Irritating...

Yeah the free planet sucks. In a recent game never even found it.

I think for it to be worthwhile, the planets should be pre-colonized. Not sure how they would do that.  

I got one but it was Class 8 not Class 10 like it is supposed to be. Also it is out of the way, not in or near my home System. 

It's never a class 10 for me, either.  I agree that it should come colonized and in the same system as your home planet, so it doesn't give you too much of an advantage or just get instantly culture flipped.  I believe that the second planet you can make appear using ideology points is already colonized and just a higher class planet.  It should be done like this, only of course with an actual class 10 planet. 

I have gotten two free "lvl 10" planets.   One was lvl 14, the other was lvl 16, and both were in star systems adjacent to my home world.   I was actually thinking that maybe the idea was a minimum lvl 10, but evidently not!     They should change the language or make the planet always lvl 10.   And it should be "nearby", no doubt.

Personally the fact that they are not colonized is fine, giving a planet that is already at full population (and is not a captitol) would provide at least one difficult issue: its morale would be pretty low (at least for the couple of races I have tried out  --- the morale requirements have ramped up sharply in B5).   And imo, it would be a bit OP.    But that's just my take.

The biggest problem really is that the value of the planet is so dependent on the size of the galaxy and the density of habitable planets.   In a sparse galaxy it is huge, in a crowded galaxy it's not that big of a deal.

 Last game it was in my second settled star system.  I cannot remember a time I didn't find a new local planet.  I think it has always been nearby somewhere.

There is a destroy colony button in the planetary governors screen.

Is this a galactic council option if so vote that someone else gets it. I like the option myself it expands my survey range. I agree their may be stragetic,  or influence issues. These issues can be fixed with some extra work in building ships,  and buildings though. Sometimes you have to buy them.

Ha, better and better, got the final stage of the top Bene branch of the tree, and *poof*, instantly, no planet appears.

Also, Darca, that's "destroy colony", not "scuttle the useless planet, and don't let anyone else have it".

I tend to play tall to avoid as much spammy-spam-spam as I can.

More than a dozen colonies late-game, and I find myself turning the game off out of constructor-spam-induced boredom.

A populated planet would be a rather huge advantage I would think. Though I do agree they should be in close proximity to your homeworld or at least in a system that you do already have a planet colonized. To be honest, I must be lucky because it has always appeared near one of my star systems. I typically have recieved 8's which is fine, it's better they keep some level of randomness to me then be bland always. Just my 2 cents.