So... How big have you managed to get your colony?

[sargatanus]

I'm mostly curious for Vanilla numbers since the sky is the limit (well... and CPU/GPU specs) with modding.

[*The Bad Technical Lagging Pun]

I safely got to at least 1k colonists at base game without any dlc or mods.

The lag however happened when I decided to construct 80+ domes at once just to test limits.

[Denniss]

The largest I got was 20-25k. Older system with massive lags but still playable. At some time it stopped loading saves so impossible to continue

[76561198356019466]

200 XD
I having gaming ADD

I get to a 2nd dome and think, "No. I don't like the setup. I wanna start over."

[cap-boulanger]

I think the biggest colony I've had was around.... 7000 or so colonists? I had a lot of room to expand but the population was booming so fast that I literally was doing nothing but building and filling domes.

[Alex]

The largest colony I had was at around 6200 colonists. A combination of mega-domes, apartments and hanging gardens allowed for a high population density.

Interestingly enough, that configuration was easier on the hardware as well. In a previous attempt, I went with smart complexes, and therefore a lower population density. This forced me to build new domes non-stop. After hitting 5000 colonists, the game started to slow down considerably, so I had to abandon it. Apparently, the migration mechanics eat up a significant chunk of the resources, so fewer domes seem to speed up the game.