AI late game Ship Designing problems (turns 100+)

[LintMan]

Some people stick with and Ion 3 colony ship design for the whole game? I use 3-4 colony ship designs for each type of colony:

1) Basic colony ship - uses colony ship hull, best engines I have the tech for (I have a need for speed), and a cargo bay for extra pop. I think that's basically all that fits in the colony ship hull. As I tech up, I upgrade the engines and cargo bays.

2) Long Range colony ship - same as #1, but with a supply bay instead of cargo. I use this rarely, to colonize a planet a good bit outside my resupply range.

3) Fast Colony ship - uses Destroyer hull (I think), adds a Solar Sail III and extra supply to #1. The extra expense is really marginal - (maybe 1 extra turn build time). I build this design mid-late game when the planet I'm colonizing is more than 2 turns away, mostly then using #1 for in-system colonizations

4) Armored Colony ship - like #3, but with a few pieces of armor for passing safely through (several) damaged warp points. In my Last game, there was a system with several juicy worlds to colonize, but its sole entry point was through 2 damaged warp points in a black hole system, hence this design.