[geoschmo]

We made a uni-colony component for Devnull mod that became available when all three colony techs had been researched. I suppose you could easily make this a racial tech and allow the race choosing it to colonize all three types earlier.

I think in terms of what will be technically possible in the far future, colonizing gas-giants is a lot more likely than many of the other things that we take for granted in SEIV and other Sci-fi literature and games.

In terms of strict realism I think it's way less likely that a species native to a gas giant could develop the tools nessecary to build ships to leave their planet than it would be for us to go there. But if you try to make the game fit into strict realism, it wouldn't be very fun.

Geoschmo