Playing Beta-3 on Crippling right now and something I've always noticed is that the AI builds it's small PQs weirdly. It's impossible to mess up a high PQ planet, as long as it is full with stuff it'll be a great planet. But a small PQ well you don't need a starport on a 5 PQ planet. You only have 5 tiles, the starport + initial colony alone take up 2 out of the 5 tiles. Sure you could have 3 factories and make a gimpy constructor building planet but I wouldn't recommend that to the AI.
I suggest having slightly different AI builds for small PQW planets (6 or 7 and below):
-Build one factory and the rest + econ buildings (my favorite, makes cash to feul high indy planets)
-Build one factory + half influence + half research buildings.
-Build one factory + mix of influence, econ and research buildings.
-Use the +influence and +morale bonus tiles correctly
-Might want to put 1 morale building on each planet, even the small ones. I dunno what the AI sets it's taxes to exactly, but I usually run it at 59% or 69% and keep at least one morale building on each planet and that works out pretty good.
Starports are also bad on small PQ easily captured planets because when you capture a planet, you can use the production in it's queue to help rush along your ship. One AI PQ5 planet had on a starport, factory, initial colony and planetary defense. Come on, 4/5 of those tiles are practically useless. I steamrolled through the 1/0 defender with my fleet or 3x 2/0s and now get a nearly free new defender for that planet. Bad AI, no starports on small PQ planets. Focus production, spread out econ/research/influence, that's my motto.
