Ah i see, I was aware of the SM instant but figured this was a "less cheaty" way of doing it or some such.
Actually, this (empire setup, including tech) is exactly what SM mode was originally put in for. Don't forget that Aurora started out as "Starfire Assistant", i.e. a book-keeping helper for a multi-player paper-and-pencil 4X game. SM (Space Master) mode was used to transcribe the empires that the players had created into the system, advance time by a turn, figure out which systems (and when in the turn) had player "collisions" that would need to be played out on hex paper (SA originally only had the galactic map - no system map), update the fleets with the results of battles, and generally fix things that Steve hadn't put explicit hooks in to do.
Over the years (soon to be decades
), Steve automated more and more of the paper-and-pencil tracking in the game (e.g. weapons fire and damage, system map, NPR setup, ...), but human-directed setup remains an SM function.
That being said, when you create a new game there's a "Assign starting tech points automatically" checkbox that will use the same algorithm (I think) as is used for NPRs to spend your tech points on research. Note that it is a GAAP (Generally Accepted Aurora Practice) to use the research points to buy tech, then (when research points hit zero) use the "instant" button to grant yourself system designs (engines, weapons, sensors, ...) based on the tech available for free as part of the initial setup. My recollection is that this is what happens with NPR too.
John
