Newbie question re interface

[FinnegansFather]

Been playing the game several hours and enjoying it a lot. However, the complexity of planning colonization seems overwhelming, and I think I must be missing something.

I see in the Expansion Planner screen where to find out which locations can be colonized with my current level of colonization tech. However, I don't see an organized way to keep track of all the star systems discovered to this point, so that I can know what good locations I would gain by researching a particular colony tech, such as Ice or Desert Colonization. If the goal is a particular resource, I see how to go looking for a potential location of that sort. But how about if I am just looking for high quality locations to extend my empire in a given direction. I doubt that I am supposed to have to go looking though each planet and moon in each star system -- but at the moment, that's the only thing I can see to do.

Is there some spreadsheet-like summary of discovered star systems, with planets and moons listed?

[Bingeling]

There is no such function as far as I know. You should find the ones with resources (and no mine) by browsing resources by galaxy priority, but that is only slightly more convenient than doing it the hard way on the map.

[FinnegansFather]

Well, bummer. This game is light years ahead of MOO2, but even MOO2 had that function. Seems an odd thing to have to do without.

[Verjigorm]

I somehow don't understand your problem. Sort the potential colonies in the expansion planner by quality and check their resources. Next check their distance and pick the best. Even though one isn't rich in resources, if the new planet provides a good quality you're going to benefit in form of growing income - that's, what colonies are for.

[Bingeling]

The issue is that if you are a brand new human empire, you have no tool to figure out where those juicy 95% quality marshes, deserts, and oceans are, so that you can figure out how important it is to get more colonization tech, and which ones to go for first.