This game is great although i have a HUGE suggestion that could make it even better, how about you can build something that if you have a bunch of resources, can build a exploration ship, which can be used to create a new colony thats directly linked with the one you started with, so you can chose to send people and resources as you please to create a new, eventually self sustaining colony that can then again launch another ship
So for your idea specifically, perhaps you have to build highly expensive ships that can only be used once just to transport, say 100 wood or 50 stone, it would incentive's working on your other colony first, and perhaps you can eventually be able to a deep space teleport, or commercial rocket taxis of some sort so that you can eventually slowly or even later instantaneously transport stuff and people between the two colonies to the point where someone could work at one colony but live on another.