Tips

Factories increase the manufacturing points (mp) of your planets. The mp are then used for either Military Production (building ships) or Social Production (building planetary improvements).

How many mp are actually used, and for what, is determined by the sliders in the Finance Management screen. You can get there by either clicking on the Domestic Stats button or by pressing F4.
The slider below the tax rate, labeled Production Capacity, determines how much of your total production is being used. When you start the game, it is set to 67%. This is one reason, why your colony ships take so long to build.
The three sliders at the bottom determine how your production is split between Military, Social and Research Production. They all combine to 100%, so you can't fully utilise all your production at once. You have to make some trade-offs. At the start of the game, the sliders are set to 33%/33%/34%. This means, that you are only using 2/9th of your total production for any one area. Which equates to roughly 5mp for your homeworld, if no factories have been build yet.

Still, it shouldn't take 72 weeks to build a colony ship. More like 29 weeks, if you build an improvement at the same time, or 15 weeks, if you don't. The Terrans have a -10% penalty to Military Production, but that would increase the time only by one or two weeks. The only way I can see this happening is, if you decreased the Military spending.

Finding planets with a good Planet-Quality rating is always a problem. Planets with a PQ 10 or higher are preferable, but, if you can't find any, it doesn't hurt to colonise planets with a lower rating. They can become quite decent in their own right sometimes. Especially planets with a PQ of 4 or lower. Those can get a pretty high PQ after some terraforming. It just takes a lot of time to get them going.

Still, if you have trouble finding enough planets, it might be best to change the map settings a little. Using Common for Stars/Planets/Habitable Planets provides a good amount without being overwhelming.

Building a military is advisable even if you go the pacifist route. The other races will see your lack of an army as a sign of weakness and will eventually declare war on you. While especially true for the more militant races, like the Drengin and Arcean, it is also the case fort the good races, like the Altarians and Torians. Just build a strong enough army so the other races stop trying to extort you for money (or planets). You don't need to actually use the army. Think of it as a self-defense force. Only to be used in case of an attack. Never to wage war against another race.

Well, I hope this helps. If you have any more questions, or if something I wrote is unclear, just ask.

Edit: Fixed an error. (I always confuse Social and Industrial.)

Awesome thank you for clearing that up was extremely helpful and clear.

I am pretty sure I have most of the basics figured out now but now what I am uncertain of is what to do, this is mainly due to playing on a small map which I figured would be best for learning but I find after expanding the smallest amount I find myself surrounded on all sides, while I only have 3 planets, so I am kind of sat there just researching with nothing else to do with all planet titles filled with buildings and no need for colony/constructor ect due to everything able to be "expanded upon" has been, so I am not quite sure if I should just sit and do nothing while just researching or if there is something I should be doing.

I think it may be easiest if that's ok with you to give a quick run down of how I play out and maybe point out the errors.

Buy colony ship, start researching for universal translator so I can trade tech early, buy a factory, start building research building, set flag ship to auto, mining ship begins work on near by asteroids, colony ship goes to local grad 4 planet, start building factory on new planet.

Launch new colony ship and send in direction of nearby star with 1 habitable planet and when it arrives start building factory/starport.

From there I pretty much find all my borders surrounded (which I guess will happen eventually on any map size), so then I just build constructors and put them on any resources I can find(not sure how to add modules, guessing need to research them), and send my mining ship to begin work on asteroids near new planet.

Its at this point I kind of get a bit ditzy as I am not quite sure what to do, I try and build 1 of each building on my planets making sure to match bonuses, then I just try and explore the tech tree trying to figure out if I should focus down one patch or balance ect and then I have no clue what to do apart from sit and research. Also I put all my planets on social focus unless I am building a ship then I change to military focus.

Cheers again for the help.

Your starting strategy is pretty much standard, except for a few things.

Getting Universal Translator that early is usually not that important for most races. You might be better off going for Planetary Improvements (or its equivalent) to get better infrastructure (labs, factories, markets, etc.) or Space Weapons to build an early army. Preferably a mix of both.
However, for the Terrans and Drath, going for UT first is actually pretty smart, if you are able to quickly make contact with other races. The Terrans and Drath are the best diplomats in the game, especially the Terrans, so you can get very good deals while playing them. Buying and reselling techs from the other races can get you a pretty good profit. Just keep an eye on how much money your trading partner has. The less money they have, the less they are willing to pay.

Your starting colony ship is best used to find another planet. The secondary planet of you home-system isn't worth your time at the beginning. Also, if that planet gets colonised by another race, it is very likely to flip to your side, because of your influence. Oh, and don't forget to restock your starting colony ship before sending it out. It only starts out with 100m colonists, despite being able to carry 250m.

