Also! do populations grow linearly? Maybe they shouldn't. They definitely don't grow linearly in real llife. Maybe there should be some kind of generation thing. Like, 16 hours, the population doubles. So it would take 5.8 days to grow it completely, but the strength of the colony would stay relatively low for a few days. The numbers would need to be balanced, obviously, but I would welcome a change where a new colony is something precious that would need to be protected for a little while. And maybe if you take over a struggling colony, it just kills the whole population and turns into an outpost, to prevent people from just being total vultures about it?