Colonies to slow to get up and running later in the game.

Hi!

later in the game, getting a new colony up and running takes ages unless you got cash

Yep. You need to focus to social production, and to buy the first factory. Then, after few turns, while the planet is building the second, you come back and buy it for much lower cost. Only after that you can leave it alone, but if it is large, you better build several more factories to really speed-up its development.

Any way to build a 1st generation improvement and upgrade it later?

Asked many times, maybe included in 1.2 release.
BR, Iztok

Two things will help. Money and transport ships. Money to buy the factories or whatever you want is very good. The transports are great as you can fill up the new planet. Run a few transports to your over populated colonies then send them to the new one. THe way to increase your colony is send them back out with only 1 person. There should be an option to send them with nobody but that would be a suggestion for a future patch.