My personal house rules for increased challenge in Aurora :^)
Game Setup
Difficulty: 300%.
Sol system start
Human gravity variance should be set to 0.7g
Disaster: Cooling 2%.
Spoilers On
Swarm On
Invaders Off (you can turn them on later)
Note: Disasters only seem to apply to a Solar System created at game setup.
Terraforming
You may not use Terraforming Modules.
You may not Terraform Earth.
Terraforming Facilities must be built on-site and may not be moved.
VERY HARD: Terraforming Facilities may not be built. You can use TFs found through xenoarchaeology to terraform worlds on which they are found, but may not move them.
Colonies
Conquered alien homeworlds should have their political status frozen after rising one level.
You may not loot the infrastructure from alien homeworlds, but use it in place. (At 300% difficulty, the amount of alien equipment otherwise trivializes the game.)
VERY HARD: You may not colonize in the Solar System.
Ship & Systems Design
VERY HARD: All missiles must have at least 1 point of Armor or ECM. Yes, including AMMs.
VERY HARD: You may not use the Sorium Harvester module.
Combat Rules
You are strongly encouraged to avoid the use of beam ships that barely outrange & outspeed the enemy to cut down infinity enemy beam ships.
VERY HARD: You may not use the Final Fire PD mode on Beam Fire Controls. (You may use Final Fire Self Only.)