Colony

The Eventide Colony Spaceport.

Colonies are player-owned settlements on planets within the sector. A colony can serve many purposes: they can produce goods for the player to take at just-under open market price, they act as useful storage areas or markets away from the Core Worlds, or they can simply produce lots and lots of credits.

Colonies were added in version 0.9a. An in-progress blog post is available at dev blog post on colonies, containing some information on the workings of colonies, though the information contained is partially outdated.

Colonization

Low Hazard worlds are valuable

A newly built colony with Tech-Mining

Creating a new colony is fairly simple; all you need to do is find a suitable planet, survey it, and bring the required crew and materials. Care should be taken about the large amount of crew required, as it's easily possible to end up far below the required skeleton crew for your fleet.

The full process of colonization is as follows:

• Locate an uncolonized planet, not currently settled by you or a different faction.
  • It's possible to colonize planets in the Core Worlds, but that would result in a Territorial Expedition by the Faction claiming the system being sent to conduct saturation bombardment to destroy the colony (until size 5).
• Perform a full survey of the planet.
• Explore the ruins if there are any.
• Bring 1000 Crew, 200 Supplies, and 100 Heavy Machinery, then press "Establish a Colony".
• Optionally, rename the planet, then confirm your choice, the name can be changed later by clicking the name of the colony.
• If it's your first colony, you will be also prompted to choose a name and a flag, and set grammar rules for your new faction. These can also be changed later by clicking the name of your faction.

This will immediately create a size 3 colony on the planet with a Population & Infrastructure industry and begin constructing a free Spaceport, to be finished in 15 days.

Choosing a Planet

The hardest part of setting up a colony is locating a planet suitable for the player's goals. Different types of planet tend to hold different traits, and can vary in their rarity both to locate at all and in which resources they appear with.

One System vs Multiple Systems

There are certain advantages and disadvantages to focusing your planets in the same system, or spreading them far apart.

The advantages of colonizing a single system are:

• It's easier to protect the colonies in one system. If a planet is a target of a large attack, fleets launched from other planets can help defending it.
  • Buildings like Patrol HQ, Military Base & High Command can cover multiple colonies.
  • This does not help against convoy loss, however.
• Only one Pirate or Luddic Base needs to be dealt with at a time.

The advantages of colonizing multiple systems are:

• Significantly more freedom to pick good planets based on their resources and conditions.
• Once Hyperspace Topography is advanced sufficiently to unlock Slipstream Detection, colonies will reveal slipstreams in a certain radius. Spreading them out reveals a bigger portion of the map.

It's worth noting that in the older versions such as 0.9.1a, the general consensus was that it was much better to colonize one system to deal with Colony threats. However, the later introductions of various Special Colony Items, Hyperspace Topography, and changes to Colony threats made multiple systems more appealing.

The presence of a Gate can also be a significant factor for colonizing a system, though this also depends on player preference (some players prefer having a Gate in their colonized system(s) while others don't mind too much).

Hazard Rating

Hazard Rating Hover Description

The Hazard Rating of a planet dictates how much an Industry or Structure upkeep costs to run each month, as well as affecting the rate at which population grows. Planets with lower hazard rating are generally preferable, though certain hazardous conditions have their own benefits, and the presence of rare resources can outweigh higher hazard rating.

The base hazard rating of a planet is 100%, modified by any hazard conditions present. The lowest possible value is 50%, for a planet that is habitable and has mild climate, though such planets are very rare. One the other end, the hazard rating can be as high as 500%, though most planets will be under 300%.

The hazard rating is a direct multiplier of the monthly upkeep cost of the planet's industries and structures. While harvesting industries such as Mining have relatively low upkeep, production-based industries such as Heavy Industry can potentially eat into your profit heavily, or even run a deficit if placed on a planet with a high enough hazard rating.

The hazard rating also directly affects the population growth rate of a planet. For every 25% the hazard rating is above 100%, the population growth rate will be decreased by 5 points, and vice versa for a hazard rating below 100%. This, however, can be countered by using Hazard Pay, which gives a bonus equal to the hazard penalty + 5 points. The cost of it is 1,000¢ per month for every point it gives, so it will cost more on a planet with a high hazard rating.

For example, Population & Infrastructure has a base upkeep of 1,500¢ per month on a size 3 colony, so:

Hazard Rating	Base Upkeep	Population Growth	Hazard Pay
100%	1,500¢ per month	No effect.	+5 growth · cost 5,000¢ per month
75%	1,125¢ per month	+10 bonus to population growth	+5 growth · cost 5,000¢ per month
250%	3,750¢ per month	-30 penalty to population growth	+35 growth (30 + 5) · cost 35,000¢ per month

Planets with a higher hazard rating are also more costly to survey.

Resources

Main article: Market conditions

Effectively all planets contain resources that can be harvested by extraction industries. These can be a major factor of the worth of a planet in terms of income, as some planets contain an abundance of materials such as Volatiles and Food, whereas others can barely provide even a paltry amount of Ore.

The presence and amount of resources on a planet dictates the baseline for much of that resource a given industry can extract, or whether or not that industry can be constructed to begin with (e.g., a planet with no farmland cannot have Farming).

