Introduction

Colonizing planets, along with building up technology levels and interacting with other player empires, forms the majority of player activity in the game. Colonization is accomplished by flying a spacecraft or vehicle to a planet, setting up a town square with a flag and then building a colony. Players can accelerate this process by bringing along resources to sell to the colony, bringing passengers to give the starting population a boost, and working the building processes by hand.

Colonization of harsh environments such as airless moons or inferno worlds pose additional challenges. All buildings require additional resources, and population immigration comes solely from automated trade routes via airport terminals, or ships shuttling passengers from habitable worlds.

The prospect of colonizing multiple worlds for the purpose of tax income is a good way to to get money for technology research, and therefore it is encouraged to colonize many, if not all, of the planets and moons in a home system.