questions

[lord_onyx]

1. how do you get your colony ship near the solor system to colonized a planet? How do you get it to a planet in another system from the outside?

1. how do you get technology setup to learn during a turn?

[Strifeguard]

Originally posted by lord_onyx
1. how do you get your colony ship near the solor system to colonized a planet? How do you get it to a planet in another system from the outside?

In both cases you need to form a colony task force. You can only form task forces at systems with Mobilization Centers. (don't worry if you don't have the tech yet, your home system comes with a Mobilization center) To see which systems have mobilization centers, press "B" while viewing the galaxy map. This will toggle empire borders/colors. It will also make a Grey/Blue pentagon appear over every system with a mobilization center (the pentagon with 2 black dots denotes an imperial seat).

Right click on any system with a Mobilization center and choose "Create Taskforce". Then design a detachment with the mission "Colony" and place your colony ship in it. Pressing the "B" key twice on the galaxy map will make the taskforce mobilize. From there you can either switch to the system view of the planet you just mobilized the taskforce at, switch to the forces view, select a planet and the taskforce you just formed, and click "Create Colony".

If you want to colonize another system, click on the ship icon that appeared when you mobilized the taskforce, and then click on whichever system you want it to go to.

Note: If your planet has built a "System Colony Ship" it cannot fly to other star systems, and will automatically deploy once it's finished construction. If this is the case, just go to the system view, select forces, click on the planet you want to colonize, and the System Colony Ship, and click "Create Colony".

Originally posted by lord_onyx
1. how do you get technology setup to learn during a turn?

Technology automatically researches every turn. You can decide to dedicate more or less to different fields in order to increase/decrease your rate of development, but you are always moving forward in tech, you never need to "set it up".

[lord_onyx]

On question 1: I started out with a colony task force. I sent them to a system. THe planets were recognized, but I found no way to have the colony task force get to a planet or colonize it. I neeed to know what I missed.

Thanks,
lodr_onyx

[The Wagster]

From the galaxy screen double click on the system in question to go to the system screen, you can now see all the planets in that system. On the right is an info 'box' and at the bottom of that is a button called "Forces" or "Task Forces" or "Ships" or something like that. Clicking on that changes the info in that 'box' to show information about any taskforces (ships) you have in the system, click through the ships until you find the colony ship and select it, then click on the planet you wish to colonise and a button will activate just above the "Forces" button you clicked earlier called "Create Colony" or something like that. Click on that and next turn you'll have a brand spanking new colony

Sorry if my directions are a bit vague but I'm hopeless at remembering what the buttons actually say on them