Identity creation and founding

Section titled “Identity creation and founding”

A colony is a population record. It belongs to one race, one species and one system body. Its surface inhabitants, orbital inhabitants, available emigrants, installations and political status are separate things. Creating the record creates no citizens. Designating a colony as a source of colonists moves nobody. Assigning an ark fleet to a colony can make the fleet’s passengers count as workers without unloading them. This page follows a colony from creation through settlement, support, growth, work, unrest, political integration and removal. It describes the rules as the game applies them, including whole-number arithmetic and stored intermediate figures, so not every displayed number is recalculated continuously.

The political status coefficients and the installation coefficients come from the game database. They are data, so an edited database changes them. When a value on this page is rounded, an exact half goes to the even neighbour. This applies to the radiation and ark calculations too. A conversion to a whole number without rounding drops the fraction toward zero.

The game finds a colony by race, species and system body together. A body can therefore hold several population records, including records of different species that belong to the same race. When no species is given, the game uses the race’s primary species. When the race has no species at all, the game shows the message “No Species Available for this Race” (titled “Species Missing”) and the colony creation ends there without a record. An existing record is returned unchanged. A new record receives a new ID, its race, system, body and species, the Imperial Population political status, zero surface, orbital and total population, stability 1, empty resource and project lists and no terraforming gas. The game calculates the body’s colony cost for that species, without orbital extremes, but creation does not check that settlers could survive there.

A homeworld record is also named “Home World”. It becomes a source of colonists and the race capital, its body’s ground mineral survey is set to completed, and the race receives a survey record of the body. When this is the first population on the body and the body has no homeworld minerals yet, the game generates them. The homeworld flag does not set the population amount. New game setup sets it afterwards, 1,000 million for a player race , while the other NPR homeworlds that receive a population get a rolled amount of at least 500 million. The NPR generation template can raise or lower that roll, a Minor or Conventional starting level then divides it by 4 and a Pre-Industrial level by 8, and the result never exceeds the body’s population capacity. An NPR colony also receives its own colony AI. The automatic creation for surveyed bodies and new game setup use this same record lifecycle. A new record is therefore no evidence of a settled city.

The automatic creation for surveyed bodies runs for a standard NPR each time one of its fleets completes the geological survey of a body. It is the exception to creating records with nobody in them. It first requires an apoapsis distance below 80 AU (a moon uses its parent planet’s orbital distance, and gas giants and superjovians are excluded), and a body of a companion star also needs that star within 80 AU, or a suitable Lagrange point inside that range. It then requires that the race has no population on the body yet and that the body’s current colony cost with orbital extremes, for the race’s primary species, is not negative. When the worst-case colony cost W is 0, it seeds .0001 million (100 people) and requests 1 Deep Space Tracking Station. When W is below 1.5, or the body’s mineral deposit value is at least 6 by the NPR deposit valuation, it creates the record and can seed the same amount. It then requests 50 infrastructure when W is below 2.5 and the body’s gravity lies within the species’ tolerance, or 100 infrastructure when W is below 2 and the gravity is below the species minimum. Those are installation import requests, not delivered support. A body with ruins, or with a ground mineral survey potential above Minimal, can get an empty record. The NPR side of this seeding is on the NPR colony page.

The Create Colony button of the System Generation and Display window creates a record the same way. It refuses gas giants and superjovians but does not check that the colony could be supported.

Unless stated otherwise, population quantities and workforce figures are millions of people. Colonist cargo on ships is counted in whole persons. Setting the surface population or the orbital population clamps a value below zero to zero and recomputes total population = surface population + orbital population. It does not recalculate support, growth, workforce, political modifiers or the body-wide totals.

State refresh and execution order

Section titled “State refresh and execution order”

The strategic update of each construction cycle first processes disasters and environmental changes, including radiation and dust decay, orbital motion and water vapour condensation and evaporation. It then grows ark passengers, removes empty ground formations and recomputes the surface population totals of every populated body. Only then does it refresh the environment and population state of every colony. This order matters. The body occupancy is a snapshot taken before the surface growth that population production applies later.

The colony refresh runs these steps.

