Starting Planet Type question.

[great.throwdini!]

The gas giant "head start" is a bit unfair to the computer ... even with the opening homeworld, the player can lead in population (and all of its production bonuses) over all rock/ice cpu-controlled empires for a healthy chunk of time.

Does it seem unreasonable to start each empire off with the same population and facility counts? Although gas giant homeworlds would permit for future growth beyond that available to rock/ice homeworlds, it would blunt the huge headstart already present in the game.

Or, perhaps, start every empire off on the same *size* homeworld?

I know that part of any game in this genre is luck (some spacefaring races are more fortunate than others in terms of locale), and that is acceptable, but the current set-up for gas giant races is a bit much in the early game and not discounted greatly by the distribution of gas giants throughout the play sector.