Following a planet is not a normal thing to do. Just move to the planet and then your ship moves with it.
Follow is meant for following other ships so you move with them, wether hostile or freindly and can set a distance you will try and stay at.
Picket sets your ship moving at speed 1 and is meant to keep your signature low when in space, I believe it makes little difference when orbiting a planet but I never use it so don't know for certain if there is any point

You need also population to work in the facilities.
I have planets needing pop (i.e., negative value in Available Workers), where ships don't perform maintenance. They suffer damages, so I have to resupply them every now and then, and they can repair by themselves.

If pop and total maintenance capacity are above 0, they're still being maintained partially as per rule 5 here: https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg101959#msg101959

Quote from: Alsadius on October 07, 2024, 10:59:12 PM

Does the colony have a spaceport and/or a cargo shuttle station? (A cargo bay on the ship would also work).

You can't move cargo without some sort of cargo handling option being there to move it, and MSP is cargo for this purpose.

That is not the case actually, you can both resupply from and transfer supplies to a colony without cargo handling on either end, although it does seem fairly slow.
https://imgur.com/a/0lKxwQu
Cargo Shuttles are necessary for ship-to-ship resupply only.

You can use maintenance facilities, but you need cargo handling if MF don't exist.

Huh, I stand corrected. Guess I need to go update a couple of my wiki edits, then.

Just to make sure I'm not totally out to lunch: you do need facilities to transfer cargo/population, fuel, and missiles in C#, right? It's just MSP (and ground troops) that can be transferred between an empty rock and a ship with no logistics components?

Does the colony have a spaceport and/or a cargo shuttle station? (A cargo bay on the ship would also work).

You can't move cargo without some sort of cargo handling option being there to move it, and MSP is cargo for this purpose.