For you're last question:

What has helped for me is check you're Population see how that is I found if you make troop transports or other colony ships and transport them to a less populated planet you're approval rating does go up also goto you're details on your screen of the planet you're looking at and check to see what you're peeps are saying about the place that can lend some insight

4]You also need to look at the size of the module. Each ship can only hold so much equipment. You might be capable of fitting more of a more expensive module with similar stats, than a larger, less expensive module. On the other hand, if you aren't filling up the ship, design it so that you have the cheapest parts for effect. The modules, weapons, armor, etc. you add should be determined by what you want the ship to do. If you just want a scout, throw on some Ion engines(moderate sized, but cheap for effect) and a few sensors. If you want a weapon barge, throw on the most size efficient weapons and eat the costs to have a vessel capable of doing more damage.


5]Too high a population causes morale problems. The higher the population, the more morale penalties you incur. Also, IIRC, due to the way morale bonuses are applied, morale boosts become less effective as morale penalties increase. Once your population on a planet gets beyond 18 billion, morale becomes a severe issue.

Your average colony supports 6 billion people. Your capital, on the other hand, supports 12 billion people. If you have the same farm and entertainment setup on every planet, you are likely overpopulating your capital. Try removing a farm from the capital to see if morale improves after the starvation kills off the excess. Alternatively, build large numbers of transports and continually load up population and store them for when you launch an invasion to keep the population down.

1. Click on the planet. On the right-ish side of the planet display at the bottom of the UI, you'll see ships in orbit. Double-click a ship to get it out of orbit.

For newly built ships, you'll see blue icons on the right hand edge of your screen. Left-clicking takes you to the planet that built the ship. Right-clicking launches the ship out of orbit and takes you to it (unless you have a rally point setup for the planet, then right-clicking just clears the icon off the screen).