Monthly upkeep of your colonies is reduced if some or all inputs are supplied in-faction, being produced on the same or a different colony. The maximum reduction is 50% if all inputs are supplied. For that reason, it might be worth colonizing planets with good resources to supply other planets, even if the hazard rating is high. Note that produced resources are not consumed - one colony that exports 6 units of food can feed an unlimited number of colonies that require 6 or less food.

Each resource has an abundance level, from -1 to +2 for food, volatiles, and organics, and from -1 to +3 for ores and rare ores. This number is added to the production of the associated resource if the industry that exploits it is established.

Resource Table
	Food	Ore	Rare Ore	Organics	Volatiles
-1	Poor	Sparse	Sparse	Trace	Trace
+0	Adequate	Moderate	Moderate	Common	Diffuse
+1	Rich	Abundant	Abundant	Abundant	Abundant
+2	Bountiful	Rich	Rich	Plentiful	Plentiful
+3	-	Ultrarich	Ultrarich	-	-

Like all market conditions, they are static and do not change, though the amount the colony produces will increase with the population size and can be further improved with story points and special items. Having rich deposits is a positive factor, but even a poorer quality deposit can be a good source of income with enough investment.

This is especially true for Mining, since one industry can produce organics, volatiles, and both types of ores at the same time, as long as a deposit is present - a colony with 3 sparse resources can be much better than a colony with 1 rich resource.

Ruins

For more information, see Market_condition#Ruins_Condition.

Ruins are an atypical kind of resource that can only be exploited by Tech-Mining. Unlike other industries that exploit resources, Tech-Mining doesn't actually exploit any commodities, but rather find loot within the Ruins for the player. These loot can be commodities (Supplies, Fuel, Heavy Machinery, Metals) & weapons, and much more rarely, blueprints, AI Cores & even special colony items.

Ruins also come in different sizes, from smallest to largest:

Scattered

Widespread

Extensive

Vast

Do note that Tech-Mining can attract attention from the Luddic Path.

Planet Types

For more information on the different types of planets, see Category:Planets.

The Planet Type influences the planet's hazard rating & resources due to it influencing the pool of potential Market conditions.

For example:

• Habitable planets are the only worlds where Farmland can be found.
• Gas Giant & Ice Giant will only have Volatiles Reserves and will always have High Gravity, so these worlds will always have at least 150% hazard rating.
• Volcanic World almost always have vast Ore Deposits & Rare Ore Deposits, along with 200+ hazard rating from a mix of market conditions.

As such, the type of the planet can inform the player of various possibility & potential before even surveying

Base Accessibility

Though it can be improved later through a variety of methods, the base accessibility of a planet is a crucial statistic in considering the viability of a colony there. A colony's base accessibility mostly depends on the system's distance to The Core Worlds, and can be seen when establishing it. The further a colony is from the core worlds, the lower its accessibility will be. Accessibility can be improved by various buildings and improvements, but the distance plays a significant role in colony's profitability, especially early on.

Overall, the base accessibility of a colony is not a hugely important factor because of the large number of bonuses available, but it's still worth considering on a colony meant to make money.

See below for more information about accessibility.

Planet Class

An easy rule of thumb when selecting a planet for colonization is looking at its Class, where higher classes typically having more exploitable resources & lower hazard rating.

However, sometimes it may be better to select a lower class world over a higher class one for various reasons:

• The class rating doesn't take into account base accessibility.
• The player possess some Special Colony Item(s) that can make certain worlds more valuable.
• Higher Hazard Rating can limit the amount of viable Industries to ones with lower upkeep.
• Sometimes the class of a world is inflated by the presence of Ruins, and it might be better setting up a temporary colony for Tech-Mining than settling permanently.

Table of Planet Class
Tier	Frequency	Notes
I	Majority >50%	The bottom of the barrel, these worlds have typically only have 1 or 2 low quantity exploitable resources along with higher hazard rating. These worlds are generally avoided when it comes to colonization efforts, however, certain combination of conditions can make some worlds in this category a viable candidate.
II	Common ~25%	A "step" above the bottom, these worlds have generally more resources than tier I, though don't necessarily have lower hazard rating and may be "inflated" by Ruins presence. This is the minimum class for Habitable worlds and almost all Volcanic & Cryovolcanic worlds. Habitable worlds in this category also typically have very little & low quantity exploitable resources.
III	Uncommon ~10%	The middle of the pack, these worlds mainly consists of uninhabitable worlds with higher quantity of resources but higher hazard rating, or habitable worlds with more resources, and/or bolstered by Ruins presence. Despite typically having higher quantity of resources, the higher hazard rating may make these worlds unfavourable to colonize.
IV	Rare ~5%	These worlds, whether uninhabitable or habitable, offers even more quantity of resources or level of Ruins presence, and generally serves as a good colonization candidate. However, uninhabited worlds can still suffer some of the same shortcomings as before with higher hazard ratings.
V	Very Rare ~2.5%	The cream of the crop, these worlds are almost universally excellent colonization candidates (generally only letdown by base accessibility), a majority of which are Habitable worlds with an abundance of resources and/or Ruins. The few uninhabited worlds that may be found in this category are guaranteed to be the same.

