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[Beacon]

Hey guys, I've managed to set up my first colony, on Mars, but have some questions.

1: I'm getting messages saying that 'Unrest is rising on Mars due to overcrowding'. What can I do to stop this, and what happens if I don't?

2: I have dropped some mines onto the planet, but what else should I put there, both for benefit to myself and that the population will need?

On another point, I'm trying to design an Asteroid Miner - how do they work? Do they need a large cargo hold for carrying the minerals, do they need cargo loaders? How big should they be? How many mining modules? Do they need sensors?

[head]

Hey guys, I've managed to set up my first colony, on Mars, but have some questions.

1: I'm getting messages saying that 'Unrest is rising on Mars due to overcrowding'. What can I do to stop this, and what happens if I don't?

2: I have dropped some mines onto the planet, but what else should I put there, both for benefit to myself and that the population will need?

On another point, I'm trying to design an Asteroid Miner - how do they work? Do they need a large cargo hold for carrying the minerals, do they need cargo loaders? How big should they be? How many mining modules? Do they need sensors?

I'm pretty sure cargo holds. More modules = more shit per year  (they will huge) and the only sensor they might need if they operating in your own space is geo sensor

[Cheeetar]

Hey guys, I've managed to set up my first colony, on Mars, but have some questions.

1: I'm getting messages saying that 'Unrest is rising on Mars due to overcrowding'. What can I do to stop this, and what happens if I don't?

2: I have dropped some mines onto the planet, but what else should I put there, both for benefit to myself and that the population will need?

On another point, I'm trying to design an Asteroid Miner - how do they work? Do they need a large cargo hold for carrying the minerals, do they need cargo loaders? How big should they be? How many mining modules? Do they need sensors?

I'm not sure, but I believe overcrowding only occurs because of too little infrastructure, and if you get the colony cost to 0 (fully terraform it) you shouldn't get any more messages about infrastructure.

[Osmosis Jones]

Yeah, just ship infrastucture there. For a col cost of 2, a thousand infrastructure should see you to ~ 5 mil pop IIRC.

[Greiger]

Huh, you're right.

The best similarity I guess comes from how I pulled back all the civilian ships I can from the system back to Sol and destroyed both the jump gates. There's no way I can fight them. I don't even know where they are coming from other than they have insane sensor ranges and shielding, so they can pinpoint me wherever I am.

On the bright side, I haven't needed to build a single colony ship as the private sector is very willing to go colonize planets on my behalf.

Sorry I'm late to the party, but those are the star swarm.  I actually had a big nest of them next to my home system with fully functional jump gates on both sides for 20 years.  I keep sending fleets to try to exterminate them but they keep losing to the queen after swatting 150-200 of the bugs.  I even have anti-fighter criuser designs specifically built to destroy those FACs wholesale.

On the bright side, they don't seem expansionist.  20 years and they haven't even tried to enter any of the neighboring systems.  And I've been watching the jumps like a hawk with sentry guns.  So they might be like precursors and have no interest whatsoever in leaving their system.

[Areyar]

To limit the damage from unrest (production penalties), ship some troops there.
It will not stop the "unrest rising" messages, it will actually add an "unrest reduced to zero because of troops" message for each at each production cycle, but as the message sez: unrest will remain zero.

But infrastructure is better in the long run, for overcrowding also leads to negative population growth.
Getting the environment to 0 is your ultimate goal though.

[Beacon]

Yeah, just ship infrastucture there. For a col cost of 2, a thousand infrastructure should see you to ~ 5 mil pop IIRC.

Sorry, what is 'infrastructure'?

[Osmosis Jones]

It's an installation you build, just like automated mines, or construction factories. Basically, it's the stuff needed to live on hostile planets; so shielded/insulated living quarters, airlocks, biodomes, etc., are all abstracted away as infrastructure.

The more infrastructure you have, the more colonists you can support. However, the higher the colony cost, the more infrastructure required per colonist. When you get the cost to zero though, no infrastructure is required.

[Metalax]

Hey guys, I've managed to set up my first colony, on Mars, but have some questions.

1: I'm getting messages saying that 'Unrest is rising on Mars due to overcrowding'. What can I do to stop this, and what happens if I don't?

