volcano planet planets 5 or less

Small planets do not even have an option to have a governour assigned, do they?

yes they can be just not a good idea

Only dead planets at this time can not be improved, part of the learning curve when this game came out in alpha/beta was making all planets cores was a bad thing, I and a few others do not even make all 30+ planets cores, for me it is what the resource is.

why would not colonize a 30 planet unless its close to another players territory.  Then you would have to conquer it later.  you don't colonize bad ones like volcano.  You get lots of productivity from a 30 planet.

Did not say colonize it just not core it, Way too many 10+ planets way to close to each other weaken Core worlds using some as colonies especially if you have 2 or 3 "large" planets in the same system make the Cores stronger. It is a judgement call and knowing what resource is more important than another helps.

Like if you need the resource waffles for both food and approval, but pancakes only gives food then you would Core the waffle planet and colonize the other then when you get the tech that gives orbital harvesting you can use that to harvest pancakes.

It's a learned thing but you should get the hang of it.

Plus you can always go back latter and put a Governor on the colony.

waffles pancakes wtf .  core 30 planets for the productivity.  But really right now I am in a Thulium poor galaxy and Elurium is common.  Not even the other players have thulium.  My 2 thuliums are in enemy territory

first in prod

ship power

science

happy

normal difficulty

colonized everything but the volocanos

minors are colonies

the huge class is costly

I guess, if you are first in everything, those 2 Thuliums will be soon in your territory