Star System Infrastructure

Main article: Objective

An independent makeshift comm relay

There are 3 different types of infrastructure that can be built in a star system, each offering specific bonuses to its owning faction: comm relays, nav buoys and sensor arrays. These can only be built at stable locations at a cost of 15 heavy machinery, 30 metals and 5 transplutonics. Some star systems contain Domain-era infrastructure, which has more powerful effects but cannot be built, these can be claimed & brought online at a cost of 5 heavy machinery.

The player can hack these assets, take control of them, or break them for resources, although the latter two actions will be considered hostile acts.

Each star system has 0 - 3 such objectives or stable locations. New stable locations can be created by interacting with the systems star.

Colony Stats

Size

A colony that is 10% grown.

	Colony size is an approximate measure of the population level. A colony one size larger has many times the population.
–In-Game description

The Colony Size is an important factor in all aspects of a colony's function. It affects the base income and base upkeep of the industries and structures built in the colony, and is the most important factor in the number of produced commodities. Colony size also affects the size of patrols and military fleets created when the colony has an appropriate building.

Colony size grows as dictated by the colony's Population Growth Rate, which shows how much progress the colony makes towards the next size per month. This value is modified by a variety of factors, and can be positive or negative. Negative growth rate will cause the colony's progress towards the next size to slowly return to 0%, but it cannot cause the colony's size to decrease. Once growth reaches 100%, colony's size increases by 1, and the progress resets to 0%.

The growth rate is dictated by the amount of population growth points a colony has, and the following factors affect the total of those points:

Factor	Effect
Accessibility	+1 for every 10% accessibility (rounded down) or -1 for every 10% below 0% accessibility
Instability	-1 for every stability point below 5
Hazard Rating	-5 for every 25% hazard rating above 100% or +5 for every 25% below 100%. No effect at 100%
Free Port Status	+5, increases to +25 over 365 days
Spaceport	+2
Megaport	+1 per colony size
Decivilized Subpopulation	+1 per colony size
Hazard Pay	Counters the Hazard Rating penalty · gives an extra +5
Other Larger Non-Hostile Colonies	Larger non-hostile colonies in the same system gives a bonus equal to the sum of the sizes of the larger colonies

The effect of growth points on the total growth rate decreases as the colony size increases, leading to a longer time between size increases as the colony's size grows. The maximum size for a player-controlled colony is 6. Sizes up to 10 exist in the game files, but the largest colony in the Sector is size 8 Chicomoztoc, controlled by Hegemony. The smallest size a colony can be is 3.

Colony size affects how many industries can be built in it, starting at 1 at size 3, and adding 1 more for every increased size, up to a maximum of 4 at size 6.

Non-player colonies have a growth rate and may appear to grow if it's positive, but their size will never change.

The actual approximate population of a colony can be determined by using this formula: $P=10^{n+g}$, where P is the population, n is the colony size, and g is the percentage of growth between the current population size and the next population size, expressed as a decimal fraction, e.g. 50% growth=0.5.

Accessibility

Accessibility Rating Hover Description

	A colony with high accessibility is able to import and export more goods, and can claim a greater market share for any commodities it produces and exports.
–In-game description

The Accessibility of a planet affects most factors of the colony's use as a population center and as a market power.

The Income from Exports by a given colony is directly tied to the accessibility, as it multiplies the colony's market share in each export commodity, and therefore export revenue. For example, if two planets produce 5 units of ore but planet A has 150% accessibility while planet B has only 100%, planet A will have a 50% larger market share (subject to rounding).

The amount of resources that can be exported and imported both in-faction and cross-faction is also tied to the accessibility. For every 10% of accessibility a colony holds. A colony can export or import 1 additional unit of each resource to and from other factions respectively (rounded down). In-faction import/export capacity uses the same calculation but with a bonus of +5 units.

So a colony with 79% accessibility can import/export 7 units of any given resource cross-faction (79% divided by 10 is 7.9, rounded down to 7), and 12 units in-faction (7 units from accessibility, 5). This can affect a colony's ability to produce or export to its maximum potential; a colony producing 5 units of food Food can only export 4 units cross-faction with an accessibility of 49% or less, for instance. Likewise this can also effect a colony's ability to import goods, so a colony with an Orbital Fusion Lamp that adds 10 units of Volatiles demand with the same accessibility as before will only contribute 4 units worth of market value to the global market value.

This is rarely a problem for a fully developed player colony, but can be a factor if the colony is small, very far from the core, doesn't have a Megaport and a Waystation, or if the player is hostile to many factions.

Accessibility is modified by many factors:

Factor	Effect/Example
Planet's Proximity to (positive) or Isolation from (negative) other colonies	The Core Worlds start with +32% to +49%
Hostilities with other Factions (based on the number and size of factions with hostilities)	Factions start with between -14% (Independents and Sindrian Diktat) and -86% (Pirates)
Planetary Conditions	Low Gravity (+10% accessibility) High Gravity (-10% accessibility)
Free Port status	Starts at +5%, increases to +25% over 365 days
Colony Size	+10% at size 5, then another 5% per additional colony size
Colony Structures	Spaceport (+60% accessibility, or +80% when upgraded to Megaport; having neither results in a -100% penalty) Waystation (+10% accessibility)
Fullerene Spool	Spaceport / Megaport: +30%
Story Point Improvement	Spaceport / Megaport & Waystation: +20% accessibility
Alpha Core	Spaceport / Megaport: +20%
Alpha Core administrator's Hypercognition skill	+10%
Pirate Activity	-[10~50]% penalty based on severity based on pirate base's level
Piracy Respite	+10% or +20% (from resolving the Pirates crisis)

Stability

Stability Rating Hover Description

	The colony's stability is a measure of the strength of the local government and its ability to effectively muster and leverage the resources of the colony.
–In-game description

The Stability of a colony is a number from 0 to 10 that affects many stats of the colony.

