Thanks!

I agree that different aspects of the game really open up on larger galaxies. unfortunately I suspect the number of ships and everything later in these games might be too much for my computer.... but yes, other options you'll notice change things significantly as well. personally, i like a huge galaxy with fewer stars and planets. you get more base $ for trade on larger maps, but it's harder to cover your trade routes with economic base boosts. i don't think the cost of building new bases is 'curved' for the galaxy size, so if you use a lot of bases, you'll find you have to spend a lot more thought on where to put them.

next game i'm going for blind exploration.

Yeah, change a few settings, and the game plays very, very differently. It's a great feature.

I actually enjoy the smaller maps, medium esp. Once you get pretty good at colonization, the larger universes tend to get too easy. (especially if you switch to grabbing up the resources at the right time)

The AI seems more optimized to smaller maps, but i'm sure this will improve.

Another example I can add of why this is the best space tbs game... in another game I was playing as the dregins, I spotted an ai colony ship headed to a system I have not explored yet. It had about 200 colonists on it. Being the evil race I was, I knew I was playing this one in a war style. So I decided I had to stop this colony ship at all costs, no matter what I did not want it setting up another colony anywhere. So after brainstorming, I figured out how I could do it. First the ships I had near it were much to slow to intercept, that ai colony ship had a speed of 4 which was a terran ship by the way. I was not yet at war with anyone, this was a young game. So I knew I needed to design a ship that was faster then this colony ship or I would be out of luck and never able to stop it. Problem was, it was already past most of my colonies except one which was in the travel path of this ai ship. That colony never had a space port on it and was just established, darn, back to the drawing board. Then wait a minute... I figured with enough cash, I can make something happen.

I was to buy a starport and design a ship just for this role and buy that too. Alot of money to spend but worth it. Like this, I can have everything happen in about two turns. So I designed a ship based on a cargo hull. This ship would be an interceptor light cruiser, named it a "Ulysess" class. Its purpose is to intercept and attack any unarmed vessels in the area. Well, this plan had worked very well. Within 2 turns, that ai colony ship was near my outer planet. The starbase and ship was built and ready for launch. Then, I intercepted that colony ship, declared war and attacked it, killing all colonists on board. Then I proceeded to mop up and hit a couple of scouts and other unarmed vessels in the area. Needless to say, I was very satisfied with the outcome of all of this. In fact, this same ship made its way to another system and wreaked havoc there too on the torians. The thing is, I researched space weapons right away and had lasers before anyone else. Not many games allow me to do interesting things like this.