This is a bit of thread Necro - but most of these are house rules around 1-13. Now that we've moved to 2-5-1 I'm curious if people's house rules have changed any.
My configuration settings and house rules tend to be an effort to try and even the playing field between me and NPRs as much as possible in order to increase the difficulty level of the game (and ruin my own life and enjoy it). As a result I tend to:
- Difficulty modifier: 200+
- Hostility modifier: at least 25, often 50 or 100.
- limited research admin ON
- no terraforming OR terraforming only with facilities discovered on ancient ruins. they may not be constructed (including orbital ones)
- no automines - except those discovered on ancient ruins. they may not be constructed.
- either: no mass drivers OR mass drivers only if a certain technology unlocks them (or ancient ruins). If I permit MDs they may only have an unpopulated colony as the destination.
- no box launchers on anything over 1000 tons.
On terraforming, I don't think NPRs can terraform - so that means they have a reduced ability to colonize. I feel like having a key capability that NPRs can't use dramatically affects the balance of power in a game. So I ditch it. While I could argue that NPRs can take over my colonies that I terraform, I feel like terraforming makes it possible for me to expand faster / with greater ease than NPRs.
Automines and MDs are more about just making my life harder for pain and enjoyment. I waffle on whether or not to not use automines, because at some level there's balance built into the game already and realistically building dozens of ark modules is sometimes more pain than I want to put up with. For MDs - I mostly don't feel like governments would happily fling life-ending masses of dense materials into the orbit of inhabited colonies on a regular basis. One single mistake seems like it carries way too much risk.
The box launcher thing is because of a (perhaps outdated) perspective that NPRs don't handle them well in volumes. So it feels like an unbalanced option for larger vessels.
Lastly, I've been experimenting with picking 1-2 weapons at the start (e. g. carronades, gauss) and then using SM to remove all other weapon technology. When I do that, I make a house rule that I can't research those initial levels - I must get them from NPR wrecks. Once I have the basic technologies, then it's open game. Sometimes I lock MDs behind railgun technology as a result. This means I have to stick to a military doctrine/capability longer.
Re-reading this thread, I'm likely to:
- reduce survey speed significantly (looks like there's a sweet spot of 5-15%).
- change low gravity tolerance for humans to 4/10ths of a g
- consider ArcWolf's 9/28/2021 update to his box launcher rule. :)
(note not using decimals because of built-in anti-newbie code that makes all my decimals have spaces, alas)
