I ran into a problem while playing the game where the planet showed up as an icon in the screen where you normally see what ships are in orbit around the planet. I could not build any more ships and any ships I sent to the planet were never seen from again.

I was playing in a large universe, custom race, and "challenging" level. Prior to the appearance of the ship eating planet, I think that there were about 8 ships in orbit. The action that occurred just prior to the planet going all hungry on me was a freighter sent out from the planet was destroyed. I went back to a prior saved game to resolve the problem.

Don't know if this issue has been posted before, but there you go.