  1. Convert seconds to years at 31,536,000 seconds per year. Calculate the current colony cost without orbital extremes. Copy the current and worst-case costs and reset colonisation pressure to worst-case cost + 2.
  2. Calculate the body’s population capacity for the colony’s species. Associate eligible ark fleets. Calculate infrastructure and radiation effects.
  3. Calculate annual surface growth and this interval’s overcrowding unrest. Calculate the workforce and production efficiency.
  4. Apply unrest and stability. Advance political status. Replenish the available-colonist pool. Clear the record of mineral changes.

The strategic update then calculates race income. Population production follows later in the same update. It refreshes the output modifiers and capacities, takes a snapshot of the minerals, applies surface growth and runs production. This tick’s growth therefore does not enlarge the workforce or the taxes already calculated for it. A political status change happens after the occupation and service calculations of the refresh, so production can use the new status before those earlier figures are recalculated. Body totals add up the surface residents of all races and species on the body and leave out orbital residents. Only bodies with some positive surface population enter the reset, so the total of the last body to be emptied can stay at its old value. Capacity is stored once per body and recalculated for each colony’s species in turn, not kept separately per colony. See game time and state refresh and production dispatch.

The population summary refresh of the Economics window is an active calculation. It runs whenever the window refreshes the selected population. It recomputes the body total and the ark association for every population on the body, calculates colony cost with orbital extremes and resets pressure. It recalculates support, radiation and growth with no overcrowding unrest, then refreshes the wealth, workforce, efficiency and output displays. It does not apply unrest, advance political status or replenish the colonist pool. Its protection shortfall adds shortfall fraction x 10 to pressure, while the strategic unrest update adds shortfall fraction / 10. Viewing a colony in the window can therefore overwrite the stored pressure, growth and support figures without advancing time, and the displayed values need not equal the preceding strategic calculation.

The summary calculates annual wealth before it refreshes the workforce and efficiency, so its wealth preview can use the earlier efficiency. It does not recalculate the body’s maximum population capacity before growth. The growth step recalculates it only when the stored capacity is zero.

Surface orbital and transported people

Section titled “Surface orbital and transported people”

Surface citizens are the colony’s population amount, stored as FCT_Population.Population. Orbital population comes from the passengers on eligible ark fleets. An eligible fleet belongs to the same race, lies within a coordinate tolerance of 1 of the colony, has no civilian role, has no move orders and contains at least one ark ship. An ark ship is a ship whose class carries an Ark Module, the colonist component with SpecialFunction 7 in FCT_ShipDesignComponents. The eligibility test has no system survey or species check. An unassigned fleet is assigned to this colony. An assignment to a colony on another body is replaced. An assignment to another population on the same body is kept. Only the fleets assigned to this record contribute, and their ark passengers are divided by 1,000,000. This is an assignment and a stored figure, not a cargo unload.

Ordinary colonist transport takes people from the source’s surface population into the ship’s colonist cargo, then adds them to a compatible destination when they unload. Loading uses the actual surface population and the free colonist and passenger capacity of undamaged components. It does not create people from the available-colonist pool. A load that is not a whole number of people is taken from the source in full, but the cargo count drops the fraction, so fractional persons can disappear. Unloading requires the same species and cargo shuttle support. Cargo loaded from a neutral race’s population (FCT_Population.ProvideColonists 1, set by the Neutral Race option at race creation) also needs a destination outside the system where it was loaded. Unloading adds carried persons / 1,000,000 and does not enforce an infrastructure survival limit. See the transport transaction rules.

Orbital credit counts the loaded people that undamaged Ark Module berths can hold, limited by the cargo carried, across the fleet’s ark ships only. Each undamaged Ark Module holds its component value, 200,000 colonists as shipped. Empty berths supply no residents. The count does not filter cargo by species. The fleet sum is truncated to whole persons before conversion to millions.

Environment infrastructure and capacity

Section titled “Environment infrastructure and capacity”

Colony cost depends on the species. The current cost describes current conditions. The worst-case cost covers the extremes of the body’s orbit and supports planning. A cost of -1 marks an uninhabitable case. A cost of zero needs no infrastructure. Temperature, atmosphere, gravity and the species’ tolerances decide the cost through the environmental calculation, not the installations the colony owns. See species habitability and colony cost for the environmental ingredients and gas changes.

Let S be surface millions, C the current colony cost, W the worst-case cost and D the species population density modifier (FCT_Species.PopulationDensityModifier). Let G be the gravity infrastructure multiplier and I the colony’s infrastructure capacity, the sum of installed amount x DIM_PlanetaryInstallation.InfrastructureValue (1 for Infrastructure as shipped).

