[Fyron]

You have to have a movement point to colonize, so the colony pod will need an engine.

Population can't grow in cargo.

I don't believe anyone was able to get something like the infiltration bay to work, especially for use over enemy planets.

Web mines won't work without causing actual damage. You can make engine-only damage mines, though. None of the damage types that do not do physical damage work on mines.

Weapons can't generate resources. You can make a "scrap mining" type of facility that produces extra resources but lowers planet value (VIP ability works as a negative), but that's about it.

There is no way to implement scanning of other systems, short of cloaked drones. They will hit any mines present, unless you want to make all drones skip minefields in settings.txt:

Drones Can Be Hit By Mines := True

In SE5, you can make a new drone unit type that skips mines, while leaving the others as normal, but such fine-grained control doesn't exist in SE4.

Autolaunching units can be accomplished via repeat orders, though I'm not sure you can do it for planets in sequential movement games, due to launching immediately.