Central planning is great when you have one clearly defined goal that takes precedence over any other, namely winning a war. It's trash for anything else.
After reading many business books: central planning works great as long as the benefits of centralisation outweigh the drawbacks of centralisation. After reading Outsiders by Thorndike, I’m convinced that the drawbacks outweigh the benefits surprisingly rapidly because distributed companies are shown to run much better. Historically, it has been the same with countries/states, according to Taleb. Although large countries had benefits and could stay alive for long times, small city states (e.g., Florence centuries ago or Switzerland today) and decentralized nations (e.g., Habsburg or the EU), run much more better.
It can still work somewhat great for parts of the economy.
E.g. healthcare, education, utility...
I feel like it works out about the same for those. The difference is market forces work much worse in those cases.