Colonize

A ship with a mission of  "colonize" will be disassembled by it's crew when the starship reaches an own or unowned planet. The ship’s parts are used to make supplies for the colonists after unloading any colonists, cargo and fuel on the ship to the planet's surface.

Colonizing ships is not the way to go in order to inhabit new planets, since ships can only be colonized once. To take ownership of an unowned planet just move a ship with some clans in the cargohold to that planet, and when you're there use the cargo screen to drop clans onto the planet. The ship can then move on to the next planet, and repeat the process.

The following is an excerpt from an article called "Reverse alchemy" which was written by Jan "Sirius" Klingele. It explains the consequences of the colonisation mission in great detail. The full article can be found at the Planeteer Resurrection website

"The Host person can set the recycle rate to any thing from 0% to 100%. Default setting is 75%. This is the percentage of the minerals that are recovered from a starship that colonises a planet. The minerals that were used to build the hull and weapon systems are transformed back into minerals and laid out on the planet's surface. Money spent to build a ship cannot be recovered. Fighters are recycled.

The only fact totally clear is that you loose all the megacredits spent on the colonising ship. However it is not correct, that you can recover the recycling rate of all the minerals used for the ships components. The truth is (at least for host versions 3.21 and 3.22), that you get the recycling rate only of the minerals used for the hull, the engines and the beam weapons back. You do not get any minerals for torpedo launchers or torpedoes on board, but you receive, surprisingly enough, the full minerals for the fighters the colonising ship is carrying.

• Tri = Recycle rate * (hull tri + engines tri + beams tri) + fighter tri
• Dur = Recycle rate * (hull dur + engines dur + beams dur.) + fighter dur
• Moly = Recycle rate * (hull moly + engines moly + beams moly) + fighter moly

In any case it is evident that you lose during the "Colonisation" Mission a certain portion of the minerals and all the money used for the construction of the ship. These losses of the "Colonisation" mission deter most players from using the mission on a regular basis.

....

Experimentation with host version 3.21 and 3.22 has shown, that you get the following amount of supplies: one supply for every Kt of hull mass plus one supply for every engine plus one supply for every fighter plus one supply for every torpedo on board. You get no supplies for beam weapons or torpedo launchers.

• Supplies = Mass of hull (/ Kt) + no of engines + no of fighters + no of torps"

Crew to Colonists
The number of clans that will be added to a planet's population from a ship's crew is calculated by
Clans = Roundup (Crew / 100 ).

So a Small Deep Space Freighter with it's crew of 2 will, when colonized, put 1 clan on the planet: 2/100 rounded up is 1. A Virgo with it's crew of 1858 gives a planet a population of 19, because 1858/100 rounded up is 19.

Any colonists onboard the ship's cargohold will simply become colonists on the planet.