From a purely selfish motivational point of view, I to have wished the M1 freighter had longer range but I am OK with it as is as your tech defines your ability for hull size/life support…. . However, if you think about it a little more along the tech lines, your colony and freighter have identical max ranges. Now, the amount of life support required for keeping all those people alive on their journey should be way more than what’s required for a simple freighter crew. Yes you can argue life support includes “fuel” + the obligatory O2 & water but the savings for a crew of maybe 100-200 vs. 2.5 billion folks should be there to go further.
The simplest implementation mechanics (I think) would be to add come life support rating to the cargo module.
Honestly I would fine either way, and the Dev Team has bigger fish to fry
