I solved the yard bottleneck by having my colonies with 14 base space yards each. Not all built yet, but with a 10 planet start using map6 I posted in the scenario/mod archive you can get them all built on breakeven minerals for 51+11 colonies by turn 80 or so. See my posting TDM-Modpack politics in really big game. You have to grab all the 51 sphereworlds on the map of course...