ast486: I bought this game awhile ago and just got around to playing it recently.

I'm playing the mechanical race and what is absolutely batshit is that while my mechs don't require food or water, colonizing a planet that has iron or the like requires food and water!

That's ridiculous!
All food should be removed from requirements when I'm playing as mechs.
Water makes sense if it's required to mine ALL metals, since in real life it's needed to cool, lubricate, float materials down rivers, etc.
What's even more rediculous is that getting a water planet also requires food and getting a food planet also requires water, while the mech race has NO way to make any of it.

This is a gamestopping design failure.
How did this slip through and not get corrected this entire time since release?!?

xXSunSlayerXx: I'm not entirely sure what game you are playing, but i just started a game as mono to make sure and the planets didn't require any food or water to level up. the only requirements were population and the respective amount of tiered resources. did you update your game to the newest version at any point?
what is your current game version (bottom right corner in the main menu)?

xXSunSlayerXx: are you sure about that? when i installed the game back in the day with galaxy, it was absolutely not up to date. i think they recently updated the installer/ galaxy download to be 2.0.0, but if you installed the game a few days ago your game might have been outdated. try the "check for updates" button in the main menu.

ussnorway: The mono race does NOT use colonise to transfer units onto a new planet… a fact that is clearly printed in the race description. They don’t need food or water but resources and population limits still apply.

To “colonise” a new planet (or increase it) you first select the home planet that will be sending units over… then right click on the planet you want to send the units over too and the bottom list item should be “transfer units”.

Things that can stop this transfer;
Sending troops uses lightspeed energy and you will need more to send units to planets longer away… you may have to wait for this resource to build up.
The planet may be blockaded… this is normally because the remnant fleets are in system
The planet has been occupied already by another player race… this does at least update your map.
Yes you can send every last unit from the home planet but doing this will leave the old planet unusable until you reoccupy it again.

Mono (general) Tips;
Alliances make the game much easier to learn | play and the fact that your race does NOT need food or water makes any race that does a natural ally… give them the planets you don’t want because this stops them being occupied by races that are not as friendly to you.

Don’t only use your home planet to transfer troops… this is needed at the start but loosing to many troops will quickly drop your income capacity and as you expand the lightspeed cost gets inhibitive so look for level 2 or 3 resource planets that can act as troop building centres for your empire without crippling the home system