Are Gold Aliens capable of upgrading the citadel level of their homeworld if it is level 5 or lower? Or is the planet set to remain whatever level that I set in TEDIT?

I'm sorry, I don't have your answer because most games with Gold Alien planets are captured rather easily.

The Gold Aliens have a peculiar habit of placing the bulk of their figs in the sector above their planet which makes it easier to capture.

Standard Ferrengi however do keep their fighters on the planet, which is why I continue to use a Gold planet for standard ferrengi. My Gold ferrengi planet holds 10M fuel, 10M figs 50k shields. Even with an additional 2M figs in the sector, players on my server (Comet) capped it within 140 days in a 1k turn game.

This time, I gave the Ferrengi 10M Sector figs, 10M planet figs, 10M fuel, and 50k shields. The game has 1250 turns, it will be fun to see how long it will take them to capture this one. With a very "fat" bank, it's well worth the effort.

Go head and make a game with 5 different Alien planets at 5 different citadel levels and see what happens.

I have no clue about v2.xx, but in v1.03 the aliens will upgrade thier homeworld cit if the resources are availble to do so. Colonists are the main factor because they won't colonize a planet.

No worries. I got some TEDIT scripts that would put the necessary resources needed to upgrade the planet. All the aliens would need to do is set the upgrade.

If V2 does not allow the aliens to upgrade cit levels, I got scripts for that too. It goes in the standard editor > planets editor > citadel project construction and then makes the upgrade from there.

This script is also helpful for non-alien planets in "capture the planet" games.

I like to set some planets at level 3. When invaded, players will have to fight over it while the citadel is being upgraded and the real battle comes maybe a day before the planet goes level 4. It can make for a chaotic series of events.

I'll get back to everyone on this on what I find.