Stability below 5 provides sharp penalties to the colony.

Colonies with extraordinarily low stability for an extended period of time are may become "decivilized" - this effectively destroys the colony and creates Decivilized Population condition on it.

Currently, the time period required to start decivilizing is 16 months at 0 stability (the math is a bit more complicated, but most of the months need to have 0 stability), then there is a 10% chance of decivilizing each following month. Colonies belonging to other factions can also become decivilized, though some are protected from it.

Stability, like Accessibility, is affected by many factors:

Factor	Effect
Base Value	5
Comm Relay in the system	-1 if no relay exists +1 if faction controls a makeshift relay +2 if faction controls a Domain-era relay
Domestic Goods	Demand exists and is met ~ +1
Luxury Goods	Demand exists and is met ~ +1
Colony Structures	Patrol HQ (+1) / Military Base (+2) / High Command (+2) Orbital Station (+1) / Battlestation (+2) / Star Fortress (+3) Ground Defenses / Heavy Batteries: +1 Commerce: -3
Alpha Core administrator's Hypercognition skill	+1
Decivilized Subpopulation market condition	-2
Free Port status	-1, increases to -3 over 365 days
Active Luddic Path Cell	-1
Pirate Activity	-1 to -3
Food Shortage	-1 for every Unit missing
Recent Unrest	-1 for every Point of unrest
Story Point Improvement	Population & Infrastructure & Orbital Station: +1

Stability has the following effects on the colony:

Property	Effect
Colony Income	Every point of stability below 5 reduces it by 20%, completely negating it at 0 stability.
Population Growth Rate	Every point of stability below 5 reduces it by 1.
Fleet Size	Multiplies it by a number scaling from 0.75 to 1.25. $0.75+Stability*0.05$
Ship Quality	Multiplies it by a number scaling from 0.75 to 1.25. $0.75+Stability*0.05$.
Ground Defenses Strength	Multiplies it by a number scaling from 0.25 to 1. $0.25+Stability*0.075$

Income & Upkeep

Monthly Income & Upkeep Hover Description

Each Industry & Structure in a Colony has an upkeep cost that needs to be paid every month, and many industries either produce commodities that will be sold to generate income, or generate income naturally. On the first day of every month, income and expenses of all colonies is totalled and either added to or removed from your current credits, along with fleet expenses, commissions, and such.

The total sum of a colony's Income and Upkeep can be seen in the colony screen, and detailed info can be seen by hovering over it and pressing F1.

Income

There are two ways for a Colony to make money.

First is direct income generated by buildings, which only Population & Infrastructure generates, and this is added to income directly.

For more information on commodities export income, see Commodities#Commodity_Export_Incomes.

The second is through sales of Commodities. Crew and Marines don't generate income, and neither do Illegal Goods. For the player controlled colonies it means that Recreational Drugs and Harvested Organs won't generate income, unless the colony is a Free Port.

For every commodity that generates income, Global Market Value is calculated by summing up demand on all non-player colonies, and multiplying it by a static number that depends on the commodity. All producers of that commodity compete for the market; every colony takes a percentage of the market proportional to its production amount multiplied by accessibility.

For a simplified example, food has a value of 1,000¢. If the total demand in the sector is 100 units, the global market value will be 100,000¢. If only two colonies produce food, that income will be split between them. If colony A exports 5 units and has 140% accessibility, and colony B exports 8 units and has 75% accessibility, then A controls 7/13 of the market, and B controls 6/13, thus A will earn ~54,000¢ per month, and B will take the remaining ~46,000¢.

Since the market is limited and your own colonies don't increase it, having multiple colonies produce the same commodity provides diminishing returns. In the same vein, reducing competition (e.g. by disrupting production facilities or spaceports of competing factions) can massively increase income, especially for markets with near-monopoly such as Fuel.

The Commerce Industry increases income by +50% (rising past +125% with improvements & addons). This increase is applied to both base Population Income & Commodities Income.

Upkeep

Every single Industry and Structure, including Population & Infrastructure, requires a Monthly Upkeep Cost. The upkeep varies based on the Industry or Structure, and also increases based on the Colony Size.

Upkeep is further multiplied by the Hazard Rating.

Installing an Alpha or Beta AI Core into a building or industry reduces its upkeep by 25%, in addition to other effects.

Finally, Upkeep can be decreased based on how much of a colony's Demand for commodities is fulfilled in-faction, by the production from the same or other colonies. The reduction scales linearly based on the percentage of the commodities that is supplied in-faction, up to a maximum of 50% if all imports are in-faction.

Note that you are not directly paying for your colony's imports. The only impact of imports is the upkeep reduction from in-faction supply. Counter-intuitively, reducing imports by installing AI cores can sometimes increase upkeep: if the commodity is supplied in-faction, reducing its import will make the in-faction fulfilment ratio worse.

