Population is their biggest advantage. Especially so for Planetary T3 Ports which absolutely dwarf anything else one can build.
And population matters - a lot - as it “feeds” into production volumes.
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This is incorrect, assuming you care about volume of production (most people do) as the additional refineries boost production greatly.
If you don’t care for volume though, for sure you can build on smaller planets or moons.
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Eh, this is highly debatable. Even Anvil’s Pride, a Tier 3 Orbis with two refineries in a highly built up system, was often permanently dry of steel and titanium while building up the Pleiades.
Your comment might apply in remote areas of the galaxy, but in areas with significant build activity, that’s really debatable.
That is the reason I think the doc is "groups oriented". May be mark/separate corresponding sections/suggestions ("for groups" / "for single players")?
All my Refineries markets have 100k+ stock of primary commodities (Steel, Alu, CMM, etc.). With some non-primary in 1-2k range. The last is potential problem, in case other come to get them (looking in Inara at my area, that is usual). So, for single player (which is not exposing to Inara its own refinery in case there is no other 50lY around...), single refinery hub per station is more then sufficient (to be on safe side, with one more slot reserved for the second one).
For groups, especially big groups or huge projects, expectations from "primary refinery" can be different. But groups have huge "building resources" as well. I don't think that is the case for "most people" (lonely architects).
Yes the assumption is that it’s possible to hyperbreak on orbital facilities, whereas it’s clearly not possible to do so with planetary ones. It’s rare that you can’t hyperbreak directly into an orbital one (need to get temporarily unlucky as to the phase of its orbit.)
Similar logic applies when departing - planet can often obscure your destination so you have to supercruise away first. That practically never happens with orbital facilities.
I have always felt the different to be very stark. But your comment intrigued me so maybe I will go and actually measure.
Primary advantage in speed for planetary is departure. You are out of "mass lock" within several seconds (one burst), if destination is obscured, supercruise + SCO + jump is just several seconds longer then just jump (FSD requires no cooling between SCO and charging). In my observation, there is around 30 seconds difference with departure from coriolis.
"Well done" orbiting + gliding (0.05 earth planet) for me is comparable in time with flying to the entrace from the back of coriolis. Auto-landing time is more or less the same (after drop near port / right in from of the coriolis entrance).
I get "obscured destination" when departing from orbital often (as reported by many players, most orbits are extremely low). Also that is phase dependent (orbitals in general turn faster then planets, for port on locked planet, the destination stay almost on the same place for many hours, star orbiting speed).
Direct hyperbreak is possible 50% of the time (when the station orbit is in the system plane), and you never know when. So normally you don't break from 7ls during your first visit (also after relatively long break).
In addition, "arrival" direction (from the local star) and "departure" direction (to the destination star) are different (when constructing in different system). So you come "from the back" or "turn around" at departure often. In comparison, planetary landing is almost the same in time independent from the direction you come (no "hyperbreak", small curve at the end doesn't cost much time) and planetary departure is the same for any destination as long as it is over it (you turn when charging).
You can manually disable auto launch (and auto dock, and auto land) in your right panel if it really bothers you - there’s no reason whatsoever to not use the advanced version to at least keep that as an option.
Further, autolaunch will place you in a queue when the slot is busy.
I’ve rarely had any issues with it.
"Waiting in a queue" can take minutes and that happens often (they sum into hours after 100s times).
When departing from "near" pads, all my "Advanced computers" on all my Cutters:
- don't choose right vertial speed to fit into the gate every second time (periodically hitting the wall), then "fly back", take position, finally fly out (take a lot of time)
- "shaking" when in the queue, periodically hitting walls.
Do you mean my computers are "brocken" and the problem is not usual? Any tip in which System I can fix them?
Also when I depart manually, I can have any speed and burst from withing the gate. When auto-departing I immegiately get annoying "speed warning" alarm.
"Shaking" is the primary reason I don't like advanced computer on. Often, arriving large ships really block the gate, so I have to wait several seconds. Without computer, I just stay where I am (and that is good). With computer, it takes control and move the ship, always in "wrong" (not the one I want) direction. Annoying.
So I prefer not auto launch from orbitals.
To not think/check "is it off or on", I equipe "standard" variant.
And now my "conspiracy theory": on or off, there is more traffic when I have "advanced"

