I agree the game changes when you build a colony, though I suppose I never considered just building farming and then not caring if it got raided. The main reason I want a colony is the ability to make specific ship hulls and weapons to order, which requires heavy industry.
I think it's the cycle you get stuck in. If you want to advance your colony the limiting factor is money. But the easiest way to get money is from that same colony.
In my current run, I have one colony. I set it up with 1.8 million initial investment. I have all of the colony skills. The colony/planet is size 6, hazard 100%, +4% accessibility from distance to core worlds, no noteworthy resources. And it's earning me 250K/month. It took a few in-game years to get this big, but the silly thing is that from the day I founded it, my only income has been those few credits you "recover from computers" after combat, and this colony. (no bounties, survey/analyze missions, salvage, trade, etc.)
Once I had the colony, the easiest way to get money was to sit back and wait. If I tried to leave and do something else, I would usually get a "pirates are attacking in 20 days" message that would force me to abandon whatever that was. I was raided because I built heavy industry. I built heavy industry because I wanted custom weapon orders. I then had to chose whether to put my money toward my fleet or my colony defenses. Because defenses are more cost effective, and because I know major factions would send forces before too long, I chose colony defenses. This meant I didn't have a strong enough fleet to go after the pirate base that kept sending the 20-day-notice attacks. And so, between them and at least one fleet from most major factions, the babysitting was more or less constant for a couple in-game years. I eventually dusted the pirate station around the same time my star fortress came online, and have yet to face a serious threat since, though more pirates have stated a new base somewhere else.
The babysitting is over. And I can now produce a new legion carrier every few months.
But all I had wanted at the start was a couple railguns to put on my new Hammerhead without having to search several markets to find them.
I feel like I skipped much of the game.