And I will say the trait for .3 progress if we spend 2 actions is never going to happen, there will always be something to put that off or someone crunching the numbers shows its more efficient to spend the two actions on research on something else.
I'll disagree with you there. I'll even go out and say that we've researched twice in a turn more often than we've actually colonized another planet (of which we've only done twice in this quest). And while there has been some curveballs thrown our way, there are still periods where we can plan for stuff as we've done several times throughout this quest. It's especially simple for us to do since swapping an ISC is a free action and takes effect next turn, and we have done such a thing where we made plans for next turn and kept to it.
Unlike planetary colonization, which we have done precisely
ONCE in the entirety of this quest, and that was back when we still had only one half of a Subsector, and I don't think making it so we could get 3 instead of 2 per action will help. Meanwhile, the majority of territory we got had been from absorbing other settled worlds either through conquest or diplomacy. It's also been how we've lost a fuckton of infrastructure levels b/c almost everyone else have shitty standards compared to us. And I don't see that changing anytime soon, especially since our neighbors are the Space Baltics: Imperial Ganger edition and fucking Chaos who intentionally make all their worlds as fucked up as possible.
To believe that we could absorb these worlds, especially if we get several in a single turn, is hubris IMO. Especially when you take a minute to look at the map of the systems and see that most of the systems in 621 have multiple planets, each of which we'll need to take. So excuse me if I'm not confident in our ability to take several planets from Chaos without some infrastructure dipping into the Red unless you guys are cool with our Medical Infra collapsing for the 3rd time.
Which is why more than anything else I'm pushing for Integration Specialists, b/c they'll save us grief in the long run. Especially if it saves us on our Void and Civilian Infrastructure (the former is really important since if you don't have a good navy you're fucked and the latter b/c we're looking to raise that pretty quickly and taking a dip in that will not do us favors where we have the opportunity to get it to X in 4 actions if we do it right).
