New colony: how to generate income ?

[Master Marcus]

I may miss something basic here, only my first game but still I don't understand why any new colony found is not generating income ( only expenses ) for several turns after- even with a good morale. never saw this in any TBS before....And when I check the AI opponent's income on some of its new worlds, a bit lower than expenses but still a few units instead of zero, then I'm confused. What to do?

[Martin the Dane]

Income is relative to the planet value and planets with a value under 15 does not gerate income.

[Master Marcus]

Originally posted by Martin the Dane
Income is relative to the planet value and planets with a value under 15 does not gerate income.

almost yes, not entirely. Thx for the reply, and at last I've just found data about this ( and why your answer and the one I'm searching is almost true) written by Brad Wardell upon Undocumented Economics somewhere at GalCiv.com : " And there are penalties for getting taxes out of people living on a class 14 or lower planet.(...) and anything under class 12, well, ...."

The big huge is between 14 and 15 then. And that's exactly the case and now it's crystal clear. Though it's still possible to have something like 1bc, 2bc income on a 13-14 class, after many turns of pop growth and when having something like 15+ expenses. Confirmed now. With Soil enhancement built in the first place as a social imp on a 14, it's even more worth the try but for 13 and less I pass on in the early stages.

[BlueDEvil]

I find that planet class improvement items tend to improve planet class like this:

Planet Class Improvement
<18 +1
18 -< 28 +2
>28 +3

Because of this, you should always avoid lower class planet at the early parts of the game.

[Eric S]

In my current game, I traded almost all of my ability points towards improved habitability. That gave me three inhabitable planets in Sol itself, and if I land a colony ship on a Class 14, it immediately turns into a Class 16. Class 13 only goes to Class 14, so that's not as dramatic. Still, being able to grab Class 14 planets and have them immediately workable has done a good job of letting me spread out.