Planet population dies off?

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agorski
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Planet population dies off?

#1 Post by agorski »

I've noticed that on some marginal worlds, even if producing enough food and in resource supply range of the Empire, that the population slowly and inexorably dies off until the planet ends up with zero population. In systems with another successful planet, I don't think there's even a way to recolonize the dead world. Is there some way to avoid this from happening?

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Planet population dies off?

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

What effects are modifying the health meter of these planets? Check the tooltip on the health meter icon (heart) on the planet panel.

Another colonized planet in a system shouldn't affect whether a planet can be colonized, regardless of whether or not it has previously been colonized.

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agorski
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Re: Planet population dies off?

#3 Post by agorski »

Geoff the Medio wrote:What effects are modifying the health meter of these planets? Check the tooltip on the health meter icon (heart) on the planet panel.

Another colonized planet in a system shouldn't affect whether a planet can be colonized, regardless of whether or not it has previously been colonized.
Thanks. I didn't look under the Health Meter because it was displaying a really high number, like 25. So I assumed there was nothing wrong there.

I'll have to try recolonizing one of those planets.

There are two distinct behaviors I've noticed:

If a system has another populated planet, the dead planet shows up with it's meters, but all output is zero. It still shows as controlled (name in race color). THAT's why I assumed it would not show a Colonize button.

If the only colonized planet in a system dies out, you get a sitrep notice, and the planet shows no meters and no control and looks like an uncolonized world, apparently losing all buildings, too.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Planet population dies off?

#4 Post by Geoff the Medio »

agorski wrote:Thanks. I didn't look under the Health Meter because it was displaying a really high number, like 25. So I assumed there was nothing wrong there.
25 should be sufficient to prevent population loss (and allow slow growth) if there's enough food.
I'll have to try recolonizing one of those planets.
So they do have a colonize button that you just didn't see before? But they die off still without explanation and appear with your empire's colour after dieing?

Another thought: what focus settings are these planets on? What are their farming meters?

Are they connected to the homeworld? You could appear to have a surplus of food but be unable to deliver it to some planets if they're not connected to the stockpile location...

Perhaps you should attach a zipped save file demonstrating a slowly dieing planet and one that's already sort-of-died with and without another colonized planet in the same system?

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agorski
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Re: Planet population dies off?

#5 Post by agorski »

Geoff the Medio wrote:So they do have a colonize button that you just didn't see before? But they die off still without explanation and appear with your empire's colour after dieing?
Never saw a colonize button because I never sent a colony ship back there. But yes, if there's a colonized planet in the same system, then the one that goes to population zero generates no notification when it dies, stays the race color, and has focus pulldowns and meters all set to zero.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Another thought: what focus settings are these planets on? What are their farming meters?
The primary focus was farming, and the planet was generating more food than the current population, yet the population growth under the meter was always slightly negative until the planet just croaked.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Are they connected to the homeworld? You could appear to have a surplus of food but be unable to deliver it to some planets if they're not connected to the stockpile location...
Yes, I was connected to the homeworld via solid color starlanes all the way, and plenty of food stockpiled. All the rest of my planets were growing.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Perhaps you should attach a zipped save file demonstrating a slowly dieing planet and one that's already sort-of-died with and without another colonized planet in the same system?
Don't have one of those right now, but attached is an image of a dead world.
Picture 1.png
Picture 1.png (99.16 KiB) Viewed 2006 times

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Planet population dies off?

#6 Post by Geoff the Medio »

agorski wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:Perhaps you should attach a zipped save file demonstrating a slowly dieing planet and one that's already sort-of-died with and without another colonized planet in the same system?
Don't have one of those right now, but attached is an image of a dead world.
The "dead world" has a health meter of 10, not the 25 you reported earlier. That's why it's dieing. If a planet's health is less than 20 - the break even point - it will continually lose population - about 40% per turn currently - no matter how much food you supply it with.

It's probably not actually dead, but has so little population that it appears as zero. I thought there was already a minimum population check, below which a planet is considered unpopulated, but either it's too low and you haven't reached it yet, or there isn't and should be. Or maybe there is but the reaction isn't resetting ownership... I'll have to look into it.

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