Using the social focus isn't that useful, if you are doing it with all of your worlds. Instead, use the production sliders in the Finance Management screen. Set Military Production to 1%, and split the rest between Social Production and Research. If one of your colonies isn't constructing any improvements, the money will be automatically allocated to ship-building. This has the same effect as what you were doing, but is less wasteful.

As for what you can do after the colony-rush? Well, there are a few things.

First off, research Trading, then build some freighters and send  them to your neighbours to establish some trade-routes. Trade-routes not only increase your income, but also your relations with the races your trading with. You can also build some Economy starbases and fit them out with trade modules to increase your income even further.

Building starbases in general is something you can and should do. Economy starbases can not only be used to increase your trade-income, but also to improve production on your world.
Influencer starbases can be used to spread your culture and eventually flip planets of the other races to your side. However, you need to have a military, as that could likely lead to war. The other races don't take kindly to cultural conquest for some reason.
Military starbases are used to increase the fighting power of your ships. They do this via modules, that either increase the damage, defense or speed of your ships. For the first two types to work, however, your ships need at least one weapon or defense.
New starbase modules are unlocked by research, but to add them to a starbase, you need to use another constructor ship. This means, that building up starbases takes a lot of time and money, but it can be worth it.
Also, while the first few starbases are free (the amount depends on map-size), all subsequent ones cost an increasing amount of money to build. The cost can be reduced by researching techs that increase your Logistics ability, but it will still reach an exorbitant amount, if you build lots of starbases. However, there is one exception. Should your Logistics ability ever reach 100 or higher, all starbases will be free.

As for research, it depends entirely on what you want to achieve. Having at least a token army to prevent the other races from picking on you is mandatory. Besides that, you're pretty much free to choose. I usually go for better infrastructure first, because it improves the total output in research, production and, most importantly, taxes. However, if you are playing the Terrans, you can get those techs quite cheaply from the other races, so it might be better to research techs that improve your Diplomacy ability first, as that makes it easier to get even better deals. If you're lucky, you might be able to buy a planet or two.

As Gaunathor suggested, different races have different strengths/weaknesses.  Thus, you might be better off with a strategy that best fits the features of your race for that game.  As G noted, Terrans are advised to use their diplo strengths, etc.

One thing would be to try a game with a custom race for which you chose all the characteristics. You can also vary the galaxy setup to allow your strategy to have a good chance.

For example, if you want to play a game in which you establish many colonies, you can specify a galaxy with lots of stars and lots of inhabitable planets per star.  Combine that with less than max number of major AIs, and you have a good chance of colonization opportunities.  In smaller galaxies, max AIs almost always means that you end up with few colonies, especially once the game difficulty is Tough or higher.

Next, you can use the race setup to favor the strategy you wish.  For example, if you want to expand colonies-wise, perhaps choose Industrialist to get the production bonus.  You can also use race setup points to increase economy and production stats.

On Super Ability, you can also choose one which gives you some colonization advantages.

I play DA on higher difficulty levels (usually Suicidal).  I convert the miner to a colony ship on Turn 1 and send it and the starting colony ship instantly in search of good worlds.  I also research for Planetary Improvements first for the bonuses, and quickly go for the others that give overall bonuses.  The only exception is when I discover that my Home World has a 7x Research bonus tile.

Once you try a Custom Race and see how this works, you can go through the stock races and see which is closest to your custom race, and then tweak that stock race to come even closer to your preference for that game.

You sound exactly like how I felt a couple weeks ago ColdHands. I bought the Ultimate Edition on Steam for $5 & then was totally confused about how to play. I have always enjoyed Sid Meier's Civilization franchise games, & Alpha Centauri, but I have never played MOO or any of the space civ games like that, so it took me a while to learn Gal Civs II.

I read the entire manual twice (it helps a lot if you have the time to read it. Its 90+ pages.) Then I have been reading everything I can find on the boards here for the past couple weeks. The thing that probably helped me the most though was watching the 2 Lets Play series that a guy named GetDaved has up over on YouTube. He sort of explains as he goes along why he is doing what he is doing so it really helps a new player. First I watched the whole series where he plays Dread Lords, & now I am watching his Twilight of the Arnor Lets Play. The only bad thing is it takes a LOT of time to watch them all lol. The Dread Lords one is like 37 videos I think, & each are 10 minutes long. The Twilight of the Arnor LP I am watching now is 42 vids long I think, & each is 15 minutes long. Of course you dont have to watch them all. Most of the stuff that would help you the most now (starting out & the initial colony rush, etc) happens in the first few videos.