Duh I'm stupid and can't move my colony ship...

just click on the colony ship, and then left click on the destination. It should move automatically after that.

Think it's right-click on the destination actually...

~SDC~

You need to load a new colony ship with population from the planet it's built on.

click on a tiny ship icon, in lower right of screen, (after you select the new colony ship from the ships tool bar list.)

then click on another tiny icon (with a green arrow on it) just to the right of that one - set your loading population with the slider bar, then press `launch' button.

now the ship will appear on the map

hah ha documentation is as bad as MOO3. these instructions don't appear in the manual

The difference between GC's interface and MOO3's is night and day. If you have any level of prior experience with strategy games, you can play GC right out of the box without reading one word of the manual. No one will ever understand the convoluted morass that is MOO3.

Worst interface ever.

Also, if you open up the Planets screen for the planet that just built the colony ship (and you'll automatically be taken there at the beginning of the turn to decide if you want to change the ship type you're building), you'll see that little box in the bottom righthand corner that says "Ships In Orbit." That's where you'll see your colony ship (and if you hover your mouse cursor over the ship icon for a second, it should tell you what ship it is). Now, you can do what was said above or you can also just double-click on the ship icon and it will show a Launch dialog in the very bottom right corner with a slider that lets you choose how many people you want to load from your planet onto the ship (I think it defaults to half that planet's current population). Once you've got that set, click the Launch button and your ship will now show up ready to move.

~SDC~