On second though it seems like this game is currently balanced around the faction that can increase its network range with stations. As the colonize-everything faction, after 2 restarts I have yet to be able to colonize a single planet. I have never started with another planet in range and in one of the games I didn't get the 2nd +network range after getting 2 techs in each category, and the nearest planet was further than that. also my tech tree is all gunked up with terraforming options which are useless to me (they should be removed for this faction)
edit: alas, with one more restart i was able to get planets in range and colonize for the first time!