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[Hal900x]

I have explored roughly 70% of the sector. Not so many high-threat systems, but a few. ALL the planets I have thus far discovered are far poorer than anything I see referred to in forums, wiki, etc. First off, every one of them seems designed to thwart Special Items. If it's Soil Nanites, there's transplutonics on the only real farming planet in the sector. If it's Catalytic Core on a planet high in ores there's an atmosphere. Plasma Dynamo? No Volatiles (10!?) in sight. Leaving specials out of the equation, it's the same thing. A rich ore planet is insanely high hazard. None of the systems have complimentary planets. You get the idea.

Scrutinizing the planet list of for hours gives me the distinct impression this was by design. Perhaps it was too easy. My first and only colony is a jack of all trades, master of none and is pretty mediocre. Now, if this is intended then great, I work with what I have. But decades of experience with RNG assures me this could all be rotten luck. Is it?

[Megas]

While item requirements are annoying, some seeds are rotten and may not give good much less perfect colony systems.

Catalytic Core is useful mostly to meet demand for a hypershunt tap.  Likewise, Plasma Dynamo is useful mostly to meet demand for the lamp.

Soil Nanites are okay but not required.  Player can meet demand with even Poor Farmland if it has someone with Industrial Planning running it.

The items the player needs most are Pristine Nanoforge and Synchrotron.  He needs those to meet demand for Military Bases and especially High Command, not to mention quality from the nanoforge to reliably produce pristine ships.  Synchrotron is the annoying one with No Atmosphere requirement.

[Falcon_BR]

Dude, I had problems like that, so I keep exploring to find the perfect system, but it was impossible, I had one with 4 habitable planets on it! I was about to colonize them, one already with pollution, so it was going to be the heavy industry one.
So, I didn't really need the 10 volates production, but without the fuel prodution, they were ok, not great, but ok, I could have gone with them, all with 125-150 hab.
Also found one with a arid with 125 hab, no trans, a cold one with +3/+2/+2 rare, com, vol, and a no atmosfere one, so fuel they were also ok to colonize, with a crioship on the system and a hypershunt close by.
Still ok, but I said to myself, keep looking, found one with all planets with poor resources, -1/0 or -1/-1, an water one with trans, and 0 food, a arid one with -1 food, and I said for my self, men, this system is garbage, the only good think is the gate, it is resource poor, the gas giant is 300%, no way it is going to turn a profit!


After exploring all the planets, guest what, the last system was the best one, you really don't need a +3/+3 resource, just enough to feed your refining, the one with -1/-1 was not habitable, so with the drill and administration it was producing more them enough.
The cold one I placed the lamp, just to discorery that until it reachs size 6, it can't sustain itself! This costed me a lot of money, but when I was finally figured out I could place a gamma core on pop to decrease the cost to 9, took me lots of money.
With a single no-at planet I have 36% of the fuel market, more them that and everyone would start attacking me, this happens with everything! Just because I had 5 planets in this system, I  could have 2 of all industries, just one with fuel, This gives me a 450.000 GMP, down to 300.000 after paying salaries.
So, you don't need great planets, I was really said I couldn't use the soil nanites on the water planet, and just had a single no at one, also the hypershunt is 12 of distance, so, no extra industry, but doing the math, 10 volates is hard to get, but 10 trans is almost impossible! You need story point and a gamma core on it! And my colonies are far away from the center, so my colonies lost a lot of shipments, that I normally have stockpile to cover it, even with everything produced locally, the game makes you have shortages from deliveries from other systems, it is a strange game mechanic, you should lost profit from not delivering, not don't receiving goods locally produced.

My point is, don't try to find the perfect system, I see people here with 2 50% habitable planets with the same system, but for what? You need colonies to give you profit and the profit will be high only before you can self sustain, so cost goes down 50% I really don't think I can spend more them 450.000 upkeep in a month, even with an armada that can take down the sector. I was unluck, there is not a single 100% or less habitable planet (unclaimed) on my sector, but I really don't need it.

