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?