I was wondering what changes people make on conventional starts if any? I find the default to be a little too slow. Although I have not tried the default now that I build more then 200 factories at the start.
Also was wondering how people go about adding ruins. Do you just hit the add ruins button and roll with what you get or do you say i want at least a "xxx"? I think ruins need to be added to a single race/country start to give a reason to actually build a navy. I know that there could be aliens on the other side of the first jump point (happened my first game I actually made it out of sol) but I can't see my race thinking that it would really be a possibility.
In my current game I started in a nebula and added ruins to the only possible colony. I also doubled my pop and starting resources and raised the accessibility (had a lot of .1, although going to .5 was a bit overboard). So far its been an interesting game, I found the ruins when I was in the middle of researching tech to build colony ships and actually had to stop and ask myself how to handle it.