How do you take over an empty colony?

[Grandpa Kim]

Some new info, fresh from one of my PBW games. I sent a "capture" fleet in blind to take a planet in another system. As it turned out, the planet had 0 pop. ... but I captured it anyway! There were two other empty colonies in the system so I tried to capture them the next turn and was successful on only one of them. Still, two outta three ain't bad.

So what did these two colonies have in common? ..... Facilities! Of the third planet, I have no idea, but it seems quite likely it had no facilities. This evidence is thin, but I think a colony needs either population or facilities to be eligible for capture.

Oh, BTW, although my fleet took NO action against the third planet, merely passed through, no combat log, it is now uncolonized and open for recolonization. Weird.

Kim