Colony Buildings

A full developed Colony

Main article: Industry

The most defining characteristic of a colony is buildings that are placed in it.

There are two types of buildings: Industries and Structures.

The player can build as many Structures as they can afford, but the maximum number of Industries is limited by Colony Size.

Buildings have varying construction time and only one building can be in construction status, but multiple can be queued up.

Some buildings can be upgraded to another building. Buildings continue to function while they are being upgraded, and don't interfere with other constructions.

A building can be downgraded or shut down for an instant 75% Credit refund.

Colony Size	3	4	5	6
Industries	1	2	3	4

Main article: Population & Infrastructure

Population & Infrastructure is a special structure present on every colony, representing the living spaces & habitation of the people living at the colony. It is built when the colony is established and has a variety of benefits & demands that has a significant impact of the colony as a whole (as elaborated above).

Structures

Main article: Industry#Structures

Structures are buildings that, for the most part, don't produce commodities (at least ones with a global market, e.g. Crew), but instead enhance the colony in some other way. The full list of the structures is:

• Spaceport → Megaport
• Waystation
• Ground Defenses → Heavy Batteries
• Orbital Station → Battlestation → Star Fortress (three different types)
• Patrol HQ (upgrades to Military Base, an Industry)
• Planetary Shield

Industries

Main article: Industry

Industries are mostly buildings that produce various commodities for export around the sector. They bring the bulk of a colony's profit. Tech-Mining, Military Base, and High Command don't generate money, but have other impactful effects, while Commerce doesn't bring money directly, but increases income of the colony in general. The full list of the industries is:

• Farming (requires Farmland)
• Aquaculture (requires Water-covered Surface found only on Water Worlds)
• Mining (requires at least one of: Ore Deposits, Transplutonic Ore Deposits, Organics Reserves, or Volatiles Reserves)
• Tech-Mining (require Ruins)
• Refining
• Light Industry
• Heavy Industry → Orbital Works
• Fuel Production
• Commerce
• Military Base → High Command (upgraded from Patrol HQ, a Structure)

Each Industry has unique aspects to them that should be considered. Some are useful for you directly, some are just profitable but depend on planet properties, items, competition and your other industries and some have unique uses.

Colony Defenses

Patrols

A player faction Heavy Patrol (Detachment) with a Light Patrol (Fast Picket) nearby

Constructing a Patrol HQ on your colony will cause it to automatically and regularly spawn patrol fleets. More, larger patrols can be generated by upgrading to a Military Base or High Command, at the cost of an industry slot.

A Patrol HQ will maintain two "light" (Fast Picket) patrols regardless of colony size. The upgrades will introduce "medium" (Patrol) and "heavy" (Detachment) patrols, with the number of patrols (especially the larger types) increasing based on colony size.

Patrols will cover the system the colony is located in, and will generally patrol around the following:

• Any player colony within the system.
• Any player-controlled Objectives within the system.
• All Jump Points to Hyperspace in the system.
• The local Hyperspace right "above" the system, if a sufficiently big enough colony (generally at least size 6) with a Military Base/High Command exists.

Patrols will resist any disruption expeditions or raids on their home colony. If an objective is captured by a hostile faction, local patrols will attempt recapture it. Patrols can also break their normal routing if they detect a hostile fleet (typically a Pirates fleet or a Player fleet with its Transponder off) to pursue it.

There are two main colony stats affecting patrols, Fleet Size and Ship Quality.

Fleet Size determines the average amount and value of ships in the fleet, so you get bigger, better and more ships.

Ship Quality determines the average amount of D-mods your ships have (and is also related to what ships and weapons they can use).

The 3rd properties affecting patrols, Officer Quality, can be manipulated from the Doctrine & Blueprints section on the Command Screen.

Ship Quality

Fleet Size & Ship Quality Rating Hover Description

Ship quality determines the number of D-mods your fleet has on average. At 0% quality your ships will have on average 5 D-mods, with each additional 20% quality decreasing the average D-mod count by 1. Note that this affects both patrol fleets & trade fleets.

Negative quality is possible.

Do note that if a ship would roll to have a "negative" D-mod because you have close to or more than 100% quality it just defaults to no D-mods. So when the info box says the fleet has an average of 0 D-mods, it is actually lower as some ships will still have D-mods until ship quality is 120%. For this reason if your ship quality is above 80% it is not really worth using Fleet Doctrine to increase it any more.

Ship quality within a faction is determined by the local quality of the planet with the largest "Ship Hull" export, meaning that a low-quality, but high output planet can supersede a high quality, but low output planet, leading to bad overall ship quality. Not having any in-faction production of ship hulls (i.e. Heavy Industry or Orbital Works) results in a -25% penalty to ship quality (due to the low quality of Cross-faction Imports for hulls), and will restrict player fleets to a basic, limited set of ships, weapons and fighters (the player cannot use their own Blueprints). Your selected Fleet Doctrine has no effect in this state. Stations do not require Heavy Industry to use weapons or fighters from blueprints. Having a Heavy Industry on any colony will remove the imported hull penalty.

