planet couldn't support themselves and reduced the workers on the Hab (the overall colony total available) to make it up. But I may have misinterpreted the data.

[nuclearslurpee]

I thought I experienced something bad and read some posts that verified it, but I may have been mistaken.  At some CC costs, adding pop past a certain point actually reduces available workforce. What I thought I saw happening was that the pop on planet couldn't support themselves and reduced the workers on the Hab (the overall colony total available) to make it up. But I may have misinterpreted the data.

This will eventually happen for all bodies with a colony cost greater than 1.5, although for most bodies you ever want to have a large colony on the population at which this happens will be large enough that you'd terraform the planet anyways (for example at CC 2.0 the break point is 215.4 million pop). Funny thing is that you can keep adding population and eventually for CC < 5.0 reach a point where you increase manufacturing population again; this point is for any suitable body just short of 242 million pop.

Of course if you have a very high CC you'll reach the break point quickly but the orbital habitats should ensure that you retain manufacturing capability.

[smoelf]

Bonus points for using ground force construction capacity.

Holy smeg you're a genius! How could I not think about it before and have no one suggest it before? Why bother with tugging so damn many habitats if I can make them directly at destination?
I only need to things to make it happen: minerals and construction capacity.
Minerals I can transport.
Construction capacity I can get from "Automated Construction Factories" aka ground construction units indeed.
No population required.
Fast to build.
No tugging micromanagement and endless waiting for it to complete.
This is brilliant.

I tried doing this a while back, but it didn't turn out the way I expected. You need a spaceport to build orbital habitats with construction facilities. Spaceports require population. It is in theory possible to do this and avoid stabilizing JP's or building enormous jump drives, but you do need some initial population to man the spaceport to get started.

Perhaps it is possible with commercial jump drives and two of the smallest orbital habitats.

There is also another solution, but I never got so far as to try it. Find a worthless body in the same system that is easy to colonize. Get 1.000.000 population there and get a spaceport up and running. Build your first habitats, tug them to the target, move all facilities there, and shut down operations on the inital colony. It is a bit more micromanagement, but perhaps more doable than researching and building a jump drive that can handle 500.000 tons.

[Stormtrooper (OP)]

I already have jump drive handling 620 tons lol. But... Why would I need a spaceport? If my freifghters have cargo shuttles I can unload the minerals just fine if I remember correctly? And if I have minerals and construction capacity thanks to the "Automated Construction Factories" what else do I need to build an orbital habitat space station?

[smoelf]

I already have jump drive handling 620 tons lol. But... Why would I need a spaceport? If my freifghters have cargo shuttles I can unload the minerals just fine if I remember correctly? And if I have minerals and construction capacity thanks to the "Automated Construction Factories" what else do I need to build an orbital habitat space station?

In addition to minerals and construction capacity, you do need a spaceport to be able to do that. From the wiki/change log:

Space Stations can be built by construction factories at any population that includes a Spaceport.

http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=C-Space_Stations

So unless you have a spaceport and the population to support it, you won't get the option to build a ship designed as a space station.

[Droll]

I already have jump drive handling 620 tons lol. But... Why would I need a spaceport? If my freifghters have cargo shuttles I can unload the minerals just fine if I remember correctly? And if I have minerals and construction capacity thanks to the "Automated Construction Factories" what else do I need to build an orbital habitat space station?

Yeah this is something I missed to. The "space station" construction tab does not appear unless there is a functioning spaceport. I remember wondering why not every colony could build stations but that is why.