#1 - I think placing extras is a little different to placing normal components. To place an extra, you click on the extra you want and then click a 'hardpoint' (the little red dots) on the ship picutre to place the extra on that point.

#2 - I don't fully understand either, but I'll give it a go since nobody else has replied.

As far as I know, factories and labs create points. If you're operating at 100% manufacturing capacity, each of these points will cost you 1bc from your treasury.

For example, you have a factory that creates 4 manufacturing points per turn and you are running at 100% manufacturing capacity with all your focus on social production. Each turn, 4 bc will be deducted from your treasury and it will translate into those 4 MPs which you use as social production.

I think in the latest versions of the game, any spare social production is assigned to military and if no ships are being built, the MPs go back into the treasury.

So if you have 4 social production but aren't building any social projects or ships, you will keep your 4 bc.

That's as much as I understand the issue. What people do usually to balance their economy is devote entire large planets to harvesting money. The planet will have a large population, a high approval rate and plenty of economy boosting buildings.

#3 - Try running a constructor into an exsisting starbase. That will take you to the upgrade screen where you can apply your modules.

The place button is there for the 'functional' pieces so you can toss them on without worrying about where, if you don't care about aesthetics. Since the jewelry bits are there *purely* for aesthetics though, they can't be autoplaced.

Out of curiosity, how does one circumvent this problem? Should one build a portion of one's worlds solely for the construction of smaller ships (fewer factories), and others for bigger ships (many factories)? Or, once one reaches high production capability on all worlds, should one simply not build cheaper ships? Or even, should one drop all Military production for a time to produce a spate of smaller ships before jumping up again for the big ones?

And then I'm not even getting to problems with Research and Social production...

The amount of bc potentially saved would be considerable.

J.

I only pay attention to "overspending" on military ships in the early game, the difference of a single turn can decide whether you get that awesome planet or the competition does.

Lateron it simply costs waaaay too much friggin' time to micromanage that (especially when you have more than 5 planets). Just not worth the hassle.
That said, I often do end up with planets that have too small an output MP wise to build the bigger ships. (Usually taken by force from enemies) I assign them to make cheap constructors because I always seem to be needing those and I don't like using planets that can build capital ships in a reasonable amount of time, but I don't specifically design planets just to make "small ships".