Really, its just finding the highest efficiency method to drilling resources. Waiting to launch till you're core is full on resources or you can't go further w/o risking losing your core is helpful, too.
but if you have any type of defense system, which kill everything you can keep playingand use a launchpad. this is helpfull if you want to get different things for the tree, too. Especially if your drills are faster than your production of the wanted stuff