If you're launching constructors to go to a starbase, I would suggest using a "Rally Point" to have ships made on a planet auto-launch the constructors and send them to the right location (check out the rally point tutorial for more info)..

You can also right-click on the notification icon (the blue box that drops on the right side of the screen) to launch a ship...which is alot easier than finding the planet and sifting through the planet screen .

As for differenciating between ships that are jsut icons, try clicking on them once to get a breif destription of them in the context area, or just roll-over them to get their name.

Hope this helps!

I dunno, rally points are only sorta useful honestly ...

The real functionality I would "like" to see (no pressure ) is a "select all (ship type)", and a"launch all (ship type)". The "launch all" would put them out of orbit of course, then the "select all" would then allow me to right click a given destination. This is particularly true of constructors that might have many sources but a single destination in order to build something quickly.

I'm not fond of the Rally Points mostly because if I forget to turn them off, the next ship I build will also go there, even if its a defender or something that should have stayed home or gone somewhere else