I agree with Ryat. Yor can be hard to play in the early game but the get really strong later on. Big plus us you need no farms so all planets effectively gain 3-5 tiles, HUGE advantage.
My typical early game approach:
Home world - heavy manufacturing
Design & build a colony ship yo use as a shuttle, no life support, 2 colony modules fill with engines
Do assembly projects on home world and use the shuttle to move population to other planets
