In my games thus far, I've started out with a pretty big survey fleet, and not much in the way of military. I've mostly been able to get away with this in other 4X games, because I don't expect to run into aliens for a while. (And I'm usually pretty diplomatic, too - I fight only when I have to.)
But in Aurora, the result is that I explode outward, and run into three or four NPR's before I'm ready to come to grips with them. (There's usually one within one jump of Sol.) It takes a *lot* longer to develop a colony in Aurora than in other games, so my first colonies are very vulnerable.
So obviously I need to either change the NPR settings (to 5% or so instead of 30%) or else change my doctrine.
My question is, how are people handling the early game in terms of strategy and force mix? Do you explore each system down to the last rock and get any colonies planted and suitably defended before moving on to the next? Do you explore everything around Sol and then stop expanding until you've exploited everything? Or do you explore far beyond Sol and build military frantically to keep up with demand?
Militarily, are people finding it best to focus on jump point defense (probably with FAC's) or warships and PDC's stationed on planets? (It would be best to have both, of course, but economics does intervene.)
Anyone else feel inclined to lower the NPR chance? See, the thing is, in other games, the NPR's are out there doing their thing whether you know it or not.
So it's good to get out there and find out the worst. But in Aurora, NPR's will spring into being if you explore - which is a little odd, when you think about it. Maybe I should just set the chance very low and put in more NPR's at the start - but I suspect that would slow the game down.
EDIT: By the way, how often do people see low-tech and pre-industrial NPR's? I've yet to run across any - though I'm not sure how one would detect a pre-industrial population at all.
