For the Onyx Hive, the commander ship Nephelinite indicates is gives 1 promethion each time it survives a battle.  It doesn't give any promethion.

The Onyx Hive tech tree originally had the the tech Orbital Repair, which allows caretaker ships to be built that help heal ships in its fleet.  Since Onyx Hive ships don't repair that way, the caretaker ship was useless.  Caretaker ships have since been removed from the Onyx Hive, but the tech is still called Orbital Repair, and the text still indicates caretakers can be built.

I made a mod that excluded silicon races from the Orbital Repair tech and added a tech to replace it that only silicon races can research.  It has a new name that doesn't mention repair or caretaker ships.  I decided to have it do something for the silicon races, so I had it give +4 to logistics instead of +2.  I also called it Silicon Logistics Improvement to match what it does.

Perhaps something can be done like that to avoid confusion with what can and can't be done by the silicon races.

Yes.  It's called CHEATING or maybe just a BUG.  There have been many, many complaints about this and a lot saves sent in.  We're just waiting for a fix.

A Bug and an Exploit for it

Bug Background
I can't launch a colony ship or constructor without population on it.  I don't think the AI can launch colony ships without population, but it may be worth checking to be sure.  I think it's possible for the AI to launch constructors without population.  I'm not 100% certain, but it's something worth checking to be sure.

When I or the AI gets a colony ship without population, it can't be used to colonize a planet, which is correct.  The AI will try to colonize a planet and fail.  The AI doesn't know what to do after that, so the colony ship just sits there close to the planet, probably still trying to colonize it.  If someone else colonizes the planet, the owner of the colony ship will send it to another planet to colonize it and still fail.  It will then just leave the colony ship there trying to colonize the planet.

The Bug
When the AI gets a constructor without population, I'm 99% certain that it can build a starbase that works normally.  When I get a constructor without population, I definitely can build a starbase that works normally.  This needs to be changed to be like the colony ship so the constructor can't do its job without population.

The Exploit

The exploit comes from a discovery made by DivineWrath and reported on Discord at this link.

https://discord.com/channels/299942486095167489/841714306626093116/962878867431915533

The discovery is that a rally point allows any ship to be upgraded to any available ship of its size without a problem.  This only works on singe ships at the rally point.  This leads to an exploit that uses the bug that allows constructors without population to build starbases.

To use the exploit with constructors, the Starbase tech is needed, then any ship with a cargo hull can be upgraded to a constructor without population.  The constructor can then be used to build a starbase without having to remove population from a core world.  Multiple shipyards can build a ship with a cargo hull that can be upgraded at multiple rally points.  This can lead to multiple constructors being built quickly while still maintaining population on core worlds.  I designed a simple, cheap ship with a cargo hull that could be built at the start of the game so I could have a good starting ship to verify this.

This exploit can be closed by one of these methods.
1. Making sure a constructor can't build a starbase unless it has population.
2. Changing rally points so they can't upgrade ships, but the bug still exists.
3. Doing both in order to be sure