Phase 2 progression is too slow, there's too much waiting before the investment starts generating returns.
I suggest making the cargo drone cheaper but with less capacity. Add an option to send PM to settlements to kickstart their production, and allow retreiving resources before all planets are extracted.
In early phase 2, carbon is the only useful resource to be gained from settlements. I think it would be good to have a cargo ship fetch only carbon and not waste its precious logistical capacity on other resources.
Right now each settlement can only have 1 cargo ship assigned. I think this is an unnecessary restriction. When set to production mode, the settlement should request a cargo ship as soon as it has enough resources for a full shipment.