Quantity Formula
Current required infrastructure whole-number(S x 100 x C x G / D)
Maximum required infrastructure whole-number(S x 100 x W x G / D)
Current infrastructure per million ceiling(C x 100 x G / D)
Maximum infrastructure per million ceiling(W x 100 x G / D)
Current supported millions I / current infrastructure per million, or -1 (no limit) when C is 0
Minimum supported millions I / maximum infrastructure per million, or -1 (no limit) when W is 0

The two whole requirements truncate toward zero. The per-million requirements for display and support round upward. Low gravity uses G = 2 when the species minimum gravity exceeds the body’s gravity, and G = 1 otherwise. When W is -1 the game first sets both supported figures to zero but then continues. The recalculation of the supported figures that comes next replaces those zeros whenever the cost involved is nonzero. That momentary zero is not a reliable final zero-capacity rule.

The room check that colonist destinations use differs. It calculates the worst-case cost with orbital extremes. When W is -1 the room is 0. When W is 0 the room is 1,000,000,000. A positive W uses the truncated infrastructure per million, at least one, and the room is I / per million - S, with negative results left as they are. It also overwrites the stored maximum infrastructure per million. The room that colonist destination searches use and the capacity the Economics window shows can therefore disagree.

Radiation sets the radiation production modifier to max(0, 1 - radiation / 10,000), where radiation is FCT_SystemBody.RadiationLevel. The radiation growth penalty is radiation x .0025, rounded to 2 decimal places (an exact half goes to the even neighbour). Radiation also adds radiation / 50 to pressure. The rounded growth penalty is in percentage points and applies before growth is divided by 100.

The physical carrying capacity K, in millions, is (4 x 3.1416 x radius squared / 511,187,128) x 12,000 x D, with the body radius in km from FCT_SystemBody.Radius. A body whose current cost is -1 has zero capacity. A hydrosphere above 75% multiplies capacity by max(.01, (100 - HydroExt) / 25). A tidally locked body that is not a moon has its capacity divided by 5. The final minimum is .05 million. Infrastructure supports habitation but does not enlarge this surface-area capacity.

Growth mortality and conversion

Section titled “Growth mortality and conversion”

The colony refresh calculates a growth rate, and population production applies it later. When the current colony cost is above zero and the current required infrastructure exceeds I, let f be the missing fraction (required - I) / required when I > 0, or 1 otherwise. The shortfall cost is C x f. In the construction cycle refresh the interval also adds 50 x f x elapsed years overcrowding unrest points. The summary refresh adds none.

For S > 0, an uninhabitable cost C = -1 selects -100% per year directly. Otherwise these rules apply in order.

  • With no infrastructure shortfall, the base annual percent is min(10, 20 / cube root of S). The cube root is taken in floating point and converted back to a decimal. Multiply by the planetary governor’s Population Growth bonus (1 without it) and by the sector governor’s quarter bonus, 1 + (bonus - 1) / 4.
  • With a shortfall, the annual percent is -25 x shortfall cost, and pressure gains 25 x shortfall cost. The governor growth multiplier does not apply to this mortality case.
  • Multiply either result by the species growth modifier (FCT_Species.PopulationGrowthModifier), then subtract the radiation penalty in percentage points.
  • Only when the result is positive, compare the body-wide surface occupancy B with the species-derived maximum K. When B > K the rate becomes zero, the construction cycle refresh adds 50 x (B - K) / K x elapsed years unrest, and pressure gains (B - K) / B. Otherwise, when B > K / 3, growth is multiplied by (K - B) / (K x .6667).

Zero S gives a zero rate. Finally the percent is divided by 100. Population production then sets the surface population to S x (1 + rate x elapsed years), a linear interval calculation, with negative results clamped to zero. There is no separate random birth or death roll. At exactly capacity, positive growth scales to zero. Being over capacity adds crowding unrest only when the rate before the capacity step was positive. Infrastructure mortality and radiation can therefore bypass the body overcapacity rule.

No clamp limits growth to the remaining physical room, so one interval can cross K. A very small population can truncate its infrastructure requirement to zero and avoid a shortage. The 10% healthy cap applies before the bonuses. A 1.2 governor multiplier can produce 12% before the species, radiation and capacity adjustments.

