All these posts saying their huge empire only had a couple of billion people total are really making me feel bad for starting with 12 billion on Earth at the start...
In my defense, thats how many people we are projected to have in 2100, and I like the idea of starting with a Sol in desperate need of living space. Unfortunately, no one seems to be very bothered about the lack of elbow space and will wait patiently for me to dick around with conventional tech hauling a couple hundred people to Mars every month.
My biggest empire probably hasn't been larger than 3 jumps from Sol in all directions. I haven't even gotten into a real fight save one with some precursors. Either I feel overwhelmed with management and lag or I feel like I've done something wrong and want a fresh start; I've never gotten to the endgame!
My plan though is to establish and empire 10 jumps out from Sol through ever direction I can and THEN enable NPRs. No fun in encountering them when you aren't ready imo.
I didn't even managed to leave Sol.
Probably due to lack of patience and realization that there are other things to play.
I go for a compromise between 500m start and this 12b - 10b population start.
In a save long ago, terraformed the moon (Luna), and was about to terraform Mercury with ruins...
In the current game, 2 NPRs are up at the game start, Precursors and Invaders are also enabled. Known star systems settings up.
I think I doubled the range of NPR spawning. That setting at start with Light Years.
Also, I change the start year from 2025 to 0001 - In order to maximize the potential amount of time possible in the game.
I've also left the instant ship build points at 0, while research points at just 2000 - this probably gives an advantage to the NPRs, but maybe with time I'll catch up to them.
So far, using 3 survey ships to geosurvey as much the Sol as possible. Often building research facilities - 1 built every 3 building cycles - thanks to 8000 starting construction factories...
I used to leave the civilian mining colonies to generate wealth out of resources, but I think I'll try to buy every last bit of resource I can get my hands on in this one, after reading so many sad stories about resource shortages...
This raises an interesting point whether or not the policing requirements of a planetary population should increase as the planet becomes more full above a certain threshold. For example, when the space taken is at least 50% the policing requirements start to increase more than usual, with the increase being more extreme as the space used approaches 100%.
I don't think so. I don't think Aurora4X should put much attention to the population policing, unless we can customize it, of course.
EDIT: I've also set the academy training level on 5 (maximum quality), for now, since I don't plan on building military ships so early in the game, hence, have nowhere to put the navy officers (except built a 120 fighters with no weapons). Ground forces, however, have a shortage of officers, partially due to poor command structure (1000 point HQ unit, will have to upgrade to at least 2500) and due to the size of a single formation (250 was the standard platoon, but now moved to 500 ton sized High-platoons, might need to upgrade to 750)...
