What do you mean "where social production isn't used".
Say you had your sliders at 30% military, 30% social, and 40% research. If on one planet you were building on some square plus a ship but on another you were only building a ship, then the planet not building an improvement the used social is transferred to military production. On such settings clicking the focus buttons for military, social, or research would also greatly impact resource allocation. In your case since you had military set to 100%, these would not be factors.
Design Cheap Colony, Constructors, and Space Miners
Don't use the core ship designs! In the original DL and in DA, I use small hulls for my colony, constructors, and space miners, until I reach miniaturization 25%, at which point I use tiny hulls. In ToA I'm forced to use cargo hulls until I unlock small hulls. Don't place engines on colony ships unless you need to beat the AI to a valuable distant planet. Cheaper ships can be built faster which means they can be launched sooner which helps offset their lack of speed. Also you increase the number of ships you can build in a given amount of time, speeding up your expansion.
