Some capital ships are capable of colonizing planets. There are slight issues with their behaviour when the ability is on autocast (default stting).

If you order those to enter a neutral system the first thing the capital ship is going to do is sending a colony detatchment to the surface.

The problem is that the system is occupied by neutral forces guarding the planet. In most cases the guarding fleet will contain at least one siege frigate.

Wich means the new colony gets imedantely fired upon after founding.

Siege frigates are high priority targets and being the first ones to be attacked by the capital ship. Usually the capital ship ist quick enough in destroying them.

If there are multiple siege frigates, maybe scattered around orbit so the capital ship has to circle the planet its usually death to the colony.

One could argue that its better to colonize imedantely because the planet gets more time to develope and the process is quicker. Still the bombardment will cost manpower (wich slows colony developement) and in some cases annihilate the colony completely, wich means a second colonization efford has to be made.

I suggest a small change in priorities, so that the capital ships will at least take down siege frigates an then auto-colonize planets.

Somebody wanting to colonize despite bombardmend can still micro to do so. But if a colony captital is left alone it should resort to the "save" procedure by default, preventing it from accidents takign up double colinzation effords (antimatter, time).

Thanks for your kind attention.