Population

in Interstellar Space: Genesis acts as a multiplier for most Colony outputs and is thus one of its most important attributes. It requires no food or other resources for growth or maintenance. A quick way to increase population is to devote  to . Population is expressed in millions of people, which growth is expressed in thousands of people.

## Max Population

Max Population is limited by  and the tolerability of the  to the Empire's race. It can be increased by 2 with a . The Subterranean racial ability increases this by a 50%, and Tolerant ability allows ignoring  penalties.

There is a 4%  penalty for each unit over 14, so large populations come with a trade-off.

## Population Growth

Referring to the "Population" popup when you hover over the " Current/Max" area of the colony screen, Population Growth is determined by:

**Race Base** comes from your racial attributes - by default it is 0.50% of (Current Pop + Pop Growth Progres), making this number the only one that scales with fractions of Pop, while for all other calculations only the completed Pops count.

**Pop Pressure** is calculated as Race Base \* (Current Pop - Max Pop/2)/(Max Pop/2), so it gives a penalty when it's above half. It gives no bonus for being below though.

**Race Pop Growth** = Race Base - Pop Pressure. This is the number all other growth modifiers are multiplied by.

These other factors include:

* devoted to --this can be a very large bonus particularly early on.
* , , and .
* Technologies such as Synthetic Food, Medical Isotopes, , and Neutronic Rejuvenation.
* Medicine secondary trait.
* Planet Specials.
* Special Events.

Each population level requires 1,000 growth units (the absolute numbers displayed in the pop-up), as explained below.

## Growth Mechanics

The mechanics of Population Growth can be a bit confusing because the Population on the main screen is shown in millions while growth is shown in thousands. So it takes 1,000 growth units to raise the colony's population number by 1.

Hovering over the population button (" Current/Max" below "Population" at the top center of the colony panel) will show you the current growth as both an absolute number and as a percentage.

The absolute number (growth units, or 1,000 people) = Current Population \* 1,000 \* growth percent. For a rough idea you can just take the Current Population given on this screen. For the actual Current Population, you can click on the button to open the Population Details Screen--so for a colony it might show "9/16", but drilling down shows it is really 9.892 million--so I need another 108 growth units (108,000 people) to raise my population to the next level (10,000,000).

So if the population popup says my growth rate is 1.00%, this doesn't mean it's going to take 100 turns to reach the next level--if my current level is exactly 9 (9,000,000 people), I'm growing by 90 units (90,000 people) a turn and need 1,000 units (1,000,000 people) to reach the next level of 10 (10,000,000 people). 1,000 / 90 ~= 11.1, so I need just over 11 turns to reach the next level.

The **TLDR;** here is for the absolute numbers on the Population pop-up, you need 1,000 of them to grow the colony one level.

Max Population | Population Growth | Growth Mechanics