Old Earth Lab to capacity by June ? Do you fund this with plantation bases early or how would one do this ? I find the maintence costs staggering after reaching 8~ Brainers and bad months can easily send the economy straight to hell.
It is fairly important to use your brainers properly: do not research stuff that takes too long but offers no immediate benefits,
do research new missions, avoid locking yourself out of a good deal of tech tree by neglecting to research some of the early tech (e.g. our culture -> all 4 aspects).
Tech tree viewer is your best friend here, it's not really possible (not anymore anyway) to navigate through Piratez tech without it.
New missions research is incredibly important, not doing it in a timely manner (e.g. bounty hunting no later than March, etc) will make you lose a lot of potential score points, important loot, and tons of opportunities. Remember that researching a new missions tech in a month X will make those missions appear no sooner than the
next month.
Every single research topic awards you with some score, but some (like interrogating people for the
first time) award notably more. So paying attention to tech cost (visible in the top left corner of the tech viewer) is important too: researching some too advanced (for your current timeframe) tech will use your brainer-days, but will offer no benefits (as most shiny stuff in Piratez require you to have multiple same-level techs, not just one) and net you very little score.
For the first 6 months or so, brainers easily cover their own expenses due to research score awards, as long as you're not neglecting missions and bringing new stuff and captives for the research.