Interesting starting conditions

[Aldaris (OP)]

Most people use a fairly standard start from Earth, this thread is for thinking up interesting alternatives to that.
One thing that came to mind in the Ark Ship start. You start with a large number of full colony ships and cargo ships laden with infrastructure, terraforming installations, factories, automated mines, a few mass drivers etc, a few maintenance ships, asteroid miners and some terraformers. In a system with 2 or more reasonably terraformable worlds. Total population would be maybe 400 million. This would be a very different, and possibly considerably harder start then normal, but it could make for an original storyline.

[AtomikKrab]

Starting in a nebula, a high level nebula, it makes things different.

[Venec]

Also, try starting with NPR in your homesystem or even homeworld.

[Hawkeye]

Also, try starting with NPR in your homesystem or even homeworld.

For some of this read Kurt´s "Twin Moon" campaign in the Aurora Fiction Forum

Another interesting set-up is Steve´s "Exodus" Campaign, where there is a time limit to get off of earth due to an increase in solar activity and Texashawk´s "American Dream" Campaign, where the time limit seems to be much shorter due to the effects of a nuclear war.