Colonizing planets

Finding a planet

While traveling throughout the galaxy, use sector scans to see if your current sector has planets. There can be between one and nine planets in a sector (including wormholes), however with default settings this is usually limited to five (MAXPLSE).

Inside a sector with planets, use planet scans to check on the planet's attributes. Generally you want a planet with the best attributes ("good" or "very good"), as these planets can hold more items and produce items more quickly than planets with worse conditions.

Other things to consider when picking a planet:

• Some unclaimed planets are already inhabited with small quantities of men and food, making it easier to get started.
• Planets closer to the center of a sector are more difficult for attacking ships to escape from, if the planet is equipped with sector-firing ion cannons.

Claiming a planet

To

Abandon a planet

The ABANDON command will renounce your claim to a planet. You must be orbiting a planet that you own to issue the command. The planet will revert to having no owner, and can then be claimed by anyone. The planet will be removed from your list of planets, and you will lose any points you have been allotted for the population of the planet.

The command has no options. Simply enter:

ABANDON

or

ABA

(TO DO: what effects does this have on a planet's administration)

Production cycle

1. Troops eat first. One food case is consumed for every 100 troops.
   • If there is not enough food for the troops, 1/8th of all the troops perish and the amount of food on the planet is set to zero.
   • If there is enough food for the troops, one food case per 100 troops is subtracted from the food amount on the planet.
   • If there are fewer than 100 troops, no food is consumed and no troops perish regardless of the amount of food.
2. If there is not enough food for the men (one food case per 100 men), then 1/8th of all men perish. (Men don't "eat" until step [TO DO].)
3. The amount by which to reduce production based on the planet's tax rate is calculated by dividing the tax rate by 120 and subtracting from 1. If there is a 0% tax rate, production is 100% of maximum. If there is a 100% tax rate, production is 16.66% of maximum.
4. Gold on the planet is converted into cash for the planetary bank, based on the base price of gold (by default, 1000).
5. Production begins. For each item:
   • The quantity to produce (before being adjusted by other factors) is determined by the amount of men on the planet, multiplied by the percentage of production effort for the item as set by the planet owner, multiplied by the individual production rate of each item as set in MBMGEMSG.MSG divided by 6, divided by 7.
     • Example: on a planet with 100,000 men, where the owner has set 10% of production to go toward torpedoes, where the production rate of torpedoes is 500 (the default in MBMGEMSG.MSG), the amount would be calculated like this: (100000×0.1×(500÷6))÷7 = 119047.619047... (TO DO, this doesn't seem right, look at how the production rates are pulled)
   • How the planet's environment and resources affect production are then considered. The environment value plus the resources value plus 2 (Poor is 0, marginal is 1, good is 2, and very good is 3) is divided by 4.
     • Example: A very good/very good planet is 3+3+2 (8) divided by 4, which is 2. A poor/poor planet is 0+0+2 (2) divided by 4, which is 0.5.
   • The tax factor determined in step 3 is then multiplied by the environment/resources factor.
     • Example: A good/marginal planet (2+1+2=5, 5÷4 = 1.25) with a 10% tax rate (10÷120 = 0.0833, 1-0.0833 = 0.9166) has a factor of 1.145833 (1.25×0.9166).
   • The planet's cash reserves are lowered. The environment value (0 to 3) and resources value (0 to 3) are added, subtracted from 6, and multiplied by 10 to get a value between 0 (VG/VG) and 60 (P/P). This amount is subtracted from 95 to get the percentage of cash to keep. VG/VG planets keep 95% of their cash reserves, P/P planets only keep 35%. (Like everything in step 5, this process is repeated for EACH item.)
   • If there is any cash in the bank, the production factor for this item (calculated above based on environment, resources, and tax rate) is increased by 1.5×.
   • The new quantity of the item, taking into account environment, resources, production effort percentage, production rate, tax rate, and banked cash bonus is determined.