[DirectionsToL3Please]

It's mostly RNG, but it's RNG that's been designed to make sure you don't have to suffer from an excess of excellent choices.

Find a system with +1 or +2 in a few different things and just jump on it. Don't try to hold out for that elusive +3; it's not worth losing several game years. And unfortunately, some of the nicer colony items are indeed tough to put in good homes.  Settle for "good enough" and settle right away.

[Kryptos]

As the other guy said, just settle. Perfect is the enemy of the good enough, and good enough + time (endgame farming) = great.

I don't have any GREAT seeds for 95.1, but I'm sure someone has found and posted one somewhere. Might be worth trying a game with an amazing system, to really push the limits of colonies, but that often gets boring.

I actually disagree with a lot of colony advice, and try to set down my first 2 colonies pretty much ASAP, as soon as I can afford to buy the required supplies/machinery/crew and have enough space junk to get the materials to the system. My first colonization fleet is usually a mix of barely spaceworthy pirate salvage that will be left on the planet anyway. Maybe an extra 200-300k for initial buildings (industry, waystation, patrol HQ).

I don't look at colonies as cash cows, usually. I just hope they can cover crew/officer salary and support heavy industry/orbital works to make ships from blueprints. I don't actually need them to do much more than that. That's why I try to settle 2 colonies quick, usually one for high value industry (heavy, fuel production) and the second to do something that is relevant to the high end supply chain (mining/refining, volatiles) I pick for my first.

[Megas]

Only the two ores can get +3.  The other three resources max out at +2.

With Industrial Planning alone, -1 for Farmland is enough, 0 for Organics, and +1 in volatiles and both ores.

Other considerations...
* Presence of a gate.  Very convenient after player can use gates.
* Proximity to core.  Higher accessibility equals more money and higher limit of imports/exports.
* Number of planets.  One is not enough (at least not without buffs to defenses).  Two might be.  Three or more should be.

As for seeds.  Try MN-1 in an unmodded rc6 game.  There is an orange and red binary west of core, with double Terran (one 125% with four resources, another with 75%), other planets (175% and 200%) with high volatiles, and a gate.  The only thing wrong with the system is no planet without atmosphere.

[Sutopia]

As the other guy said, just settle. Perfect is the enemy of the good enough, and good enough + time (endgame farming) = great.

I don't have any GREAT seeds for 95.1, but I'm sure someone has found and posted one somewhere. Might be worth trying a game with an amazing system, to really push the limits of colonies, but that often gets boring.

I actually disagree with a lot of colony advice, and try to set down my first 2 colonies pretty much ASAP, as soon as I can afford to buy the required supplies/machinery/crew and have enough space junk to get the materials to the system. My first colonization fleet is usually a mix of barely spaceworthy pirate salvage that will be left on the planet anyway. Maybe an extra 200-300k for initial buildings (industry, waystation, patrol HQ).

I don't look at colonies as cash cows, usually. I just hope they can cover crew/officer salary and support heavy industry/orbital works to make ships from blueprints. I don't actually need them to do much more than that. That's why I try to settle 2 colonies quick, usually one for high value industry (heavy, fuel production) and the second to do something that is relevant to the high end supply chain (mining/refining, volatiles) I pick for my first.

I totally agree on this. Vanilla colony system is there to make you able to cover most of the day to day operation costs, and it’s easy to find systems good enough for the task. Hazard rating is also extremely overrated given that in-faction supply can easily slice the operating cost in half.

I think it’s the community setting up an impractically high standards for colonization that lead to many “complaints” and drive mods to overextend the economy.

[Megas]

I skim through the entire sector with Apogee start to see if there are any good enough systems in a given seed.  If there is a system I like, I commit to the game and try to colonize a promising system around midgame.  If not, I try again with another seed.

Another thing, there were one or two seeds I stumbled in previous releases that had no red systems, and thus, no full Ordos to farm, and another with a single red system that was not easily accessible.  Thus, I want a seed with easily accessible red systems I can farm Ordos in.