Here are the factors that affect it laid out:

Factor	Effect
Cross-faction Imports	-25%
Orbital Works	+20%
Corrupted Nanoforge	+20%
Pristine Nanoforge	+50%
Stability	Has an effect of -25% to +25% (from 0 to 10 Stability)
Fleet Doctrine	Has an effect of +0% to +50% that can be adjustedm

For the purposes of Custom Production, the Ship Quality from the player's best colony is used, and Ship Quality Doctrine is treated as if it's maxed, giving +50% bonus. This means there is no need to manually change doctrine to avoid D-mods on custom production.

Fleet Size

The colony's Fleet Size value multiplies the size of fleets it spawns, in particular patrols but also things like trade fleets.

The colony's Fleet Size Value is based on Colony Size, with multipliers from the Faction Fleet Doctrine, the colony's Stability, demanded hull shortages and other values.

Factor	Effect
Colony Size	Base value is 50% at size 3, + 25% for each increased size.
Stability	Has a multiplier effect from 0.75x to 1.25x (from 0 to 10 Stability)
Fleet Doctrine	Has a multiplier effect that can be adjusted from 1x to 1.5x.
Demand Shortages	Shortages of Ship Hulls & Weapons decrease Fleet Size proportion to the shortage.
Cryoarithmetic Engine	+25% on a hot planet +100% on a planet with extreme heat
Alpha AI Core	Installing one on a Patrol HQ, Military Base or High Command will provide a 1.25x to Fleet Sizes from that colony.
Hypercognition	An Alpha Core Administrator will provide a +20% bonus to Fleet Size.

Stations

Stations provide a much more effective amount of space-based firepower against hostile fleets compared to the Patrol HQ, and can support the Player's fleet when engaging a hostile fleet nearby. The trade-off is that it can only effectively protect the planet that it's built-on, compared to a Patrol HQ's power projection (with the exception being close colonized moons).

If destroyed in battle, it will take around 1 - 3 months to repair. Like patrols, a station's arnaments depends on the blueprints known to the player, but unlike them, a Heavy Industry isn't needed to equip the station.

Ground Defenses

The strength of the Ground Defenses affects the effectiveness of raids & other ground operations against the colony, and the fuel cost of bombardments.

Ground Defenses are affected by the following factors:

Factor	Effect
Colony Size	+50 base value for size 3 colony For size 4 & beyond, the base value is +100 * (Colony Size - 3). $100*(ColonySize-3)$
Stability	Multiplies it by a number scaling from 0.25 to 1. $0.25+Stability*0.075$
Colony Structures	Ground Defenses (x2) / Heavy Batteries (x3) Orbital Station (x1.5) / Battlestation (x2) / Star Fortress (x3) Planetary Shield (x3)
Combat Drone Replicator	Ground Defenses & Heavy Batteries: x1.5
Story Point Improvement	Ground Defenses, Heavy Batteries & Planetary Shield: 1.25x
Alpha Core	Ground Defenses, Heavy Batteries & Planetary Shield: 1.5x

Submarkets

For more information on the submarkets, see Market.

A player colony has multiple markets to interact with that are unique from NPC Faction markets.

Resource Stockpiles

Resource Stockpiles is a submarket unique only player colonies, serving similarly to a storage except also for the colony too.

Any commodities that the colony produces will build up a fallback supply in the resource stockpile. The Waystation structure will also have cause the colony to stock up on supplies, fuel, volatiles & transplutonics even if the colony doesn't produce any of the commodities. The player can also add resources to this stockpile themselves. The same commodities from different sources are consolidated together for simplicity, but are tracked individually behind the scenes.

The player can take commodities from the resource stockpile for themselves. Likewise, a colony can take resources from here in the event of a shortage, if "Use stockpiles during shortages" is enabled (off by default), countering the shortage.

When withdrawing from the resource stockpile, it will first take from the amount deposited by the player for free, then it will take from the colony generated resources. The player withdraws at a charge equivalent to the base market price, while addressing resource shortages only charges around ~10% of the base market price. This charge is later applied during the monthly income under the colonies section.

Commmerce Open Market

When a Commerce finishes building on a player colony, besides the lucrative benefit of increasing income, is that it also adds an Independent Open Market to the colony, akin to an Independent colony, that the player can trade with.

This market has some limited uses due to the fact that anything that it sells, whether commodities, weapons or ships, can instead usually be obtained through some cheaper means (e.g. Custom Production for ships) due to the 30% Tariff, though some commodities can be cheap enough to buy despite the tariff like for NPC colonies.

However, this market is still useful for taking advantage of any surplus or shortage experienced by the player colony, which can be caused by Commodity Delivery missions and recently lost Trade Convoys respectively.

Storage

Like NPC colonies, player colonies also have a storage space, but unlike NPC colonies, player colony storage doesn't requires a fee to open and can be used to store things freely.

While there already exists Abandoned Stations in the Core Worlds that provides storage, these storages are useful for "player home systems", or colonized systems with a Gate.

Administrators

Administrator of a Player Colony

Every colony has an Administrator. By default, a newly created colony is managed by the player. If the player is only managing 1 colony personally, it receives a +2 stability bonus. Managing more than 2 applies a -2 stability penalty for every colony over 2 to every managed colony instead.

Freelance administrators can be recruited to manage additional colonies. They are acquired similarly to officers by hiring them on market comm boards, or rarely by rescuing them during salvage operations. You can hire up to 3 administrators. More can be found through salvaging, but only three can be assigned.

