The pop growth bonus is additive, so perhaps you're upset for no reason at all...?

If you want to achieve a good popgrowth, then the first thing you should consider to aim for is 100% approval. That is, you select a planet that has one (or more) moral bonus tile(s) and you place your very best moral improvements on them, usually this will be the Political Capital.

If the planet has food bonus tiles, use them, because this is going to give you some puffer in time.

All other tiles will be filled up with Fertility Clinics.

Ofc this planet is going to produce much more population than could possibly be brought away by own constructed Troopships, so you need to have quite some planets in the vicinity which are producing these Transports.

Just to make myself clear, the bonus to popgrowth from 100% moral is so much better than a few Fert Clinics, but nevertheless it will multiply its own bonus with these, so to have both is the absolute best way to achieve awesome popgrowth, except Breeder SA.

Are you saying that planets do not like empty tiles? Build six fertility clinics on one planet so that it becomes "economically stable"? Later upgrade those clinics with something else and lose no money because the price of the clinic is taken off the upgrade. 

Tell me this. Why is there no key to press to instantly find your survey ships like s. Press the s key and cycle through your survey ships. Press the b key to cycle through your battleships. Why doesn't the game nag me to move my survey ships and constructors before it lets me take a turn?

Don't you want to find an anomalie with your survey ship. If you don't use all your moves, they'll just evaporate. Don't you want to move all your constructors closer to some destination? Or just let the game move them to some starbase that obviously could use a constructor. OK you didn't send all your constructors towards various starbases. Obviously your falling asleep so we moved them for you. We also started filling in some tiles on your planets because you've been neglecting them. We also made some extra auto saves so if this isn't what you wanted you can go back.