Beginner question

No.

but the new expansion may change everything....stay tuned

Gees so werid. I swear 2 times now I went into a system, checked all the planets, colonized the 1 system that had a Class greater than 0, and then in a few turns another race colonized another planet in the system - both times the other race's planet had a Class of 5, so I figured there must be some tech I was missing that allowed turning Class 0s into Class 5s.

I must have missed the mouseover or something.

Anyway, thanks for the info.

When I first started, that happened to me a lot. It was very frustrating. The thing was, the planets that the AI colonized were good planets. I just didn't know that because they didn't look like good planets. If you zoom out far enough, the map becomes a tactical map and all the ships and planets become symbols. Zero planets are just thin circles. Good planets are thicker circles. The higher the class, the thicker the circle. (Am I making any sense?) If the planet is a very high class (12 or above) then the cirlce becomes filled.
Also, class 0 planets would be worthless to colonize. Class 5 planets don't help me much either. If there was a way to colonize a class 0, don't colonize it. It would be worthless.
Did that help at all?

just another clue besides the zoom out, when you click on the sun it will list how many habitablt planets are surronding it how many are currently colonized. Like someone mentioend just because it is tiny and looks like mars doesn't mean it is a bad planet

There's also a random event which can drastically boost the habitability of non-colonized planets, but you'll know that one when you see it.

Awesome, everyone.

Thank you very much for the info.

Yeah, it's possible you got the random event... I usually play with habitable planets rare, so the first time I got the random event that made ALL planets within 2 sectors +5 habitability, it made a dramatic difference in the game!

My best advice as a new player is to play a lot of small games, at a beginner or normal level. Then try the tougher difficulty after you have a good understanding of the game.

Good luck!

They should make it so that some of the Class 0 planets can be terraformed into class 4-6 worlds. Not all of them of course. You can't build a colony on a gas giant.