Silicoid newbie questions

[chaosbat]

Do the Silicoids benefit from a Fertile's planet bonus population growth or do they only grow at the hostile rate even on this special type or planet?
Also, I notice that I have to clean up the accumulated waste on a planet before I can pump bc's into pop growth. But I can immediately pay for Terraforming without doing any cleanup. Is this the case for soil enrichment and atmospheric as well?
Lastly, is there a cap on how much waste the Silicoids have to clean up before they can pump pop? Even on planets that have been set to no cleanup for a long time, it seems like only a few bc's are required to cleanup and start pushing out extra pop?
Thanks,
CB

 

[RefSteel]

'Coids never have to (and never can or do) pay for pollution cleanup. When you have no terraforming project in the works, and pump the ECO slider, you're actually spending on population growth even when it reads "CLEAN." The slider doesn't know what message to display when you're spending on pop growth but haven't yet spent enough to add a full million rocks -- it can't say "NONE" because you'd think you were getting no effect, and can't say "+1" because you're not getting the pop growth yet -- so it shows the same message it would for any other race in the same circumstance, even though it doesn't apply to the 'Coids. When you are terraforming, the slider continues to show "TERRA" even when you've finished 'forming and are actually starting your spending on the next pop unit (as it does for all races). To figure out how much you actually need to spend to just finish your terraforming project, check out the calculation described in Sirian's tutorial: (also, read the whole thing if you haven't already; it's a great way to learn the basics ... and some of the not-so-basics ... of the game).

 

[Zed-F]

1) Silicoids treat all planets as hostile for the purpose of pop growth rate. They do benefit from larger planet size if someone else pre-enriches the planet for them, but they can't enrich it themselves (IIRC, even if they trade for the tech.)

2), 3) -- I think RefSteel answered these.

 

[chaosbat]

Ahhh. I see.
Thanks for the cleanup info. I was confused by the "clean" on the ECO bar. I'm guessing what I took to be "extra" bc's necessary to start pumping up pop was actually just the fact that it takes more bc's to increase silicoid's population. That makes sense, and thanks for the tutorial link.

As to the "fertile" question, I was actually curious about fertile planets generated by initial planet creation, but I assume these act the same as ones terraformed - ie. no increase for 'coids.

Thanks for the info!

CB

 

[Zed-F]

Yep, they just get the extra pop room, not the extra growth rate.