Have 1st colony ship, but when I try to send it out, it shoes minus capacity & errors out. Why is the capacity minus?

It's going farther than it can hold the fuel needed. Example your going so far it need 10k deut to get there it can only hold 5k.... You can either slow it down or pick a closer destination.

It should be noted to everyone especially new players that:

Slots 7,8,9 have the highest possible and average number of fields. When colonizing you want to get planets with at least 200+ fields. This will become very helpful later on as terraforming gets hella exspensive.
Slots are arranged 1-15, 1 being closest to the sun and the hottest 15 being furthest and coldest. The higher the max temp on a planet the more effiecient solar sats will, while the lower the max temp is the more deuterium will be produced. planets also tend to be smallest in slots 1-3, and 12-15.

Feel free to ask me more about any of these things

Yes, it is the fuel capacity.

unknownhost wrote:It should be noted to everyone especially new players that:

Slots 7,8,9 have the highest possible and average number of fields. When colonizing you want to get planets with at least 200+ fields...planets also tend to be smallest in slots 1-3, and 12-15...

I believe it is slots 4-8 and ESPECIALLY slot 14 that are generally accepted as having the highest average fields. And for long term growth I would suggest a minimum of 300 fields, not 200.

unknownhost wrote:...Slots are arranged 1-15, 1 being closest to the sun and the hottest 15 being furthest and coldest...

It should be noted that this is on average. You are not gauranteed to get a cold planet in the higher slots or a hot planet in the lower slots.

Either slow it down, or send a Cargo Ship alongside if you want to send it further out at max speed.

The galaxies are a linear chain. so from Galaxy 5, Galaxy 1 and 9 are equal distance.

The further your ships travel, the faster they get. Although the Rate of Increase slows down exponentially.