Ark births follow a separate rule on every ark ship carrying colonist cargo. They need none of the residency conditions, so the ship does not have to be stationary, assigned or at a colony. The berth figure here adds the Ark Module’s capacity once for each berth component type in the ship class, so it ignores damage and counts a stack of identical modules once. When the loaded people are at least that figure, nothing happens. Otherwise the growth figure r starts at (1 - loaded / berths) x .05 x years. For each load of colonists aboard, in turn, the same running r is multiplied by that cargo species’ growth modifier, then the cargo amount is multiplied by 1 + r rounded to a whole number. The multiplier is rounded before it multiplies the people, so ordinary small rates produce no births. There is no final berth capacity clamp, and the species modifiers of earlier cargo entries affect the rates of later ones. This differs from the orbital credit count, which weights each module entry correctly by its undamaged count.

Genetic modification moves people between populations of the same owner on the same body. When the colony’s genetic modification is switched on, it converts min(surface population, conversion rate x years), in millions. The conversion rate is race genetic conversion rate x colony genetic modification capacity x production output modifier, with the race rate from FCT_Race.GeneticConversionRate. It finds or creates the target species’ record on the body, adds the people there and subtracts them here. It creates no new inhabitants and does not move ark passengers. The capacity and timing rules are on the species engineering page. Project execution and scientific staffing belong to research and scientific personnel.

Combat casualties, bombardment and system disasters are further loss paths, so natural growth does not explain every population change. See ground combat and conquest, space combat resolution, system disasters and game time and state refresh.

Completing a Forced Labour Mining Camp or a Forced Labour Construction Camp in industrial production also subtracts .1 million surface residents and adds 5 unrest points, once per completion batch. This is a production-driven conversion and loss, separate from natural mortality.

Workforce efficiency production and taxes

Section titled “Workforce efficiency production and taxes”

The workforce uses the surface population plus the assigned orbital population, T. Agriculture and environment workers come from surface inhabitants only, while services scale with the total population. The game keeps two versions of each share. The required set uses the current colony cost and is the one production efficiency uses. The second set uses the worst-case cost. When the two costs differ, the population summary shows the Agriculture / Environmental and Manufacturing rows as “current-cost figure / worst-case figure”, and the Service Industries row the same way when its two figures differ. Keep this in mind when comparing the displays.

For each version, the agriculture share is .05 x (cost + 1), capped at 1, multiplied by S, and divided by T for the fraction when T > 0. The 0.05 is the base life-support fraction per point of colony cost. Services start at min(.7, sqrt(sqrt(T x 100,000)) / 100), computed with floating point square roots and converted back to a decimal. Each version then caps its service share so that agriculture share + service share does not exceed 1. Manufacturing millions are T - agriculture millions - service millions. The manufacturing fraction is zero when that result is not positive.

Production efficiency compares the manufacturing workers with the labour that installations and shipyards demand. Total citizens are not all industrial workers. Orbital citizens can raise T without adding surface agriculture. Production, manned mining, terraforming, research and shipbuilding then use efficiency, radiation, stability and the political production modifier in their own output calculations. The production output modifier is governor Production bonus x sector quarter bonus x species production rate x race economic production modifier x efficiency x radiation modifier x stability x status ProductionMod, with the species rate from FCT_Species.ProductionRateModifier and the race modifier from FCT_Race.EconomicProdModifier. Automated and orbital mining use separate modifiers. See production capacity for the category formulas and work queues.

Labour demand adds up amount x DIM_PlanetaryInstallation.Workers for each installation, plus the colony’s shipyards, leaving out shipyards carried by a ship. A naval yard demands slipways x capacity x .00025 million workers, a commercial yard .000025. Efficiency is 1 when demand is zero or the required-set manufacturing population covers it. Otherwise it is manufacturing population / demand, with a floor of zero. There is no separate working-age fraction in this calculation.

The taxable workforce is the colony’s shipyard workers plus the workers of installations flagged TaxableWorkers, not the whole population or all manufacturing labour. The annual wealth modifier is status WealthMod x race wealth creation rate x radiation modifier x governor Wealth Creation bonus x sector quarter bonus, with the race rate from FCT_Race.WealthCreationRate and the sector quarter bonus 1 + (bonus - 1) / 4, and it is multiplied by stability when unrest is above 0. Financial income is financial capacity x efficiency x wealth modifier, and workforce income is taxable workforce x efficiency x wealth modifier. The game credits both at race level in each strategic update. The status ServiceSector coefficient is read when a game is loaded, but the workforce calculation does not apply it. See population taxes.

