Nice start.  Maybe too late to suggest it, but if early RD are necessary, but later RD are overpowered, throw in a disaster to reduce them as needed.

Paul and I just recently maaned to get a efw more turns on the Theban empire campaign going, but we, having learned from earlier experiences, halved tech and build times, and slowed down population growth by a lot. We also consiously ruled out asteroid settlements.
This resulted on us now being at turn 206, with the thebans at least hitting 156 k income and TL 9 while covering an area larger than Steves Rigellians at the latest sample database provided by him.
Starfire for epic campaigns defenitely profits from a slowdown of the economy. Wars now are modeled a lot more on cautious advances, caring about the survival of your large units due to build times, and long recovery periods between battles. Also the sprawling empires with low incomes limit fortifications in interresting ways (and we're making an effort not to pile automatic weapons sky-high, as they would cut down a lot on the enjoyment).
 

Being still a Newbe to Starfire (playing 3rdR), I can fully understand that (though I also would have _loved_ for the campaign to continue).
My brain simply refuses to imagine the workload that campaign created, even with the help of Steve´s SA.

There aren't many that have allowed a campaign to get that big.  Steve is probably one of the few I know of, with his Rigellian Campaign.  Nice to know that someone is still reading it, though. 

Kurt

While I never re-read things, I have been checking on a monthly basis for new posts on the Phoenix Campaign. So sad it is gone.

Will definitely be following this one!

I tried, I really did.  It's just too big at this point.  I thought for a while about converting it to an easier game to play, like some modified version of full thrust or something of my own, but then it really wouldn't be the Phoenix Campaign any more. 

Kurt

Well I just finished re-reading the Phoenix Campaign for about the third time so I am really looking forward to this.

Nice to know that someone still reads it!  I really wanted to resurrect it, as the broad sweep and scale of the campaign really interested me.  I was just too big to play out, though. 

Kurt

Oh boy, Kurt's back.  All the other Campaigns are presumably suspended indefinitely due to their age (including the Phoenix Campaign?).

Nice to hear from you again.  How's your health?

Yes, the other campaigns should be considered finished.  I tried to restart the Phoenix Campaign last year, but found it unmanageable for the same reasons that forced me to quit originally.  It was just too big, and it took me way to long to move it forward. 

My health is fine these days, but I don't have as much time as I used to.  Still, I should be able to keep this campaign moving forward. 

Thanks for asking!

Kurt

Really well thought out, however as vandermeer pointed out, with 100 labs you'll pretty much hit max tech in about 100 years, I would have thought that with so much nuclear devestation and sociatal displacement that technology would stagnate somewhat. That said I'm looking forward to see what happens, oh and I would think that with such well thought out factions you could have waited for the next update, perhaps an alternate history sequel where the factions don't join together as in this one?

The number of labs was unrealistic for the setting, I agree, but I wanted a setup where I could reach the medium tech's relatively quickly.  I have found with conventional starts that it takes a lot of time for the civilizations to become established, and I wanted the Federation to have a jump-start.

I thought about having the factions be separate, and either moving forward that way or moving towards the formation of the Federation, but I wanted a bit of a simpler start as I have been away from the game for a while. 

Kurt 

Very well thought out. Look forward to reading more.