A few things:

1) one of the most frustrating parts of the game so far is the buildings system. It's extremely micromanagement heavy - every time you research an upgrade all your planets with that building need to go back and upgrade which takes loads of turns. Especially when midgame you can easily have 50+ planets. Which leads into the next issue...

2) buildings build way too easily and quickly. A few factories and 100% production and you churn them out in 1 turn, assuming your factory tech is roughly with the rest of your building tech. 

The result of this depends on a person's play style -  either loads of micro, or it reduces the amount the player cares about individual choices - they essentially just give up. If you have to make 100+ building decisions in a turn, each of which have negligible overall effect, why bother optimising?

I think the solution to this is simple - why not make buildings much more expensive, but let them auto upgrade when you complete the required tech? I think this would bring the system back towards making smart choices rather than a micro slog.

Also, rather than have 1 core building that upgrades 10 times, have 1 core building with 3 or 4 upgrades and then more enhancer buildings like the solar power plant.

Finally, I have noticed that a world with almost all factories will far outperform a world with almost all labs in research when set to build the research project. Is this intentional? It seems to kind of invalidate the purpose of labs.