Colonist sources pools and destinations

Section titled “Colonist sources pools and destinations”

Colonisation pressure starts at W + 2 in each refresh. It then gains the radiation, shortfall mortality and body overcapacity contributions, and in qualifying colonies the insufficient-protection contribution. The available-colonist pool’s cap is pressure / 100 x S. Each state refresh adds cap x elapsed years and cuts the pool back only when it is above the cap. The pool is not clamped below zero. Replenishing it subtracts no residents. It represents available emigrants, not a separate group of citizens.

The colonist setting of the Economics window (Source of Colonists, Destination of Colonists or Stable - Not Destination or Source, stored as FCT_Population.ColonistDestination) drives route selection. The nearest-source search requires the given system, the Source of Colonists setting and the Imperial Population status. Civilian shipping lines also skip colonies flagged Military Restricted Colony. For a player race’s shipping line fleet, the available pool after queued loads must also cover the fleet’s colonist capacity in millions. The nearest candidate by travel distance, Lagrange points included, wins. Physical loading still takes actual residents, and shipping line loading also subtracts the load from the available-colonist pool. These selection rules and the cargo transactions are separate. See movement and logistics.

The pool after queued loads subtracts the full colonist capacity of each distinct shipping line fleet of the same race with a queued Load Colonists order at this colony, not a guessed partial load, and is not clamped below zero. The immigration room check returns zero for a player race’s shipping line fleet when the colony’s pressure is 10 or more. Otherwise it takes the smaller of the body’s remaining room (K - body surface population) and the infrastructure-supported room, then subtracts the colonists embarked on distinct same-race fleets with Unload Colonists orders to this colony. Negative room is possible. These planning tests are not a general gate on the physical unload.

The nearest disembarkation search matches the fleet’s primary embarked species, excludes comets and applies the civilian Military Restricted Colony exclusion. Colonist destination routes require room strictly greater than all embarked millions, so exact room is rejected. The normal colonist unload search also excludes colonies that already have an Unload Colonists order from a same-race fleet in that system. A second variant of this search keeps them. These are planning restrictions, separate from execution.

Occupation protection unrest and stability

Section titled “Occupation protection unrest and stability”

Occupation and fleet protection answer different requirements. With species determination d, militancy m and xenophobia x (FCT_Species.Determination, Militancy and Xenophobia) the occupation figures are these.

  • Resistance per million = (d + m + x) / 300, in decimal arithmetic.
  • Resistance = resistance per million x S.
  • Required occupation = resistance x status OccupationForceMod.
  • Net police = actual occupation - required occupation.

For positive S, the annual unrest reduction fraction defaults to 1 and becomes net police / resistance when resistance > 0. Actual occupation adds up the rounded occupation strengths of the formations at the colony and rounds the total to a whole number. Each formation adds square root of class size x units x morale / 10,000 for each element, using the element’s class size. When the formation has a commander, the commander’s Ground Combat Occupation bonus multiplies the running sum after each element, so the order and number of elements can matter. An exact half goes to the even neighbour.

At zero surface population the update refreshes required and actual occupation but leaves net police, resistance and the annual reduction at their earlier values. The unrest update can still use those earlier police values for an emptied or orbital-only colony.

Required fleet protection is S x (m / 100) x status ProtectionRequired. Actual protection adds up all of the race’s fleets in the same system that have no civilian role. It does not require local orbit or proximity. Each non-commercial ship contributes the size in HS of its undamaged weapon components, excluding CIWS and decoy missile launchers. One HS is 50 tons. The measure is qualifying weapon HS, not hull tons or fleet BP.

The unrest update applies these changes in order.

