Hello all. Just needed to ask a question or two as I' m a little lost...
1) How do I transport food? I built freighters, but then what?
2)At what point can I start colonizing radiated planets? What research will that take?
3) I find myself banging away at the "end turn" button early in the game as I'm waiting for a new tech or colony ship to be built. Is this normal?
Thx in advance!

1) Food is transported automatically. You need one freighter per food unit per turn.
aka:
Planet A produces 10 units of food with 3 people. excess is 4 units
Planet B produces 2 units of food with 2 people. Starvation is 2 units.
You need two freighters to transport extra two units from planet A to planet B.
Empire's total food production is +2
2) You can colonize them anytime. To make them terran you will require two technologies:
radiation shield which has to be built on planet. it turns radiated planet into barren.
and then terraforming: twice. To turn planet from barren to swamp/ocean/desert etc. and second time to terran.
3) If you start the game with technological level set at pre-warp beginnings are slow. first 50 turns you don't do much. just wait for ages for tech to be researched, for ships to be built. nothing to do.
if you set the age to be later you will have more stuff to do as you will already have colony ships and other technologies.

You need to terraform three times.
Barren -> Desert or Tundra
Desert -> Arid or Tundra -> Swamp
Arid, Swamp or Ocean -> Terran
And the cost of terraforming increases every time you use it on a planet, so expect to take some time to get a planet from Radiated to Terran. This information is available in the manual.
It is of course very much worth it on a decent sized planet (Large/Huge) with decent minerals (Abundant/Rich/Very Rich) due to both farming and population limit. Don't waste time on doing it to a Small or Tiny planet, or a Poor or Ultra Poor one.

Thx guys. Lukas in your example wouldnt planet A be producing 7 excess food if it had 10 food/3 people?

ah yes. i was under assumption that one population needs 2 units. but it in fact needs one.
food is hardly a problem... only in the beginning. then you stop caring about it and only about moving your workers from farming to industry or research.
and yeah. three times to terraform.
i... probably should check stuff before saying anything :D

CoRed please remember that transporting people (well, mostly aliens, but you know who I mean) between colonies takes 5 freighters per 1 population, so if you sent them recklessly you might end up with starvation on some of your planets as there won't be enough ships to ferry the food.
On the other hand, during space travel people (err, aliens) eat only what their mamas have made them for second breakfast, so the planet they've left might experience a food surplus.