[Fyron]

Regarding Resource Storage Facilities:
No one has advocated building tons of them to store 2,000,000 resources. Just a few of these at huge planets of your atmosphere are all that is necessary. The small amount of resource production or research lost due to building them is insignificant. If your empire fails becuase of 1800 fewer resources, then you have not done a very good job at building it. And about retrofitting and stored resources: you should be retrofitting constantly, using a retro-series of ship designs to expedite the construction process.

Orbital Space Yards:
If you don't build these, then you will most likely lose to an experienced player that does build them. All else being equal, the player with the ability to produce more ships in a given time period will win. In one game I am in, a player started attacking me with around 18 ships (several of which are minesweepers, and there are a few carriers (which is really funny)). My main fleet of ships was on the other side of the galaxy. The 6 space yards at each of my homeworlds had just completed building a set of light cruisers, and with the planetary space yards, the total was 21 in that turn. Then, I set the stations to emergency build. They took 3 turns to complete the ships. So now, I have quickly built 39 light cruisers, and I will get at least 18 more in 3 turns. I am building new space yards to replace the ones I have now when the emergency build period ends. Sure, I lost a few under-developed fringe colonies, but my enemy will lose a lot more. I suspect that he has a poorly developed infrastructure. And btw, this game has only been going on for less than 40 turns.

Colony Ships:
Yes, it is good to build one or two before you get the space yards up, esp. for those large and huge planets near you. And so what if there are a few turns in which you aren't building any colony ships? After the space stations are done, you can build a lot more colony ships than someone without them. The best approach would be to combine the 2 strategies.