Pre: I am an ES1 vet and just completed my first hour or two in ES2. 

Wow devs, I am amazed that coming into ES2 the balance of resource production and consumption is really crazy. I am early in my cravers campaign and am completely dead in the water due to unhappiness and food production. It's unbelievable. 

Here's two examples: 

Pre: I have 3 colonies including the home base. Mostly due to very few planets that are colonizable within reasonable distance. 

Ex1:

After my first election, where my faction was very very high majority for military party, unhappiness about the election hit. Suddenly the food production completely tanked and everyone is starving. 

I look at my food values, and OMG!!! Just an unhappy level takes away 40 food production from a colony!! Here's the kicker: the colony consumption is about 7. What The Holy F%@$ devs?! You're telling me that all my colonists on the planet consume 7 food, but just because they aren't running parades in the street to celebrate their joyful contentment they also lose 5 times that amount to morale effects? This is a no go. This is a manager looking over your shoulder and slapping you for your ridiculous dev maths. Clearly this is an error in the code, right??

Losing 5 times the amount of food consumed due to morale being just under 50% has another big issue. In starvation scenarios one expects the starvation to taper off as population decreases, as higher pop means higher consumption. But when the morale effect losses COMPLETELY DWARF consumption rates, that doesn't happen. My cravers are being parasitized and eaten to extinction by an unhappiness monster. That's what these numbers are doing.

Ex2:

But wait, here's example 2: The newer colonies produce food from the colonists, but also get food magically somehow from the colony base. Want to know those ratios? The colonists make about 7 food (the colonies have 2 population on a tropical world). How much does the base make? A whopping 40 food production! What the actual f#$@ devs? This means that it would be virtually impossible for colonists to ever reach the level of food production generated by default just for being a colony. The hard work of my colonists is completely dwarfed by food production out of thin air. Outposts do get food and population through an emigration / transport mechanism. It says so in the established planet's production values under "outpost" and other policies. But once a colony is established, these transfers stop, so there's no justification for these ridiculous numbers. 

My suggestions: 

First off devs, definitely revisit this whole unhappiness thing. Resource losses due to low morale should always be a percentage of population production, never multiples above it. That's simple logic. 

Secondly, implement a resource sharing mechanic where newer colonies with low production can import food or other resources, which you can see and control. Get rid of this crazy production out of thin air mechanic for the colony bases. If the colonists on a newer colony aren't producing enough, then rebalance the production values per population and implement a resource sharing mechanic. 

MOO2 had a simple mechanic where every colony always got enough food to not starve by letting freighters (which you built and saw their numbers) transport overproduction to colonies in need. They did it simply and a long time ago and it worked great. 

Thanks for making such great games, I'm sure you will get the kinks worked out before release.