There is also a number to indicate how much wealth the planet will produce. The structures that you research can be built so quickly that there is little need to plan a building queue. However, there are a lot of intelligent decisions required to succeed in building your empire. Or, if you see a military buildup in your opponent's sector, you might want to construct a warship or orbital defenses. You can even pump cash into your planet in order to speed up construction if an enemy fleet happens to cruise into your solar system.
Technology is also simple to handle.
All but the latter two deal with designing ships. You can allocate the percentage of research points to each category, as well as decide which specific technology you want to research. Technology advances happen at a phenomenal rate-which is ideal for a multiplayer game. However, I desperately wish that there was an option to slow it down in single player games. The strategy involved in making a research plan is diminished when everything can be discovered in a relatively short time.