Playing the Torians because they don't get any love. Genius difficulty.

Screen shot 1:

There are all kinds of problems with the "starting sector size" setting. On one hand, I misunderstood it. I want to have a galaxy with a lot of tiny sectors but that is not an option. I can make my own starting sector tiny.

The weird thing is that "starting sector size" also dictates the number of opponents you can have. If you set it to tiny, you can have a maximum of 9 opponents even if the galaxy itself is huge.

Next game I am going to go with several sectors, every other race, and medium starting sector size. This machine can handle it. (My previous one couldn't.)

Nevertheless, hostiles are still ubiquitous despite being set to rare (see green circles). The precursor sentinels are the circle to the east, pirates to the south and you can see the space monster to the west. Later I traveled to another empty sector and found both precursor sentinels and pirates before I found a habitable planet. Note: I went into the .ini file and it said both "PirateBaseFrequency=Rare" and "HostileEntitiesFrequency=Occasional".

Good news: Plenty of duratanium

Bad news: Not much else. As of turn 30, I haven't found any other things other than what my survey ships picked up. (Note: I was able to find promethion and thulium in an adjacent sector but elerium was still very scarce until I unlocked the Galactic Bazaar. 

BTW, now that ascension victory is turned off (not even available from settings), do ascension crystals have any value? Should those be removed too?

Screenshot #2:

Text cut off. Did I get nanites or not? Nanites did appear under "artifacts" so yes. These visual artifacts (and worse) have been occurring since day 1.

Screenshot #3:

Onyx should never trade promethion. It goes against everything they stand for. But I'll take it because there is no promethion source in this sector.

Later they offered me a totally garbage offer, but I don't have the screen shot. Later they offered me Asteroid Mining + Subspace Streaming + Open Borders for Xeno Research, Improved Missile Targeting, and Beam Weapon Theory. No thanks. The next one was Beam Weapon Theory + 1 Monsatium + Open Borders for Xeno Manufacturing and Planetology. That's okay.

Screenshot #4:

No, our planets are not under threat. A starbase is not a planet and it is not going to be attacked by precursor sentinels.

Screenshot #5:

Because I didn't escort my colony ship, it got destroyed by pirates (does this ever happen to the AI?) and the next colony ship got one-turned. I suppose I'll have to take this one by force. Hopefully the pirates will help me out by acting as a go-between.

This didn't work out exactly as I planned. I put a defender on Ishikawa II and the pirates attacked it anyway, eschewing the adjacent and unguarded Ishikawa I. I had to divert my command ship to defend. Fortunately, that was enough to divert the pirate into attacking Ishikawa I. The pirates took it then I took it back. Success.

Screenshot #6

BUG: I wasn't paying attention, I thought the Onyx had settled the only other decent world in this sector but it was in fact a minor race. (Note: I haven't found another minor race yet, but I've found over a dozen hostile nests.) They want me to farm pirates. Okay! Here's the problem. I killed 7 hostiles, which should have completed the mission. When I went back to talk to them, I only had the bottom two options. That's the screen shot above. In other words, this quest is broken. Save file.

Screenshot #7:

I thought it might be because some of the kills were precursor sentinels and not pirates. It turned out I was correct. Therefore it is a disconnect between the UI and the mission.

While we're here, there is another disconnect between the text and the other text. Helios Ore vs. Duratanium. 

Screenshot #8:

OK, time to get rid of these stupid precursor sentinels. Why can't I one-shot them? They should barely be able to get past my shields and they have no defenses of their own, just a lot of hit points. I did 14 damage, took damage, and lost one of my support ships. Huh? Hang on, my command ship didn't even participate in the battle. Why not? Save-scumming...Every ship has movement. The smaller ships have 6, the command ship has 2. We're not in a nebula. No matter, I just moved my smaller ships out of the fleet, attacked successfully, and moved on. Drat, I don't have the save file for this one. Sorry!

Screenshot #9:

Crap, I guess I shouldn't have accepted the Illicit Goods event. Good to know! And colony worlds are great, but the crime is something I'm still learning how to deal with.

Screenshot #10:

Thanks for telling me, but it wasn't my base.