I have 2 colony ships built, selectable from the ships and bases screen.
When I hit F3 it says in the drop down box is emtpy and the button says "no colony ships available"
When I click on a planet in the main screen that I wish to colonize, it says "Yes, native type for Securan" and will not let me colonize. Left click does nothing
I took a Securan planet recently, but it was TINY. only one. And that was after my colony ships were already built. I was going to send them the the place I took by force which pissed me off and caused me to take it by force. The pop there is like 100M, not even 1% of my empire population.
It says this for every possible colony. Not just desert. continental too. I can't seem to colonize anything now.
Plus, why aren't they appearing in the drop down list in the F3 screen?
EDIT:
Wait wait, I think I know whats going on...
Ok, so I cannot colonize desert or oceans normally, but if I was to build a colony ship at walrus land, then I could colonize ocean. If I build a colony ship at Securan land, then I could colonize desert...I see. So the ships I build at Haakonish land aren't usable and thus don't appear in the drop down for those types.
The colony ships I do have have to be from a race that can colonize continental for the continentals, etc.
But the research techs allow me to colonize that researched type no matter what?
You can always build the ones you have researched. I don't think you "fix" your existing ships when you get a new tech, though.
If you have over minimum population (I think it may be 100M), you can have that colony build a colony ship of for instance securans to colonize a desert, even without the tech.
If you find, for instance, a gizurean refugee ship, you will see volcanic planets appear in your various "potential colonies" lists, until you have used it to colonize somewhere. When that colony reaches the limit to build colonization ship, you will always see volcanic planets as long as you got that colony (and don't kill off the gizurean population, of course).
Researching the appropriate colonization techs does in fact allow you to colonize a world type without worrying about needing a species that can natively colonize that planet. Couldn't say what it does for preexisting colony ships, though.
As long as you have a sufficient population of a species within your empire which can natively colonize a given type of planet, you will be able to use that species to build colony ships to found colonies for your empire on worlds of that type. Unless I'm mistaken, "sufficient population of a species" means that at least one of your colonies must be primarily inhabited by that species - i.e. the planetary population of that species is greater than the planetary population of any other species residing on that world (this is the same thing which determines what species will be recruited if you train ground forces at that planet).
