What do you use transport ships for?

[Grandpa Kim]

Fyron, Undertakr, that's what I like about this game: so many ways to do the same thing and its almost impossible to figure out which is best. But here's a question for Undertakr: How much population do you need on each of your 10 planets to match production on my 15 planets each with less than 100 million population? Make it two: What population do you need to reduce planetary ship yard build time to less than 5 turns?

Back to the original question. When it comes to transports, I will use different hulls and configurations depending not only on usage, but tech level, pop growth rate, warp point position, economy etc, ad nauseum. I am only now beginning to develop some standard designs, certainly not all. About the only one I've used for a long time is a pop transport made from the small transport hull. And it can (and does) double as a transport for anything.
MaCready, I use transport hulls to transport anything. Now, 50% of the space must be used for some sort of cargo bay. That includes the cargo bay, satellite bay, mine layer, drone launcher, fighter bay and the colony components. Many mods have a small amount of cargo capacity in other components, notably the supply storage. This allows you to use transports as refuellers.

Kim