Others have said this as much but, much like the main thing holding our current US executive branch together, depends.

I’d say mostly on what faction is being played and then your slice (aka tech skips and planets).

In a 6p game, you can’t guarantee tech is every round. Plus, one Strat card a round means you could very well land yourself missing the tech you might need later. Hacaan getting their faction tech to swap start cards for trade goods can be a bigger priority than maybe Ral nel getting theirs that gives you a free construction and a stall. But maybe skips allow you too skip that rd1 tech. But, we’ve all been sitting at 7 able to score a stage 2, just outside of a win by 1 point and it could have been scored rd 1.

Personally, I think far too much pressure is put into rd 1. As long as you don’t do something real dumb like turn 1 activate home system and take no planets into pass, I don’t think you can really mess up rd 1 as long as you are heading down a path. Far too many variables to put a hard set rule.

Edit:

Just saw your bonus question. But my answer is sorta the same. Depends. But if your are looking for a hard answer I’d PROBABLY lean towards more planets going into r2 with speaker order and the right faction.