Administrators come in 2 varieties - without any skills with monthly salary of 2,500¢ and with the Industrial Planning skill with monthly salary of 20,000¢. The hiring fee is double the monthly salary, and if they are not currently managing a colony their salary is reduced to 10%. Administrators can govern 1 colony at a time.

Other, more exotic options also exist. Alpha Core administrators have no upkeep and do not occupy an administrator slot, allowing you to have as many as you want, so they become necessary if the player wants to colonize more than 4-5 planets. They always have Industrial Planning and come with a skill unique to them (and the mysterious administrator of Culann), Hypercognition, giving +10% accessibilty, +20% fleet size, +50% to ground defenses, and +1 stability. However, they draw attention of the Hegemony and the Luddic Path, and can be challenging to remove after being in control of a colony for some time.

Colony Threats

Main article: Colony threats

A player colony will face various threats at times, depending on factors including its location, industries, and use of AI Cores. The most common of these also affects NPC colonies.

These are typically Pirates or the Luddic Path (the latter requires a concentration of technology on a single world), are persistent but also usually not too threatening.

Colony Crisis

Main article: Colony Crises

Colony Crisis on the other hand are instead a concentrated aggression from one of the major faction, exception being the Independents, usually in due to some criteria that the player colonies have met.

If the player's colonies meets the criteria(s), it will start generating points overtime until it reaches 500 where an aggressive faction will start preparing their attack, which will commerce properly upon reaching 600 points.

Here's a cheat sheet on Colony Crises without going into too much details, for more information, seek out the main article:

Table of Colony Crises
Faction	Criteria	Aggression	Resolution	Rewards
Hegemony	AI Usage	AI Inspection Fleets	Defeat 3 sets of Fleets	Unfettered use of AI
Persean League	Player Colonies Size	System Blockade Fleet	Defeat the Fleet or join the Persean League	Reputation gain with the Hegemony & Independent (only by defeating the Blockade)
Luddic Church	Luddic Majority on Player Colony	Takeover Fleets	Defeat the Fleets	Luddic Majority Benefits Doubles
Tri-Tachyon	Commodities Competition	Mercenary Raid + Commerce Raiding	Deal with the Mercenaries + Destroy enough Tri-Tachyon assets	Possible Trade Agreement, increases Accessibility for both Tri-Tachyon & Player Colonies
Sindrian Diktat	Fuel Production Competition	Saturation Bombardment Fleets	Defeat the Fleets	25% Increased Fuel Export Income
Pirates	Player Colonies Exist	Raiding Fleets	Defeat the Fleets and/or make a deal with Jorien Kanta	10% / 20% Increased Accessibility (defeating the raid / making a deal with Kanta)
Luddic Path	Sufficient Tech Presence	Saturation Bombardment Fleets	Defeat the Fleets	All Luddic Path Cells are Disrupted for a while

Hotkeys

Here's a table of hotkeys related to colony management:

Table of Colony Screen Hotkeys
Section	Key Combination	Effect
Main Colony Screen	Q	Return to previous screen (either the map or the colonies list.
	A	Add industry or structure.
	S	Show on map (only available when coming from the Command Screen).
Industry/Structure Management Popup	G	Manage AI Core
	Q	Manage Special Colony Item
	W	Shutdown industry/structure.
	A	Upgrade / cancel upgrade to a higher tier industry/structure.

Tips & Tricks

• Tri-Tachyon bars will often have loan sharks, which can provide a lot of early capital if you want to start a colony right now and are relatively certain it will be profitable or don't care about your reputation with Tri-Tachyon.
• Use Gamma AI Core to reduce demand for inputs that have shortages.
• A commission doesn't stop you from founding colonies; they will still be your own. It's like having a Letter of Marque while also being a colony governor.
  • If you wish to colonize worlds within inhabited Core systems, commissions are a good way to accomplish this. Holding a commission permits you to establish colonies in systems owned by the commissioning faction. Once your colony reaches size 5, the commission may be safely resigned without consequence. Colonies that are at or over size 5 will not be the subject of eradication efforts (as doing so on a population of that size would clearly be genocide).
• On a Free Port colony consider an Alpha AI Core on Population & Infrastructure. The supply of Recreational Drugs & Harvested Organs is often quite restricted so the extra +1 production from the core can make a lot of credits.
• For rimwards operations consider a pop-up colony with a Spaceport & Waystation.
  • This can act as a local resupply station for commodities, in particular the otherwise hard to locally source Crew. If you have ship production available elsewhere then you can also set the pop-up colony as the Production gathering point in the Command -> Custom Production screen, causing new ships custom built to be automatically shipped to the rim. When finished in that area it is easy to abandon the base provided it has not grown in population
• A "humane" way of dealing with enemy colonies is to put them through the same pain they put you through. Keep an enemy colony at 0 stability long enough and the planet will decivilize and no longer have a colony.
  • This, however, also removes the colony from contributing to the global market, it's generally much better to keep them around (ethics aside).

Profitable Colonies

Mouse over the Credits/Month and hit F1 for a detailed breakdown of profitability

Making a colony profitable means keeping Upkeep costs down and Income high.

