What's the most fun game setup?

[LoBlo]

Small quick 300 star games, or 2000 star marathon slug fest? Which do you like and how do you set up your game for maximal fun?

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[Nightskies]

ALL THE SETUPS. Except the ones my PC can't handle. For real though, all the setups. I've found that the various settings all derive good fun with the right intent.

Smaller galaxies, of course, favor more aggressive races that quickly engage in war before alliances form. Larger ones, with less star density overall, gives more passive races a little more time to develop more effective weapons and forge closer relations to allow them to gang up on the more aggressive ones.

Classic, Spiral and Ring Dense Center creates more solid stretches of nebulae, effectively increasing the size of the galaxy by creating distance between would-be adjacent areas. Large Spiral galaxies with high nebulae density particularly shifts the balance toward races with diplomatic strengths... unless an aggressive empire gets lucky in the center.

I do have a slight favor for Irregular, Ring No Center and Dual Rings No Center as it makes for the most balanced distribution of stars, making it a little less likely for any particular empire to boom ahead of others because they got a great concentration of stars where they started.

AI empires can quickly blast up in power with a bunch of independents (if you don't get them first), be it through hostility or diplomacy. Tends to create a few high powered empires in smaller galaxies, but larger ones allows most races enough time to grab a few of their own before they're gobbled up around them.

Races with high growth favors greater Colony Prevalence and can be stifled by it being Rare. As the game currently favors high Growth races, it might temper the potency of Gizureans in particular to lower this.

With both a high Colony Prevalence and Independents, it seems to generate more clusters of same-race independents, so overall diversity of any given empire isn't that much more compared to normal settings.

Colonization Range Limit being set to low and Colony Influence Range set higher, with few Independents, disabled Gravitic Locations and Race-Specific Story Events, will make more delineated boundaries. Better give the AI Excellent starting systems though, or they could struggle to get by.

Hard is the sweet spot for difficulty. Very Hard and Impossible imposes big penalties that make arbitrarily makes various strategies nonviable. Better to make a galaxy that is challenging through other means, like the following...

...

Few nebulae and more hostile races to you is a sure way to get the AI to gang up on you, increasing the difficulty without actually increasing the Difficulty setting. Boskara Hive Mind against a galaxy of two each of Teekan, Human and Ackdarian Republics starting Distant with no Colony range limit, few independents and high colony prevalence.

More important are House Rules.

My current game, I'm playing a larger galaxy with lots of nebulae on Very Hard, an average spread of empires with high aggression and lots of potential colonies and independents, but house rule of no exploits or unfair advantages over the AI as a Dhayut.
That means no Quantum Capacitors, no multi mining engines, no tech trading, no tech stealing (modded), no scuttling freighters to make bonus income, no taxes over 70%, no forced rebellions, facility duping, raid exploit, etc. Can't use any abilities outside mere manual control that the AI can't/won't have.
Although the first war is going well, its early game and think I'm losing in the big picture. Very Hard might be too punishing to use no advantages the AI can't have- not using the Dhayut's exceptional spies to steal tech feels like a big factor.

You can come up with all sorts of House Rules.

• Protect as many empires from elimination as possible.
• Do not manually control any ships.
• Exterminate all 'unsanctioned' races from the galaxy, spare none, including independents and those under the banner of 'sanctioned' races.
• Roleplay as Super Earth, as I once did:
  All ships and stations must have a Recreation Center to keep Managed Democracy alive
  All military ships must have an Assault Pod for 'Helldivers' to spread freedom
  Infantry (except one per odd troop tech tier acquired) must be Clones
  No Robotic Infantry!
  All invasions must be preceded by a Special Forces drop
  Except for bugs for farming (slavery), all other races must be exterminated to ensure peace
  -No colony may be bombarded without feet on the ground
  -Unless they stand for Democracy (or are a Republic), then make them vassals for Super Mortalen
  -Independents do not stand for Democracy unless they are Mortalen or match a (future) vassal's race
  Diplomacy is allowed, but only to prepare an empire to become a vassal or for temporary peace
  A period of peace may only last 2 years unless there are no threats to prosperity
  All Mortalen colonies must be liberated

...I like this game.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Regarding nebulae: pathing is horrible, so you will find dozes of ships stuck in nebulae for decades on denser settings, which is the definition of "not fun".

[Nightskies]

...That hasn't been a problem for quite some time. A year, maybe? Yes, it still happens, but...

1. Ships can no longer be disabled by nebulae while in a jump. So a ship skirting the edge of a gravitic storm won't get disabled.
2. Automated ships without protection will no longer go into hostile nebulae unless the player somehow prompts them to, like colonizing in a storm.