I can see already that a modified "Stay-at-home" strategy is possible. In this campaign, because of the large number of warp points in my beginning system, I've limited my exploration to only adjacent systems and have been very successful at exploiting the local systems one-by-one. By the time I've finished exploiting the local group, my military will be much more capable and much larger than it would have been earlier. My economy will be much larger than it was, and much more capable of sustaining rapid expansion, whereas it was almost painfully slow to do anything at the start.
I have done something similar with my current campaign after running into a couple of precusors. Further expansion has been halted until my military can be increased.
While this strategy was only possible in this case because of the large number of warp points in the initial system, Aurora lends itself to this variation because the economic side is not so dependent on constantly finding new habitable planets to colonize.
This strategy is not really possible in Starfire, because you miss out on so much if you don't explore. Given an equal start in Starfire, a player trying this strategy, even with nine systems to exploit, would end up far behind the player that expanded as fast as possible, unless the expanding player ran into something really nasty.
It is definitely a viable Aurora strategy, although you will need good supplies of all minerals close to home, which you may not always have. The downsides are lack of contact with (potentially) friendly alien races, not finding potentially rich geological sites that may aid economic growth, lower overall pop growth, because small colonies grow much faster than large ones, and lack of ruins, which might lead to technological discovery and potentially locating abandoned mines and installations. The considerable upside is a much stronger base economy and safety from precursors, if you are using them, and unfriendly aliens. I notice you started with a low population so if you wanted to skip the initial stay at home phase you could also start with a larger pop.
The maintenance facility also adds to ths stay at home strategy as you can build up a large fleet without having to maintain it, almost like the Bugs in In Death Ground I haven't decided yet if this is a good or bad thing for the game
Steve
The maintenance facility definitely does what I had hoped it would, in that it removes the need for micromanagement and speeds the game along. However, I do understand your last statement above, and I have been thinking about this alot in relation to my current game.
It isn't good that as long as you stay home maintenance doesn't cost you anything because you have a maintenance facility. That just doesn't seem right. On the other hand, I like the current set up where I don't have to worry about maintenance unless I'm actually fighting someone, or at least getting ready to fight someone. I like having the limitation of having to worry about maintenance issues during military operations, and having to plan my ship designs around maiuntenance issues, at least to a certain extent.
For example, in my current campaign the Wasatian Fleet is a home defense force. Even the larger ships have limited spares and even limited fuel, because they only anticipate having to use the fleet either in the home system or in one of the adjacent systems. This makes them more powerful than equivalent ships deisgned for long deployments, but it is a big tradeoff.
About the only change I would suggest would be to have the maintenance facility consume resources, as is being discussed in other threads.
Kurt