I'm old school - all my starts have been either by the book with no mods on my part or with a lower NPR rate.... and I limit starting tech to 2000
In my current game earth has 15 years of Deuranium left - everything else is gone - none of the planets had any resource greater than about 200,000 and none more than 2 - nearly all unimportant stuff like Vendarite and Corbromite.... except Venus had Deuranium at about 3mil but concentration .5 - 4 out of the 5 surrounding systems had no planets and the 5th only had 1 non-habital planet - sigh......
I am currently short of Deuranium - have eased my shortages of Neuronium and Sorium -am not producing anywhere enough fuel - barely keeping my freighters going - my entire combat fleet has spent the last ten years or more sitting in Earth orbit doing nothing to save their fuel... been at it about 40+ years game time - 2 friendly aliens - several precursor systems - 1 swarm - finally got my first sorium harvesters going - 2 that harvest 500,000 fuel a year which is a start on my fuel shortages.... another just built - 3 more coming....
have 30 labs on earth - research rate 500 - am working on 600 -
and I am having a BALL !!!!
I am re-tooling my main naval yard to build a 28,000 ton Battlecruiser that goes at 10,000K has 8 size 9 launchers and torpedoes and AMM - YES!!! look out you precurser skummies!!!
I have 4 16,000t CVE's that now move at 4,500k - 6,000T DD's, 9,000t LC's and 12,000t CAs that all do 8,000k - 30+ gunboats with 4 damage Torpedos (don't ask why torpedos) but they move at 11,000K!! CT's with 3 fire control and 6 size 1 launchers as FLAK ships that move at 10,000k - fighters that move at 11k with a size 5 missile... and now that the sorium harvesters are working I am going to move on the first bunch of Precursers.... finally -
and I have troopships to move my troops in behind....
Because of hte lack of resources - nearest planets all being 2 or more jiumps away and so forth - this has been my toughest game to date - but also my best so far!

I'm currently playing a game with Conventional Industry (using 5.14).

I started the game with 2000 systems and Precursors turned off, so that any NPR races would have less of a chance to find me, and the nasty wormhole aliens wouldn't pop through to wipe me out.

I had 1 billion starting pop and the normal number of research colonies, and added a zero to the end of all minerals (putting them in the 100,000 range), except for duranium which was already in the 100,000 range, so I doubled it.  I also put 2 ruins in system, to give humans the idea that they weren't alone.

I'm almost 25 years in, and am over 10 years from running out of my lowest mineral.  I was also fortunate enough to have minerals in the millions on Venus and TItan, almost so I don't have to go out system.  However I'm going to soon, my first jump ship will be ready in about a year.

I really like the civilian sector now - they turned smart!  I'm colonizing Titan, and now the civilians wait until there's enough infrastructure to plop their 50,000 colonists down, instead of sending them to their deaths.

Edit: Never mind I got it.

A question to the more experienced players as well as newbies. When you're starting a real game, no SM mods aside from using up initial tech points, do you alter anything at all to your tailoring, ie adding more shipyards or research labs? I was curious because I am not going to alter anything but 4 shipyards and 20 labs seem a bit small for a 500 million pop considering they're so damn expensive

Also, how many research labs do you usually cap off at? And is the military academy max level 10?

Should I consistently keep adding factories as time passes on? How much is good to cap off on?

Generally, I play with a conventional start.

I put in as about half as many labs as aurora would give me, if I had a regular start, i.e. 10 for a 500m population or 20 for a 1000m population, because otherwise, the game goes realy, REALY slow.
Other than that, no changes (I usually have enough time to build/expand my shipyards, because I have to research the various starship techs first anyway).
Oh, I forgot, I up the minerals on my homeworld by a factor of 5 to 10 for a conventional start or I run out of some minerals before anything gets done.

After converting conventional industry, I put 10% to building factories and 10% to mines. I also put 30% to building new labs (and have my best Construction/Production scientists research better research rates constantely). This leaves me with 50% for other stuff.

Edit: Never mind I got it.

A question to the more experienced players as well as newbies. When you're starting a real game, no SM mods aside from using up initial tech points, do you alter anything at all to your tailoring, ie adding more shipyards or research labs? I was curious because I am not going to alter anything but 4 shipyards and 20 labs seem a bit small for a 500 million pop considering they're so damn expensive

Also, how many research labs do you usually cap off at? And is the military academy max level 10?

Should I consistently keep adding factories as time passes on? How much is good to cap off on?

There are pre-industrial NPRs in the game. They don't do anything but wait to be invaded though

Steve

Conventional Industry is the answer to the question 'Since you can't build installations without TNE, and you can't mine TNE without installations, how did your empire ever get started in the first place?'  CI is the entire technological history and output of your race before it became 'high tech'.

Ten Conventional Industry is also 1 mine, 1 construction factory, and 1 fuel refinery.  Nine-point-nine-nine CI is 0 mines, 0 factories, and 0 refineries.

Alright, now this brings me to my next few questions.. What is 'conventional industry'? How does it differ from normal industry? What does it mean in the industry tab when I have the choices of 'convert CI to automated mines/mines/etc'?

And I have to say that Hyfrydle's newbie journal of his first long term game has me captivated and inspired. I just may very well try my own! I have just about enough experience and knowhow to try one thanks to everyone's help mixed with my own blundering through the menus, decyphering what means what, etc.

In short, every game - no matter how well you think you've planned, based on previous games - seems to be rushing from one crisis to another, based on not having enough something.

And that, in a nutshell, is one of the reasons that Aurora is such a good game and fun to play, at least in this newbie's opinion.  Add in the drama of aliens to fight/avoid/hide from/negotiate with/conquer, and no game ever plays the same way twice.  

There's no railroaded story that you have to follow, there's no only-one-way-to-win 'best' strategy, there's no having to self-nerf your own strategy/economy/tactics/etc. to keep it interesting, there's just a wide-open sandbox with new things to uncover every time you play.  AND there's an active and involved designer adding new toys all the time!  

What more could you want?!?!

Well unless you eliminated all the complexity, dumbed down the game, and turned it into a First-Person Shooter, then that would be awesome.  NOT!!!