Hmm my concern about space ports was that it made the game go too slow, way too slow. The stock game itself is slow enough already on a large map, and that's with me taking every single planet effortlessly.
And there's no way to transport some 340M people onto a colony, unless I lose a lot of engines. And well, personally, I hate slow games, slow ships... Oh yeah. So I'll take natural merchants, save myself a few years!
Kill some population first? But that'd also mean destroying a whole load of facilities, cargo, etc... then i might as well not take it over.. Perhaps a solution would be to make facilities Last longer by having a lower chance of being hit, or killing more population per damage point... I'm sure something can be done.
Abd.
And no, haven't tested 1.09. Too tired today