Another noob question....

(sorry for the bad spelling)

Definitely a good idea to specialize. In fact, planet specialization is one of the main ways you can get a leg-up on the AI (other than fleet maneuvering and power projection). If you put a mess of factories together with the manufacturing capital you can get a huge production value, ditto for research with the technology capital. Other than the capitals (and any planetary bonuses you might have gotten when colonizing before Xeno Ethics) its worth specializes with manufacturing, because all the production has to be on the same planet to apply to the same ship (if you follow me) and economics, because all those stock markets add up quick, especially if you mix in some farms and morale buildings to get the population high. In addition to specializing with your planets, don't forget to build a few econ starbases around your high production or high research planets.

specializing is ok, but you want to have redundancy. E.G. if an enemy takes away your factory/manufactoring planet, you will lose the ability to roll out ships fast from that planet, and then they can use the same thing against you.

I prefer to balance them, that way if i lose one, not everything collapses into chaos.

I agree with Gre Magus to some extent. Manufactoring, Tech, and Economic Capitols should be specialized ( Political Capitol too if you bother). And the economic starbases around both tech and manufacturing capitols are helpful.

Other than that I like a few more high and mid production planets -- usually planets that have bonus tiles on them. I only put labs on bonus tiles.

Other than that, I like 3 or 4 manufactoring buildings per planet, a starbase on all planets ( usually buy it when I colonize it ), 2 farms producing 6 food each per planet to get max pop up to 17B, rest of tiles I fill up with markets and upgrade to stock markets.

However specializing more planets in manufactoring or research that are in the area of influence from economic starbases you build around your high production/research planets is an option. Personally, I'm usually too busy conquering to build up that much.

I don't go out with any set building strategy. There are too many variables based on PQ and tile bonuses. Generally, I determine if a planet is going to be a "builder" or a "money maker". I then build it accordingly. I don't put a priority on research since I trade techs a lot, but planets with research bonuses or high PQ tend to get a lot of labs. Some things are required for every planet like farms and entertainment, but the need for entertainment gets redcuced as you acquire morale improving trade goods and mine morale resources. I tend to run one farm per planet unless it has low or unusually high PQ.

The Torians own a PQ40 planet in the game I'm currently playing. I'm licking my chops over that one. I've heard stories of planets with even higher PQ, but that's the highest I've seen personally. A planet like that can do it all and then some.

Manufactoring, Tech, and Economic Capitols should be specialized ( Political Capitol too if you bother). And the economic starbases around both tech and manufacturing capitols are helpful.

Absolutely agree with the Tech and manufacturing capitols. It's great to get both in the same system so that they can share the economic starbase influence area. Dependent on location in the sector you can get up to 16 starbase's covering these planets for a total research / production bonus of 384%. Add in tech capitol and omega research center and you've got a tech bonus in excess of 500%. I've gotten greater than 8K RP's per turn from a PQ32 research planet in this manner. Though I've never seen an 8K bc ship that required quite this level of production, it's nice to have a planet that can crank out a dreadnought per turn. You need to be careful with these, they can cost up to 2K bc per turn when in full production mode. That's why I usually make the rest of my planets more generalized but with an extra emphasis on income (stock markets).