I always used to use a conventional start and it works well for really learning the game. you are massively limited in what you can do to begin with and each asset be it ships/troops/installations are much more important on an individual level at that stage. This forces you to think about how you use each one and where will be the greatest benefit to achieve your goals. In addition to this the other parts of the game such as jump drives, cloaks, shields and so on also tend to trickle into being within your empire and so you  get plenty of time to understand how each of them work from within a game perspective rather than suddenly getting all the toys at once and not having a clue how to use any of them. Aurora has a steep enough learning curve as it is, by using the conventional start you at least turn that curve into a gentle stroll up a hill.

Having said that though I now find that unless there is a very specific RP story in mind, then conventional starts are just frustratingly slow. at this stage your industry, mining, and research speeds are pitiful compared to the specialised facilities of the TN age. Ships take an age to arrive at places and then tend to have to come straight home to refuel, along with the fact that your shipyards simply cannot grow fast enough to really build big vessels (nor do you have the wealth or mineral output to support such). It can have the chance to turn in to a very long game of hit the 30 day button over and over until you hit TN, then repeat while you now convert all your pre TN assests to the new technology.

If you made good use of the truce counter though it could be used for a multi nation RP Earth start. As for ICBM's they are generally useless from a tactical standpoint in the TN age, but you can still use the launchers for their ppv value if nothing else.

Similar to my preferred start.  I don't force Mars to any specific ruins, but I do plant a random one there for RP.

Colonies generate income both from taxes and also from shipping.  The fact you have a colony on the moon will stimulate the growth of your shipping sector.  Also when the colony grows it will generate goods that can be shipped.  You can terraform the moon into a fairly cheap (in terms of infrastructure) place to live as well.  It is possible to use the colony as a site for things (not really necessary in the case of luna) where you need population. 

There are lots of "gameplay" reasons to put colonies on rocks that have no minerals, but it is not something you should do willy nilly.  The NCC has colonies on Luna and Ganymede neither of which have minerals.  Forge is a linch pin colony but the planet is a hell hole that makes venus look good.  Venus was a mistake but one the NCC is stuck with.  I may well build a single group of terraformers just to put in orbit around venus to start making it more livable...in like 200 years or so.

For general comments on conventional starts.  You have lots of time as it is slow going, so make use of it.  Build ships and explore the solar system.  But make sure you have a solid defence at your home world from bases/OWPs.

You also will have problems with minerals eventually and the CMC will be what saves you.  You will have a fuel crissis and to get out of that you need refineries, fuel harvesters and improved efficiency for your engines.  That has to be fought as an all fronts war, it is the combination of a lot of small improvements that slowly drags you out of the hole.

Outside of that I would say you have to expect problems from the NPRs who are clearly going to be ahead of your technologically.  However, I don't see that as a good reason to stay home, if you are just going to huddle in your home system until you are technologically advanced I'd say just do a normal start.

Well, there are still a couple benefits. Population grows faster when it is split across multiple smaller colonies as compared to all on Earth, and you also have a higher percentage of that population being available as workers to crew your installations. Higher population means you also have a higher wealth income through taxes. You also get free infrastructure created by the civilian economy and dumped on Luna assuming you don't perfectly terraform it.

Next Question...

Luna is barren of any minerals whatsoever. Even after a ground based geo-survey. It's obviously easily colonizable and I know that it tends to grow much more quickly than Earth. Any opinions on how soon I should be trying to establish Luna and/or Mars colonies given a conventional start?

I know that circumstances may vary. In my case Earth's supply of Boronide is down under 50K and Mars has 5M but it's only at a 0.1 level. Mars also has 41K of Corbomite at 0.9 (which Earth is low on) 13M of Duranium at 0.2 availability and  375K of Corundium at 0.3

And a size 1 (or smaller) active and passive sensors are classed as commercial.

Excellent! I'll keep that in mind.

It's August of year 11

I've completed all the geo-surveys with the exception of four long period comets that are all out past the range of my old survey ships. Ikeya-Zang is just reaching its aphelion of 9.5 billion miles.  Books is on it's way in but is still beyond that distance, and Hale-Bopp and McNaught-Russel are still on their way out.

GSV Newton 1 (My Grav-Survey Ship) has already found 5 jump point locations though I'm years away from opening THAT can of worms. It's finished with 27 of the 30 survey locations (though I know from the game set-up that it's not gonna find any more jump points) and is happily tooling around the cosmos.

So I decided it's time to do some empirical testing of the success rate on Geo-survey teams while I develop my tech. ...and to watch how Earth mines out. I've got 400 ground based mines that were converted from the 40% of my conventional industry that I converted. Plus I built 80 automated mines figuring that I'd deploy them to the stellar bodies with the most abundant minerals.

Right now I'm analyzing how people may be jumping into space mining too early simply because it's there.  (Of course that depends on what mineral availability you start with on Earth)

I set up a spreadsheet with all the Earth Minerals and their availability and plugged in the quantities and developed an average return per mine. In my specific game it's 5.72 in Year 11 down from 5.82 from when I first started tracking it (about year 7 or so) Nothing's gonna mine out for at least 5 years and the least plentiful minerals are the ones that have started bringing down my average Earth Mine Yield. Just to be on the safe side, I've also got 5 mass drivers ready to go so as to quickly deal with any shortfalls.

The bodies with the most available minerals have (at best) a simple availability sum of 5.  I'm prepared to move auto-mines when Earth yields start plummeting but I've got a stockpile of everything with Duranium being the lowest. I've got two years production on hand and the resource is still at availability of 1 on Earth with 35 years until depletion.   Corbomite, Boronide, Mercassium, and Uridium are the most troubling as to years to depletion. But each of those has at least 5 years of current production stockpiled and most over 10 years worth.

The only projected shortfall on the list (based on current project usage rates)  is Duranium. 

Again, that can best be resolved by staying Earthbound.

Does that analysis seem sound or am I missing something?

As a stop gap measure until you can get real pickets that's not a bad idea. In that case I'd recommend a passive sensor either in addition to or instead of the active.

Commercial ships don't break down but I have found my grav and geo survey ships unexpectedly in combat too many times. I have talked about that preference in a few threads recently but it's just a numbers game, weighing fuel efficiency vs chance of engines being destroyed specifically in combat.

Your two engines should probably be size 25.

Two 25's sound reasonable. Since the Grav Survey ship is classed as military anyway I was thinking that it should have a small active sensor as well that is normally off.  When the Grav surveys are complete the ship can do double duty as a picket/sentinel. Does that make sense?