Double up production queue width, have a ship and a planetary improvement build at the same time

I think this is one thing which has not been tried yet.

One big choice is that the player is either improving the planet or creating fleets. 

That choice may be a big strategic thing, but also it may have dire consequences in early game for example. 

A bad start may have the player giving up the gameplay in the initial turns, sometimes even a few times in a row, because of a lost ship. 

But if the production queue always had slots for both a planetary improvement and a ship, that could make things more competitive, since the player is always doing two things at once, and even if he loses a ship in a battle, there are more coming out on every planet. 

Initially  would be split hard 50/50 between them, but technologies could eventually allow the player to lean towards one or the other. As a consequence, stuff would take longer to build.

I think it would open up the game strategically, and make it easier to recover from a bad start/battle.