Never enough Tech's, here's some ideas

[raynor]

The universal colony pod turns out to be extremely easy to create. In your SEIV\Data directory is a file called Components.Txt. Edit this file and look for the first components in the file--the colonization components. Find the Gas Colony component and copy it immediately below the first one. Change its name to Universal Colony. Now, change these lines:

Number of Abilities := 2
Ability 1 Type := Colonize Planet - Gas
Ability 1 Descr := Can colonize a gas giant planet.
Ability 1 Val 1 :=
Ability 1 Val 2 :=
Ability 2 Type := Cargo Storage
Ability 2 Descr := Provides 20kT worth of cargo space.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 20
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None

so that they now look like:

Number of Abilities := 4
Ability 1 Type := Colonize Planet - Rock
Ability 1 Descr := Can colonize a rock based planet.
Ability 1 Val 1 :=
Ability 1 Val 2 :=
Ability 2 Type := Colonize Planet - Ice
Ability 2 Descr := Can colonize an ice based planet.
Ability 2 Val 1 :=
Ability 2 Val 2 :=
Ability 3 Type := Colonize Planet - Gas
Ability 3 Descr := Can colonize a gas giant planet.
Ability 3 Val 1 :=
Ability 3 Val 2 :=
Ability 4 Type := Cargo Storage
Ability 4 Descr := Provides 20kT worth of cargo space.
Ability 4 Val 1 := 20
Ability 4 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None

And, there you go! You now have a component which can colonize any planet type. The only thing left is to determine what tech level you want to require. Maybe, add another tech level to Rock, Ice and Gas Colonization before you can use this? You could also modify Cargo Storage to make it 500 instead of just 20. Then, when you tell a ship equipped with this component to colonize a planet, the game will automatically load the ship with the max colonist the ship can hold -- 100 Million. This way, your new colony will have the 5% production bonus from population right away. You can also modify how big you want this component to be or how many minerals you want it to cost.

Hope this helps.