Space Mastering

[Rolepgeek (OP)]

So I want to run a campaign similar to the ones Steve runs, as a Tolkien-inspired campaign, in the Seventh Age. I have a lot of questions as such.
1. Does he run all of the initial factions?
2+3. How does he switch and how often does he switch?
4. Is the only real way to get a custom star system(since I don't think Sol fits the legends behind Tolkien) to keep generating them until they're acceptable?
5. If I do that, how do I get rid of the empire's knowledge of the bad systems/delete them?
6. Is there a way to delete an empire, specifically the Space Master one I would use while creating the systems?
7. When creating a new name theme, will it combine lines to make first and last names?
8. If I put in multiple ShipName.txt files for example, when I try to make the new theme, will the game get confused?
9. I'm sure there is a way to get new ship types for the little image, but do I have to pixel draw them by mouse, or did Steve just search for them?
10. Will the game decide it's done with this smeg if I put in 0 or a negative number for the starting year?
11. If I put in a negative number, will it count down towards infinity, or up towards 0?
12. When Steve makes the campaigns, if he runs all sides, does he have predetermined course of action for how they will end up interacting, which gets changed over time from developments in game?
13. If two nations are hostile to each other and have colonies on the same world, will ground troops be able to attack automatically? Will weapons on PDCs be able to hit other PDCs, even if it's a laser or a railgun?
14. Will I be able to think of more questions?

[Nightstar]

1: Yep.
2: Ctrl+R lets you change default empire. Alternatively, in the upper left of most windows, there's a drop down menu to change empire.
3: As often as you need. The empires should be set up to not need constant attention. When something happens that requires a change (just keep an eye on the event window), you switch over, fix it, and get back to moving as quickly as you can.
4: Without access to designer mode/database, yeah.
5: The system window (f9) while in spacemaster mode.
6: The race/empire window (Ctrl-f2). I really don't recommend deleting the spacemaster empire though. It comes in handy if you ever need to use SM mode again.
7-9: I don't really mess with that stuff. 
10: I don't think so? Haven't tried.
11: It would count up, if it works.
12: I'm not Steve, but as I understand your question, yes. Decide how each faction/whatever will behave first
13: No. You initiate attacks from the ground units tab in f2.
14: You haven't even begun to scrape the surface. I'd suggest you look at ALL the different little windows available from the main aurora menu window. The spacemaster comparisons are useful, production overview is something else entirely, and all the summary windows are priceless when you can't remember where you left fleet #7. Also remember to take the events window and filter out events that really don't matter to you. There are a lot of poorly documented convenience features in aurora. Taking an hour to figure out fleet organization wasn't worth it when you only had a couple of fleets. In a multi empire game, the trivial bits of automation can save you hours. This is because advancing a single year will quickly take hours. If you don't have a lot of time to spend on a single game, you may not want to get into this. Just a word of warning.

[ZimRathbone]

So I want to run a campaign similar to the ones Steve runs, as a Tolkien-inspired campaign, in the Seventh Age. I have a lot of questions as such.
<snip prev answered Qs>

8. If I put in multiple ShipName.txt files for example, when I try to make the new theme, will the game get confused?

No - each time you add a ShipName theme, it adds the category that you define to the table.  It then runs through the file looking at each name to see if it is already in the ship name table,  if it doesn't exist then it adds the new name to the table.  In either case it then sets the category for that name to True. If you add the same file with the same category name twice it has no effect.  If you add the same file with different category names then the ship name will have both categories set to true

10. Will the game decide it's done with this smeg if I put in 0 or a negative number for the starting year?
11. If I put in a negative number, will it count down towards infinity, or up towards 0?

Done this - started with year -100 and it happily advanced past Y0 and into positive figures (that was quite a few versions ago but I see no reason why this would have changed)

13. If two nations are hostile to each other and have colonies on the same world, will ground troops be able to attack automatically? Will weapons on PDCs be able to hit other PDCs, even if it's a laser or a railgun?

Opposing forces CAN interact but will only do so automatically if one or both are NPRs, however this usually ends up with one or both nations being eliminated fairly quickly in my experience. (I dont play with multiple races originating on a single planet for this reason). PDCs can attack other PDCs, but are subject to the usual atmosphere rules, which in practise means only missiles or Mesons can hit

14. Will I be able to think of more questions?

Inevitably - there are always more questions with this game :-)