Upkeep costs are from Industry & Structure maintenance, which is multiplied by the Hazard Rating of the world. As such, worlds with lower hazard ratings are much more desirable than worlds with higher hazard ratings. If for whatever reason, a higher hazard world is colonized, it's better to build industries with high upkeep (Light Industry, Heavy Industry, Fuel Production) on other worlds. Upkeep is also reduced by the fraction of demand supplied from in-faction sources, up to a 50% reduction, so faction self-sufficiently will dramatically reduce upkeep costs.

Income can be gained from Population & Infrastructure income & Exports. Colony Size is important for this as it increases Population & Infrastructure income and Industry production quantity.

Hazard Pay is also important for boosting population growth, especially for non-habitable colonies with relatively higher hazard rating. For some colonies, they won't be able to grow at all without hazard pay.

Stability is should be taken into account too, as it should generally be maintained to be at least 5, being any lower will have a heafty penalty of reducing income by 20% for each point below 5

Accessibility is relevant as it impacts the market share of the colony's exports.

Commerce is almost a mandatory industry for any profitable colony, as it provides a base income multiplier of 1.25x which can be improved all the way up to 2.25x.

Profitable Commodities

Exporting can be quite lucrative, but consider your production Industries carefully as some provide only a tiny return on investment or are situational.

Good global markets to exploit are generally those with high global market values and or have few large / impactful suppliers.

The most lucrative commodities are:

• Food
• Fuel
• Recreational Drugs
• Harvested Organs
• Volatiles if Orbital Fusion Lamp(s) are used to induce increased demands.

Other profitable commodities are:

• Ore
• Rare Ore
• Metals
• Transplutonics
• Organics
• Supplies / Heavy Machinery / Heavy Armaments / Ship Hulls & Weapons (to a limited degree)

If you note single planets making a big difference to the market then you may wish to consider a raid.

For example the Sindrian Diktat capital of Sindria is generally the only large supplier for Fuel, with many large demand markets. If a raid were to disrupt their Fuel Production, then an upstart Fuel Production colony would stand to make amazing profits, at least while their Fuel Production is disrupted.

Another example would be Nomios and its Cryosanctum being the biggest supplier of Harvested Organs, which unlike Sindria has terribe ground defenses, usually around 100 total, making it very vulnerable to raids.

Do note to avoid destabilizing colonies for too long, lest they may face Decivilization.

Defense Strategies

An example of a "Garrison" World, the actual usefulness of which is debatable.

There are 3 types of defenses for the player's colonies: Stations, Patrols & Ground Defenses.

Orbital Station and its upgrades is the most cost-effective way of protecting a single colony as stated earlier. While some NPC Colonies doesn't have a Station at all, it is still recommended to have an Orbital Station due to its low base upkeep cost & +1 stability bonus.

Patrols, specifically from the Patrol HQ, provides a bit of power projection beyond the host colony. A Patrol HQ by itself can rarely handle any Colony threat outside of the small Pirates fleets, but having at least a single one in a system will provide important hold over the system's objectives. Further Patrol HQs can be built to provide somewhat improved capabilities.

If a player wishes to greater power projection, a Patrol HQ can be upgraded to a Military Base (then High Command) at the cost of an Industry slot, increased commodity demands & increased base upkeep. If a player wishes, they can set-up a "garrison" colony on a suitable planet to provide protection to other player colonies in the same system at the cost of its profitability. To make a particularly strong "garrison" world, the use of Cryoarithmetic Engine, maximum stability for related bonuses & various other improvements (such as using Alpha Core) will allow such a world to generate big Patrol fleets. However, do note that such worlds can be of limited use, as the biggest player colony threats can be permanently resolved.

Ground Defenses are the weakest option for protect player bases, as of this version, raids or bombardments on player colonies are rare occurrences and a one & done deal. However, Ground Defenses has a low upkeep cost & provides +1 stability bonus and can help provide a stability buffer.

Tech-Mining

The player can also set-up colonies just for Tech-Mining to exploit Ruins in search of rarer treasures like blueprints, AI Cores and special colony items.

However, instead of fully developing a colony, the player can just have a "temporary" colony at size 3 for the sole purpose of Tech-Mining, as it isn't influenced by Colony size. After which when the player is satisfied, they can then Abandon the colony to free up its Administrator & whatnot.

However, not all Ruins are equal, as Extensive Ruins & Vast Ruins offers far greater chance for good loot.

It is also important to make improvement(s) to Tech-Mining in order to improve loot yield, especially when the Ruins are still untouched. An Alpha Core is an easy addition to improve yield that can be retrieved when finished, but a Story Point improvement is a far more hefty investment as you can't recoup this investment (2 SP 0% XP), so such an investment should be made thoughtfully (and likely just for Vast Ruins).

Change History

• Adjusted how stockpiling at player-owned colonies works
• A quantity of resources produced locally is added to the Local Resources submarket
• More if it's not being exported due to, say, low accessibility
• Taking these results in an at-cost charge in that month's income/expense report
• Can be taken "for free", but their base value is deducted from player's monthly income
• Added a setting to let a colony use these to counter shortages
• Costs considerably less than taking the resources directly
• Resources can be brought to the colony and put in Local Resources manually
• Using or taking these does not result in any cost
• Local Resources submarket tool-tip lists stockpile growth rate and limits
• Monthly salary for unassigned colony administrators reduced to 10% of base

Up to date for latest version, 0.97a.