How should I allocate terraforming and infrastructure in sword of the stars?

When I found a colony in sword of the stars, I'm presented with two sliders: one for terraforming, and one for infrastructure. I can allocate different amounts of industrial output to each of them, and the total amount of infrastructure/terraforming I can do increases from turn to turn. How should I allocate my resources to terraforming and infrastructure to get my colonies up and running as quickly as possible?

Solution 1:

The question's almost a year old, but I'll take a shot at it in case someone comes looking in the future: In the original game and Born of Blood expansion, allocate all production to infrastructure until that's capped out. Your industrial output is a percentage of the resource level of the planet equal to your infrastructure. At 50 infrastructure, you get half the resource value of the planet in industrial output. So, infrastructure first, then terraforming. You also get a production bonus for population, but by the time this makes a difference you'll be past the colonization stage.

In Murder of Crows and Argos Naval Yard, your industrial output is still a percentage of your infrastructure level, except that it has an additional cap based on your population which is used if your population is too low. A planet with a hundred people (instead of hundreds of millions) will have basically no production even with 100 infrastructure, which is a major change from the original game. The formula is a little complex, so a good rule of thumb is to look at the industrial output of the planet. If it's lower than what you would expect from the infrastructure and resource levels, then your production is capped by lack of population. Terraform first to help your population grow faster, which also has the benefit of reducing colony maintenance costs. As your industrial output approaches the point where you are capped by infrastructure instead of population, switch your production to infrastructure until it is complete and then finish terraforming.

Other good things to keep in mind when colonizing are to use a lot of colony ships (10-20 per planet is a good idea) and to overharvest planets for a few turns after colonizing them. If you're overharvesting more than -10 resources per turn it's a good time to scale it back to normal production only so you don't hurt your long term productivity too much.