I set up a particle system but It's not working right.

blender 2.65a cycles Linux open SUSE 12.2
I set up a particle system but It’s not working right.
It has several problems. First of all the Boids physics I choose because it looked
a lot better than the Newtonian one, unfortunately it also makes the particles leap
in huge quantities up suddenly. Second, I can’t see the particles which should be
green-blue, blue, and violet respectively (when rendered.) When I put a emitter sphere in between the
particles and camera I don’t see any change in the light emitted from the sphere.
Third, the particles go through the side of the mother ship object even though it
has a collision modifier applied and set to kill. I desire that they should not
penetrate the side but rather die when there center hits the mother ship object
and that the halo should not go through the space ship when it touches it’s hull.
How do I fix these problems?

without knowing what you want to accomplish it is hard to tell you what to do. for example I have no idea what your “mother ship” looks like, or where it is in relation to the camera and the sphere.

Perhaps uploading the blend file would be prudent?