I started fresh a few days ago and got Mars up and running in about half the time. I'm in the 11th year.
I started surveying nearby jump points once things were hopping at home-- and once I realized I'd start running out of elements, with crappy rolls on my home system. Hey, alpha centauri. Colony cost 2, colony cost 3, Oh my god. I found a colony cost zero world. It appeared to be uncolonized. Oh my god! I flew my spanking new jumpship surveyor over to it to start the survey-- kaboom.
Never saw them coming.
Theres something there. And their flag is a big red swastika.
I've dubbed them the space ####s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KEueJnsu80"[/youtube]]SPACE ####S!!!I don't think they're living on the planets there, but whatever ship blew me up had 8 lasers to my mere 2 on Destroyers. There were 4 or 5 other ships in the pack I detected. Theres not much else in the other direction.... sadly-- few thousand units of this and that and a colony cost 4. Mars is just now getting its CO2, so not a chance to start on that.
Oh god, I want that colony. Talk about a game changer.