Condition Change in unrest points
Radiation > 0 and S > 0 add radiation / 10 x years
Calculated overcrowding gain > 0 add that gain
Required occupation > actual and required > 0 add 100 x (1 - actual / required) x years, or 100 x years when actual is 0
S > 10, not the capital, not an NPR, protection below requirement add 25 x (1 - actual / required) x years, and pressure gains shortfall fraction / 10
No unrest cause in this update and unrest > 0 subtract 20 x (1 - d / 100) x years, with whole-number(d / 100)
Net police > 0 and unrest > 0 subtract 100 x annual reduction fraction x years

Finally unrest is clamped to 0 to 99 and stability = 1 - unrest / 100, which lies between 0.01 and 1. The natural reduction uses whole-number division. Determination 99 still yields 20 points per year, and determination 100 yields zero. Police reduction can act alongside the gains, while natural reduction needs no cause at all. When stability is below .99, a cause exists and unrest rose, the game logs an event that names the colony, the cause and the new political stability. The event adds “Unrest reduced due to action by ground forces” when police acted. Each cause replaces the one before it in the event text, so the warning names only the last cause even when several contributed points. This update applies deterministic pacification and instability. It contains no random rebellion, no automatic independence and no commander loyalty roll.

Political integration and control changes

Section titled “Political integration and control changes”

The statuses the rules refer to are Imperial Population, Conquered, Occupied, Subjugated, Slave Colony, Client State and Candidate Population. Their thresholds, next-status links and production, wealth, occupation, protection and service coefficients come from DIM_PopPoliticalStatus. The order of the status IDs is not the transition graph. NextStatusID is. The political status catalogue lists every row.

Progress runs only at exactly zero unrest and for a status other than Imperial Population.

  • Modifier = 1.5 - ((d + m + x) / 300), where the division inside the brackets is whole-number division.
  • When radiation > 100, divide the modifier by radiation / 100.
  • Add (elapsed seconds / 86400) x modifier status points, which is the modifier per day.

When the accumulated points are strictly greater than SPRequired and the colony’s NoStatusChange value is 0, the points reset to zero, the colony moves to the next status and the game logs that the colony “has moved to a political status of” the new status. One update makes at most one transition and discards the excess progress. NoStatusChange prevents the transition, not the accumulation. A colony pacified to zero unrest earlier in the same refresh can gain progress at once.

Ground surrender and the shared control transfer are described fully in population control transfer. The ongoing consequences matter here. A transfer resets status points and unrest. It gives a nonempty population the requested political status unless the new owner is the colony’s original race, and gives Imperial Population otherwise. At the end it records the outgoing owner as the original race (FCT_Population.OriginalRaceID) before assigning the new owner. The original race is therefore not a fixed founding-race history. Stability and the other colony figures are refreshed separately. Surrender compares resistance per million x surface population with the occupation strength, without the status coefficient. Occupation demand after the transfer also applies the status OccupationForceMod.

Independence is a separate race action, started with the Independence button of the Economics window. It creates a race, transfers a share of the treasury equal to the colony’s share of the race’s surface population, transfers the assets and runs the control transfer with Imperial Population status. Reaching 99 unrest in the ongoing unrest update does not trigger it. See conquest, independence and initial funding.

Absorption abandonment and removal

Section titled “Absorption abandonment and removal”

Absorbing one population into another adds the source’s installations, missile stock and stored components, reassigns its shipyards, adds its minerals and surface population, then has the source race remove the source record. It does not merge everything. Orbital population, fuel, maintenance supplies, available emigrants, project progress and political and unrest state are not added. It is this exact list of assets, not a general complete-colony merge. See population absorption and deletion.

Zero surface population does not by itself delete a colony. The game’s test for whether a colony still has population or assets checks total population above 0.01 million, any installation entries, ground formations at the colony, minerals, prisoners, and ordnance . It does not test every asset, and its 0.01 million cutoff differs from the deletion rules.

The Delete Empty button of the Economics window skips colonies flagged with the Empty Exempt button (FCT_Population.DoNotDelete). It requires no positive total population, installations, mineral stock, abandoned factories on the body, ground survey potential above Minimal, ordnance, stored components, own fleet in orbit of the body, own formation at the colony or own move order that refers to the colony. The single-colony check checks the same list without the mineral stock. These are distinct tests, not interchangeable definitions of empty. When civilian mining exhausts a body, the game removes the Civilian Mining Complex entry, one Deep Space Tracking Station, one Mass Driver and the formations built from the Civilian Garrison template, then applies the single-colony check.