[Null Ganymede]

Convenient travel routes and adjacency to allies/foes is more important than planets or bonuses, tbh.

[Serenitis]

The RNG is frequently very unkind.
For instance; I have never personally seen anything like the 'golden' systems that people like to share elsewhere on the forum. But that people share such things fairly regularly indicates that they are not only possible but reasonably probable, and I have just not been so blessed.

When I'm looking for somewhere to settle, I'm quite willing to do so from the very start of the game but vary rarely find anything suitable so quickly.
I want everything in a single system so I don't have to deal with more than 1 set of pirate events.
And I want access to all resources at levels mentioned by Megas previously.
I don't care about the exact planet types, nor presence of any other features.
The closer to the core the better. It's not an absolute requirement but there needs to be a 'very good reason' to be far from the core. (growth is also tied to accessibility!)
Gas Giants with multiple moons are attractive as you can drop in right on top of them, but again not a requirement.

Hazard rating is also extremely overrated given that in-faction supply can easily slice the operating cost in half.

In the past this was definitely the case, and you could put a colony anywhere and expect it to do varying shades of okay because the only thing hazard changed was maint. costs.
But in the current version hazard rating is explicitly linked to growth (check the modifers on the colony screen), and once you go over a certain threshold colonies will simply not grow on thier own because they get too many negative growth 'points' from hazard.

If you want a colony to grow then it's hazard rating is a p. huge consideration that you now have to deal with and work around (by spending money/stability). Or just pick somewhere else.

[Megas]

Convenient travel routes and adjacency to allies/foes is more important than planets or bonuses, tbh.

Also important to me is isolation from pop-up pirate bases.  If they are far enough away that they never attack my colonies, I take it.  One time I was about to colonize a second system with not-so-great planets (but I needed no atmosphere planet for fuel production plus synchrotron) but had a gate.  When I got a pirate raid warning almost immediately after building new colonies, I reloaded and went to another system to colonize.  Had no gate, but the planet stats were very good, and they were close to core.  The system is inconvenient to travel to when I need to, but it has been a convenient pit stop few times after I killed some bounties or Ordos nearby.

Base bounties are so unrewarding that I almost never destroy pirate bases anymore.  (And the one time I killed a base this release was only because it was in the near-golden binary system I wanted to colonize!)  If they leave me alone for the entire game, they can have their bases and the systems they are in.  I will gladly trade at then raid their bases, though.

[Sutopia]

Hazard pay mitigates ALL growth penalty introduced by hazard and since it only grows to size 6 it’s a finite money sink and pays for itself relatively quickly.

I never take hazard rating into consideration.

[geminitiger]

It's mostly RNG, but it's RNG that's been designed to make sure you don't have to suffer from an excess of excellent choices.
[/quote

 


Don't forget the number of stable locations and the availability of gate in system (if you planning on playing past the MQ).

The station construction mod helps with this "problem" if you consider it too hard (I do). Building your own mining station and or the other stations in your system means you can basically pick a system just 1 good planet, or whatever.

[Megas]

Hazard affects upkeep, and unless I try to min-max income with cores and items, I do not want high hazard worlds with high upkeep industries like Orbital Works, Fuel Production, Star Fortresses, or High Command.  Since I am not a fan of whack-a-mole, I do not use many items (only one per colony, and no cores).  I avoid the Mining >> Refinery >> Orbital Works chain because that means Pather Cell with any colony item (forge or otherwise), and thus, whack-a-mole.

I avoid worlds with more than 200% hazard, and I will take a world with less resources (but enough to meet demand) if it also has less hazard.  I take 200% hazard only if I find nothing better and I really need it.

Unless I want to try to use the lamp, I prefer non-Gas Giants for volatiles because Planetary Shield cannot be used on Gas Giants.  That said, gas giants with 150% hazard and at least +1 volatiles are good colony worlds.