[Tezzezar]

Definitely not a dumb question. I always put a cargo component on my colony ships. If the ship is starting out at a planet with a decent amount of population I'll just hit the colony button and tell it where to go. Population automatically loads.

If you're starting out on a planet with a low population level or sending the colony ship to a war zone, manually add a few million citizens to start the colony. Move the ship to the colony and manually hit the colony button. You can use population transports later to add populations if necessary.

One Last tip: beware building colony ships and moving them without population. You'll be very unhappy five turns later when your planet colonizes and there are no people to produce anything.

T-