[Slick]

Thanks, but I am still a little unclear about this one part.

Does the game check that the chosen colony ship has the right colony component for the target planet, or could it accidentally send the wrong type of colonizer?
No. If you pick an ice planet and only have rock colonizers it won't send any ship to that planet.

Just to be clear, say I have some rock colonizers and some ice colonizers available. If I "send colony ship" to an ice planet, will it pick the nearest available ice colonizer even though there may be nearer rock colonizers (which would give an error when they tried to colonize the planet)???

Slick.