[geoschmo]

And a variation on the Fixed Income game. Make the minimum empire generation a smaller number, like the equivalent to a single homeworld or three in a standard game. Just enough to get a start. Then change the "remote mineing decreases asteroid value" to false, and now you have changed the economic model completely. For an empire to become large and support a lot of ships you have to build remote mining bases over planets and asteroids. Or plant colonies to generate research. It's a trade off. Remote mining gets added to your minimum empire generation, instead of replacing it as planetary mining does. And you don't need space ports.

If I did this I would probably separate the remote mining comps and make two kinds. The standard ones for bases and ships and a lower a smaller size lower resource generation one for the early satelites.

Geoschmo