Removing a population deletes its queued research, sector commands and naval administration commands, its contacts, its shipyards and shipyard tasks and its ground formations. It clears the orders of its owner’s fleets that refer to the population or its contacts. It clears commander assignments to it and the fleets assigned to it, then deletes the population record. Freighters and colony ships of civilian lines that lose their orders also lose their cargo. A fixed asteroid body (FCT_SystemBody.FixedBody) is removed with its colony. Removal destroys the record, it does not merely hide a tree entry. The Empty Exempt flag only stops Delete Empty and the single-colony check. Removal itself ignores it.

The Delete Pop button of the Economics window removes the colony directly after one confirmation, with a second confirmation when it has positive population. It does not use the automatic emptiness tests.

Saved state and reload

Section titled “Saved state and reload”

The FCT_Population row stores the race, species, system, body and status IDs, the surface population (Population), UnrestPoints, PreviousUnrest, StatusPoints and NoStatusChange. It also stores the colonist settings (ColonistDestination, ProvideColonists), AvailableColonists, ColonizationPressure, Efficiency, the stored infrastructure requirement (ReqInf), the fuel, maintenance and mineral stocks and the production and control settings. Installations, projects, ships and colonist cargo have their own tables. Orbital and total population and most calculated growth, workforce and support modifiers are not stored as population balances.

Loading builds fresh records and resolves the stored IDs against the loaded game. A row whose race, species, system survey or body is missing is skipped. Loading restores the surface population directly, without the clamp that setting the population applies. The political status next links are rebuilt from DIM_PopPoliticalStatus. Derived values need their own refresh. A loaded efficiency or pressure is no proof that every input was recalculated when the game loaded. See object identity and reload for how references are restored and game time and state refresh for the dispatch that follows.

Loading a row does derive stability = 1 - UnrestPoints / 100 and the current and worst-case colony costs with orbital extremes. It does not clamp the saved unrest to 0 to 99 at this stage.

After the whole game has loaded, the game reruns the ark association for every colony to rebuild orbital and total residents. It does not run the full environment, growth and unrest refresh at that point.

Worked scenarios

Section titled “Worked scenarios”
  1. New settlement. Creating a species and body record yields zero residents. Unloading 100,000 passengers of the matching species adds 0.1 million surface residents. With cost 2, density 1 and G = 1, the current required infrastructure is 0.1 x 100 x 2 = 20, truncated. Delivering people and delivering their support are separate transactions.
  2. Unsupported population. S = 8, C = 2, I = 800 and density = G = 1 give required infrastructure 1,600, shortfall fraction .5, shortfall cost 1 and -25% annual growth before species and radiation effects. Over .1 year the surface population becomes 7.8 million and the shortfall adds 2.5 unrest points before policing and other causes. This is mortality, not departure into the available-colonist pool.
  3. Integration under occupation. d = m = x = 50 and S = 100 give resistance 50. With a status occupation modifier of 1 and an actual strength of 75, net police is 25 and the annual police reduction fraction is .5, or 50 unrest points per year. Political progress uses 150 / 300 = 0 in whole-number division, so once unrest is zero the colony gains 1.5 points per day before radiation. With SPRequired 100, reaching exactly 100 does not transition.
  4. Distant system protection. S = 100, militancy 50 and a status protection coefficient of 1 require 50 protection HS. A qualifying non-civilian fleet of the same race anywhere in that system with 25 undamaged weapon HS covers half. A non-capital player colony above 10 million then gains 12.5 unrest points per year. The pressure increment is .05 in the strategic update and 5 on the summary refresh. Hull tonnage alone does not meet the requirement.
  5. Orbital work and ark births. Zero surface population plus 1 million credited orbital residents gives zero surface agriculture, about .17782794 million service workers and .82217206 million manufacturing workers before demand. Surface births stay zero. Separately, an ark with a berth figure of 100,000 and 50,000 passengers at species modifier 1 for one year calculates r = .025. Rounding 1.025 gives 1, which leaves its cargo unchanged.

Boundaries

Section titled “Boundaries”

Full civilian company finance and route AI and NPR strategic planning have their own pages. Colonist sources, the pool and the physical transfer rules appear here because they change colony accounting. Terraforming chemistry, industrial recipes, research project execution, detailed bombardment and ground combat stay on their own pages. What an alien race knows about a colony is remembered knowledge, not the colony’s current physical state. See colony and race intelligence.

Concept map

Section titled “Concept map”

Resources

Section titled “Resources”

Related community documentation and developer posts. These may describe a different game version.