Colony questions

how to find the best location for a new colony?

what things you must take that into consideration before sending a gaia of?

what is needed to build a new colony?

The placing of colonies ir random in ways the closer to the sun the better for power but less fields. the farther out the beter for hydrogen but less power and the possiablility for larger ammounts of fields. What is needed is a gaia and resources for the new colony. for my first i set 2 cargo ships fully loaded with the gaia but that was in the system that I have my homeworld.

Depending on where you send your Gaia--it can cost A LOT of hydrogen. One member was going to send a Gaia Colony Ship out to Galaxy 13 where I am, until they found out the hydrogen cost for the trip was around 50,000. Intra-system colonization doesn't cost much, though it's a dice roll if you get a good field count--just make sure you take some ships along with resources so you can hit the ground running when you land.

I have my home planet and 2 colonies in the same solar system, and still I seem to run out of Ore, Crystal and hydrogen or especial Crystal and Hydrogen.

My home planet is number 13
And my colonies are at number 3 and 15

And I have a gaia sitting in my shipyard, but I don’t know where to send it, and as I am always low on hydrogen.

The colony I landed today I sent 25,000 ore, 12,000 crystal and 3,000 hydro and that got my colony to.
Ore Mine 8
Cry Mine 9
Hyd Mine 6 (you need 5 for nuclear)
Sol 11
Nuc 1
Ship 1 (You need shipyard 2 for Laser Cannon)
Capital 2 (you need Cap 2 for a shipyard)
So that's an idea of what to take. You can build slower if it's your first and it's best to get them producing sooner than later.

1 how long does it take you to transfer resources. most of my colonies are within 2 slots of each other and with pulse drive 5 it takes 53 min to get resources to my home planet.

2 I have a hydrogen planet in 15. Y because I need more hydro for tech.

3 I personally dont build more than 5 sats to power my colonies. (this makes them a less tempting target for my enemies.)
I hit 1 planet just because it had 25 sats around it. sent in the recyclers to harvest. And I know I disrupted him mines that was the fun part.

4 is the planet a fire base (strike base) IE I move my my ships there so that I can hit a person in the next system over and instead of having 4 hours to fleet and resource save now he has 1 hour.

lastly i dont keep colonies under 200 fields - y pour tons of resources at a planet that can not return the investment. (Exception to this is the fire base, I dont really care how big it is I wont keep it after the war is over.)

37:125:8 Ontopia Home world F163
37:125:6 OmniStarfire colony F202
37:125:15 Onipeace colony F287
37:125:10 COLA Spa and Resort F256

Check the wiki about field numbers on planets. Farther out does not always mean more fields. I got a 282 planet in the #5 spot. 4, 5, and 6 can have the most fields, but they can also have very few (one time I got a 60). I have colonized the same planet twice so far trying to get at least over 200 fields.