Put infrastructure on the planet. Currently your civilians are dying because there is nowhere for them to live. You can suppress the unrest by sending in ground troops. Ability to suppress unrest is determined by their defence rating so garrison units are the best in terms of ability per cost.

The longer term way of dealing with this is to terraform the planet to the point you don't need infrastructure. I use terraforming ships for this instead of terraforming facilities as they don't need population to operate.

2: I have dropped some mines onto the planet, but what else should I put there, both for benefit to myself and that the population will need?

Assuming it's not a colony cost 0 planet you will want to move infrastructure there, to allow population to live there without dying off. You can build infrastructure in the same way you build installations. I would generally go with using automated mines instead of normal as then you don't require population for their operation. Shift some construction facilities or engineer brigades over to the new colony so you can build there. Again engineer brigades don't require population to operate, but they take much longer to train than to construct a construction factory. Once you have the construction capability a tracking station is a good idea to expand your sensor net.

On another point, I'm trying to design an Asteroid Miner - how do they work? Do they need a large cargo hold for carrying the minerals, do they need cargo loaders? How big should they be? How many mining modules? Do they need sensors?

Asteroid miners don't need cargo holds. In order for them to mine you first need to create a 'colony' on the asteroid using the F9 window, select the asteroid and hit add colony. Give your asteroid miners a move to order to the new colony, once there they will automatically start mining. The minerals they mine are placed on the asteroid. Have a cargo freighter do a pick-up run once there are sufficient minerals to be worth it(2500 minerals per hold), or transport a mass driver and set it to send packets back to your main construction colony.

They don't need to be fast as they are going to be spending most of their time sitting in orbit. Remember to make them a commercial design so as to avoid suffering maintenance breakdowns. Number of modules is dependant on if your going for small ships or not as a general design, Normally I'd put 5 modules on a basic miner, as that puts it in the same size range as you should be designing your freighters with 5 cargo holds. They don't need sensors to do their job, but personally I give sensors to all my craft. Sensors remain commercial as long as the size is at most 1.

[Beacon]

Thanks for the replies.

How do I make engineers? How do I build actual facilities, for that matter?

Oh, and how can I assign commanders/administrators to certain things, such as a mining fleet or mining colony?

[Kishmond]

If I want to update a ship with, say, better engines, can I modify the existing design and refit the ship or do I have to make a new one? It says it's locked.

[Greiger]

The non cheating way to do it is to create a copy of the design, add MK-II to the end of the name or something, make the modifications, set a shipyard to retool to the new version of the class, and when you get the chance you can refit the old ships to the new class.  Bonus points for marking the old class as obsolete.  It might not have it show up in shipyard lists anymore.

The cheating way is to just go into SM mode, unlock the design, and make the modifications.  Then all ships of that class will magically obtain the changes for free.

[Beacon]

I'm still confused, my Mars colony is within acceptable human limitations, and I'm adding mines and factories all the time, but 'unrest is still increasing due to overcrowding' Population is at 0.19m, and I have over 100 mines and a few factories, what's wrong?

[Aldaris]

Go to the colony overview screen, click for Mars, if it says Mars has a colony cost of anything other than 0 it's not perfectly habitable. You might have acceptable gravity, but the atmosphere probably won't be anywhere near breathable and the temperature will be bloody freezing.

Also, with the last few systems I'm exploring, I am starting to run into strength 120 thermal contacts on gravsurvey points, they don't do anything, just sit there. I'm asume they're alien survey drones. I'm hoping they'll be peacefull aliens as my first warship is still under construction and I've yet to design my anti-missile escorts.

[Metalax]

Thanks for the replies.

How do I make engineers? How do I build actual facilities, for that matter?

Oh, and how can I assign commanders/administrators to certain things, such as a mining fleet or mining colony?

Engineers are trained using ground training facilities click on the GU training tab select engineer in the bottom list and hit add task.

To assign commanders, click the teams/academy tab, click open officers window. to assign governors select civil administrator on the leader type, select which one you want, select the colony and hit assign in the bottom right. Note that larger colonies need higher ranked administrators.

To assign officers to ships select naval officers, use assignment type filter to pick a ship and hit assign. You can also leave ship assignments up to the computer by checking the automated assignments in the top right. it will automatically assign ship officers when you advance time.