Population does not grow

[arcturus]

Hello,
I have troubles with the population. I have space for more than 6000 people. They have water and food, so they should have everything they need. Yet, my population just wont grow over 2500... I have a space elevator and a lot of ships shutteling between Mars and Earth, but the colonists keep leaving. How do I make them happy so that they stay?

[mreed2]

How many base level (along the bottom of the screen) bio-techs have you researched?

The UI shows only the cap based on the number and type of buildings that you have, but the actual cap is the lower of the cap allowed by your buildings and the cap allowed by your level of bio-tech. So, if you have only researched bio-tech 1, but built 50 colonies I (100 / colony), then the UI will show a cap of 5000, but the actual cap will be much lower than that (500? something like that).

[Gaspurr]

I have the same issues. I have a capacity for 1300 colonists spread out over a number of type I and II colonies and some research outposts. I have 4 spaceports on migration duty but each shuttle will only bring in a handful (Between 3-10) people, which is very frustrating.

I have Biotech 2 researched, all my colonies & outposts are stockpiled and no colonists wanting to leave Mars. Instead, I have some 7200 new arrivals in spaceports (I guess these are on Earth) which I cannot get motivated to join my adventure.

Any ideas on what's wrong?

[Spite Sprite]

Thank you for your reports. We'd like to try to reproduce this issue on our end so we can get to the bottom of what's going on! We haven't been able to reproduce this ourselves yet, so in order to do so, we'll need some additional information from one of you -- preferably a save file so we can jump in ourselves. Could you send one to us by filling out a report here?[rawfury.atlassian.net] Save files are located in Per Aspera's "SaveGames" folder. This can be easily located by navigating to your Steam Library, right clicking "Per Aspera", selecting "Properties", then "Local Files", and finally selecting "Browse Local Files..."

[Gaspurr]

Thank you, ticket SUP-9105 created. I also attached the savegame in question.
I should note that I find the colonist "deployment" and their subjectively random movement between colonies is rather unintuitive so troubleshooting is difficult.
May I suggest that
a) the number of colonists in flight from Earth to Mars are given
b) they can then be assigned a colony/outpost when they arrive on Mars
c) colonists leaving for Earth are flagged as such in the departure window to make that extra clear and
d) that airship speeds are boosted
Thanks for considering.

[Edit:] I just don't understand. I created a new (sandbox) game, set up my first colony, it's fully stockpiled and I have no other outposts whatsoever.
Immediately after arrival of my first 100 colonists, 3 peeps are scheduled for departure already.

Screenshot for reference: https://ibb.co/MD4t6kb

In the end 8 out of the 100 people left their fully supplied habitat back to Earth for reasons unknown to me. So I modified the savegame and instantly set up a second colony. After reload those 8 leavers left for my second colony instead of leaving Mars.
However, when the second wave of 100 new colonists arrived, only 8 left the spaceport and joined colony 1 to fill up to the original 100, whereas the other 92 stayed in the spaceport and thus "vanished".
I guess that is why in my original game I have some 7200 people loitering around in the spaceports, refusing to join my colonies...
...which is a mess.

[Edit 2:] Sorry for the autobiographical wall of text here but I think I may have gotten a clue: One singular starport doesn't seem to be capable of serving multiple colonies, even if they are very close together. It's just like colony #0 does exist for starport #0 but colony #1 right next door isn't recognised. I found out after I upgraded colony #0 to 250 people and that was when the starport "activated" the accumulated 92 loiterers and sent them straight to colony #0, once again completely ignoring the empty colony #1 buildings.

Should a developer read this, could you please confirm if this is indeed intended or a bug?

Thanks in advance, fly safe!

[Spite Sprite]

Thank you so much for the ticket, save file, and all of your info. I'm sorry you're running into this perplexing and frustrating issue!

I can absolutely confirm that this is not working as intended and that this a bug. Our initial investigations (thanks to your ticket!) seem to be that zeppelins are disappearing en route. Although I won't have an ETA available given the complexity of bug fixes such as this, we are working on fixing the problem.