After a shaky start when I didn't find a second planet for a month, I immediately found a third, and then a fourth and fifth about a week apart. It's been quiet in my corner the galaxy since then, but I recently found my sixth planet.
The first five!
I guess you could say I've been unlucky by the standards of the top 40 - I've made more explorations than most people, but still 'only' have six planets, then again, most of those accounts that aren't community accounts (ie the top 2!) are probably playing with alts and gifting to their main account, so it's hard to tell the overall luck.
And the latest addition at the bottom, and yes every single empty square has been explored my yours truly!
Luck or no, I've settled on the strategy of prioritising upgrading the mission control skill, which I've just upgraded to level 08, which allows me to run 17 missions at once.
I settled on this strategy because planets are the 'capital' of the game, and all other things being equal, the more rapidly I can explore, then the more planets I will find, and more missions I can run, the more I can explore!
It's actually been quite a challenge to keep pace with the mission control skill - you can only upgrade every 5 days, but because it requires a lot of resources, I've found that I've had to upgrade my bunkers (just on one planet) to L15, L16 for the next lot, so as to be able to store enough to upgrade to L08 and next L09.
Of course I could just let them max out and then transport resources across, but that would require co-ordination and possibly several transports, which would have meant less resources going into developing mines for production (my second priority), AND I would have had a null planet, not producing anything for at least several hours if i'd have opted for that.
Also, I figure upping the bunker skill is the most basic defensive strategy, so it'll come in useful laters.
This strategy has worked fine for now, while we only have L01 explorers, and I'm now thinking it's time to prioritising upgrading my shipyard to L20 (I'm presently only on L14) n case I need that to build explorers 2.0 and 3.0.
Alongside this, I'm now developing both the Corvette and Battlecruiser skill, don't want to get to far behind on these lines of defence!
I'm not sure whether this is a good strategy or not, because I don't know where the game is going, but I figure that securing as much working capital as early as possible is probably going to be the key to success, whatever the future holds! Maybe it's all downhill from here, who knows?!?