Nice system, Neilo. That should be able to handle anything you throw at it. 
I wish we had a decent public transportation system here in Central Texas. Our only option is to have a car or truck unless you want to take your life in your hands and go two-wheeled. Motorcycles might as well have targets painted on them. There's the bus in the larger cities, but they run slow enough that walking can be serious competition. My truck is also a V8 and my wife's car is not only a V8, but wants premium gas. They're both fun to drive, so I guess I can't complain. Still, riding the subways in London and New York and trains in Chicago has me wishing we had something like that.
I started a DA metaverse game last night. Suicidal, gigantic map, all abundant, scattered, tech set to very fast. Being a techie, I went Altarian. It gave me that race as a default anyway, so why not? Not much time to spend in there and I was pretty slow about choosing each move. I forgot most of the UI.
I was quickly reminded of how important the minor races are in floating the economy. My tech is screaming and I'm buying most of what I care to produce. But the money stays yellow and runs into the red quite frequently. I wonder about the AI. They're not gaining techs very fast and their economies look as bad as mine. Maybe they're wasting money by adding excess stuff to their ships. I can see scouts flying around, so that's probably where a lot of it went. My blank hull colonizers are scouting for me.
The minors are fat and willing to pay for any tech I care to dole out. I've met 3 so far almost exactly when I needed them. They kept me from hitting that -500 mark until my last move.
I just built the Spin Control Center and saved the game before shutting it down. My economy went way into the red when I did that, so I hope I can do some trading when I fire it back up. I don't have a military to speak of, so I might have jumped the gun on getting the SCC. Time will tell.
I have just under 20 planets. I think it was 18 when I looked at the list. AFAIK, my closest competition has maybe 6 or 7. There are colonizers flying everywhere, so I'm sure that'll change per turn. I don't have the range to see what the middle of the map looks like. I hope there's a planet out there for me to do some staging. I'm stuck in the lower right area, but not boxed in.
I've found two of my favorite resources out there. One Morale and one Military. Sadly, I don't have any constructors and little money to set aside for such ventures. Enemy scouts are close to them, so it would probably be a waste of effort to upgrade a blank. I'll take them later when the wars start.
Your game seems to have been played in 1 day, Neilo. That, and it was a 3 year game. I've barely gotten through the middle of year 0. You'll probably be done with your second or third game before I can get through my first. Oh well. I'll poke along and hopefully get some decent score out of it.
Good hunting. 
