zero pop colony ship creates zero pop colony

I've never heard of this bug. Maybe someone at Stardock can help you, like CariElf.

Interstellar, I too got that bug. My colony stayed at zero untill i decided to transport 1 settler unit over in a transport. The colony then developed and grew as normal. Don't have a clue what caused it.

But sorry Cari. I couldn't duplicate it.

Zero pop planets seem to grow OK. They're sometimes created by library events or UP votes.
If you're looking for an in-game justification, the zero refers to the number of tax-payers. There are other people hiding who you don't know about.


~SDC~

I've had combat transports go from 5000 M to 0 M as well so this bug isn't limited to just colony ships.

I had a zero pop colony once. I happened in rather odd manner. I invaded an alien planet with a full combat transport using traditional warfare, won the fight, but it started off with zero pop instead of the transport's survivors. How did it get this way? The planet was building a colony ship and it was just completed on the turn of the invasion (the military building que was on colony ship). I theorize that the AI tried to re-colonize its own planet directly after the invasion during the clean up turn when the alien empire would reorganize what was left or go out of business after being conquered, but instead it gave the victor (me) a zero pop colony. It grew like any other colony would after that, just starting from zero.

I don't know where the people went to in this bug, but normally a zero pop colony grows just like any other. Remember, the population displayed is only *tax-paying* population. I suppose the pilots and their families still start the colony on their own though

Interstellar: did you by any chance give the colony ship a move order from the "ships" (F3) screen? I've noticed that doing this with transports empties them, even if they're full and in space. Maybe it's the same with colony ships.

Yes I was playing with the F3 screen, trying to use it to find all my colony ships. I'm still not sure what I did exactly, so I didn't mention that that happened. I apparently gave it a move order inadvertently using F3 but I don't know how. As a result, I no longer use the F3 screen for anything. I'm scared of giving out random move orders! LOL

~SDC~

The F3 can be useful. Clicking on the little arrow to the right of a ship's icon in the F3 screen gives the ship orders to move to the centre of the main screen as currently viewed. So if you know where you want all your battleships (say) to be, but you don't want to faff about finding them all, just
1) Centre the screen where you want them to go, and
2) Bring up the F3 and click on the battleships' "move" arrows.

I've found it very convenient BUT it does seem to empty transports. Pity, eh?

Actually I played yesterday, and after accidentally winning a battle with mass drivers, the planet was no longer very habitable, so I lifted all the colonists.

The colony still existed with 0 population. That colony not only built new colony ships, but the population increased. How exactly do 0 people reproduce?

As said, because there are people there that simply don't pay taxes.

To abandon a world, you need to go into the world details, and use the "ABANDON" button. Otherwise, you still pay for the world, you just sent all your tax payers off via colony or transport. All the non-tax payers are still there.

So my hippies are not paying taxes, reproducing and building starships. Weird.

You have to make a difference between civiliand and military if you build a colony ship you can only move civilians, if you build a combat transport you can only move soldiers, so maybe you moved all your soildiers, or maybe you move all your civilians letting behinds either group, I think.