Cant' colonize planets?

[MrDeadshot]

Hello everyone,

I am new to the game and the forum. Started my first game today in dark age mode and got to build a colony-ship. When I target a colonizable planet and say "colonize" with this ship it flies to the destination and stops right in front of the planet. Nothing else happens. The fuel of the ship depletes and it's status always says "colonizing planet xy" - I tried this with several colony ships on different planets. Manually and automated. It does not work. Am I missing something?

[FirstPappy]

Not sure what happens if you exceed the colonization limits that are set at the start of the game. Could it be that?

[MrDeadshot]

ORIGINAL: Pappy

Not sure what happens if you exceed the colonization limits that are set at the start of the game. Could it be that?

Can't remember setting a limit and I only have one planet (my homeworld) at the moment. So it must be possible to colonize the planet.

[MrDeadshot]

Tried another game and there colonization works fine. Another strange thing: In the game where I can't colonize anything I didn't have a colony-ship blueprint and I had to design my own colony ship (even when designing was 100% automatic) ... maybe a bug?

[MrDeadshot]

Okay I found the problem ... my colony ship was TOO SLOW!
It couldn't catch up with the planet rotating in his orbit

Added some boosters and everything works fine

[elanaagain]

Yes, colonizer ships also have the crazy habit of approaching the planet from 'behind' instead of warping to a place ahead of the planet in the planet's orbit path.

[MisadventuresVG]

You might want to do the following... check you have enough fuel for the ship to easily get to its target destination, if you runs out of fuel it will complete the trip to the system but will them be dog slow at sub-light. Then check to make sure you have enough speed to chase planets I'd say a speed between 5-8 is sufficient for this purpose. Plus if the ship gets into trouble it can align and hyperspace out quicker.