How quickly do you grow your population?

[MatthewCline]

With more dupes you can get things done quicker, but they also consume more food and oxygen.  So what have you found to be the ideal balance between printing new ones as fast as you can vs holding off?

[Oozinator]

I end with <10 dupes max.
I add only fresh dupes, when full research is done and farm is stable.
I add only +1 to the dupes, before research is done, when i have much natural grown food in starterbiome.
With ten dupes they are 50% of time idle, when not building stuff..

[Kasuha]

I run with 3, maximum 4 duplicants until I have food production started up (mealwood), because plant seeds available are limited by number of growth cycles the plants got rather than on duplicant workpower. Then I start hiring again but usually stop at 8 or 10.

[Kuirem]

I go for 6 duplicants, that's enough to cover every important job and 6 Comfy bed fit right into the maximum size of a 24x4 Barracks.

Printing every single dupes can make for an interesting challenge though, just be prepared to build a cemetary.

[old_fantom]

The first three dupes I hire after launch have to have at least 5 strength and have an easy to live with weakness.  I get a researcher at launch, so I look for yokel or pacifist in my early dupes.  Getting to 6 dupes takes a while.  So early (less than 50 cycles) 3-6.  Then I go to 8-12 in mid game.  I am usually stable at cycle 50-80.  Mid game lasts until I have nearly mined out the entire map north of the oil biomes, about cycle 1000.  I usually stick at 12 until late game when I have oxygen in the entire map and food consistently above 300k.  Then I add up to 24 max in the late game 1000 cycles plus.  I don't think I could run more than 24 with the issues of growing food without cooling.  

[Muggins]

I normally cap my population at 15 but mostly to avoid extra lag.

[Soulwind]

It's just my personal challenge level, but every 3 cycles when dupes become available,  I take one.   I will make an occasional exception if every dupe has one of the completely unacceptable defects.  

[CrazeeIvan]

I'm pretty similar to a few people here, though my strategy has changed into this since Occupational.

Food is the biggest killer, then oxygen. Taking on too many dupes too fast results in inevitable starvation for someone and then micromanaging food is a real pain. So I usually stay with the starting 3 until about cycle 50 or so, when my mealwood farm is big enough to support more and stable environment.
After that, the next obstacle comes in the form of getting electrolyzers setup before you run out of Algae. In my experience, 6-8 dupes gives you a solid workforce along with low enough oxygen intake that I can comfortably reach my goal without any suffocation; sometime around cycle 150~

Once oxygen and food are sustainable, I tend to go balls to the wall and scale up to 15-20 dupes; taking care not to take on any deadweight.
I will say, I like to setup a second "base" with all modcons somewhere closer to my secondary ice biome/sleet wheat farm. Cuts down on travel time significantly.

All this is while ensuring that I'm rotating my dupes and they are getting training in all roles...

[withers]

1 dupe every 10 turns for the whole game, even when it gets crowded.

[NanoD]

Usually I take the first 3 dupes as fast as I can, to get to at least 6 dupes. 

Then I might reject some dupes depending how it looks like, but some times there is just to juice dupe that I really want then I can take even if I dont feel like I can support more dupes. 

But I have done take all dupes challenge and done lots of runs. A while I did feel like about 40 dupes was the max I wanted. But some updates it got so slow, I down size it to 16 dupes.  But now I am trying again with more dupes and see how the new optimizations handles more dupes.

[MorsDux]

+1 soulwind

 

[PickPay]

I take new Dupes as they are available if Im comfortable expanding and have enough O2/food. Stopped at 20 and Im at +350 Cycles.