How are people managing their research planets?

This is something I am struggling with. I'm one of those extreme min/maxers and my brain is just hurting trying to wrap my head around specialized research planets that are running significant manufacturing so they don't take 40 turns to upgrade one laboratory. 

In most space based tile base 4x games going back as far as I can remember with tile building improvements I've always thrown 1 or 2 industrial buildings onto my research planets and then just let them do their thing. Now, if you follow that approach and combine it with the production wheel maxing out research you may as well not have manufacturing at all if you're specializing the planet. So that leaves you with the, switch to manufacturing for 20 turns to build your upgrades and then switch back to research, but this seems hugely wasteful.

So how is everyone approaching research. More balanced planets? Just dealing with the brain hurt of a non-optimal rotation between manufacturing and science?

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Reply #1 Top

I don't build manufacturing at all on my research planets.

At first I put the wheel on 100% manuf. I usually buid a hospital as soon as possible, I save a couple spots for farms and approval and all the rest is labs.

Then when I have already built a few buildings I might start to put some research back but I try to make sure that it doesn't take more than 3 turns per building (i.e. I keep at least 10 manuf point for the first level of buildings)

I always fill up the planet before starting any upgrade, except for the hospital.

When I finish building I go 100% research. When I get a new upgrade I put back enough manuf to build each upgrade in 2-3 turns then back to research etc...

Reply #2 Top

I start with buying a factory, and building one more. Fill the main area with research buildings; save individual tiles for Approval, and a pair of tiles for hospital + farm.

Once this is all built, remove the original factories. The population will be rising high enough to manufacture quickly enough without factories at this point. Once these initial biuldings are down (plus terraforming etc), I set the governor to produce as much science as possible, while still retaining 10 production. 10 production is plenty to upgrade tiles as and when needed, and most upgrades are only 5% per building anyway so there's not much of a rush.