Well, since my internet has crapped out, I've been playing Aurora a lot more. Inspired by Redking (at least I think that he was the one who did it), I've been focusing on using only Gauss weaponry for all my ships. The challenge is going to be doubly FUN, since I haven't actually fought any engagements in Aurora. Most of my empires collapse when I get distracted by another game.
Things have been going well so far. Exploration has been halted for now. My exploration ships skimped on the fuel too much, so I constantly had to rescue them. I've learned from my mistakes though. The newest designs can go on full power for more than a year. I have no idea how effective my ships are going to be in combat though. I haven't encountered any other empires or precursors. My latest design, the Rapier, pumps out 20 points of damage every five seconds, with a maximum range of 30k. Not the best, but hopefully they're fast enough to get in range of any enemies. At 7000 tons and more than 6000 km/s, they should be.
Sol-wise, Mars is now perfect habitable, with only an atmospheric pressure of 0.5 atm and a average temperature of 31C. I'm a bit surprised at how little terraforming I had to do. I'm designing some terraforming ships next, so that Venus can become habitable as well, or at least enough so that they can operate the terraforming facilities on their own. I never thought that I would say this, but annoyingly my shipping lines are producing too many cargo haulers. I think it might have something to do with the luxury accommodations I included in my colony ship design. The next version will probably dispose of it.
As I said before, the amount of exploration I've done is negligible, due to the crappy fuel stores of my exploration vessels. Only one system explored so far, and it has no easily habitable planets. Even more annoyingly, the ones that I could possibly terraform are mostly orbiting the other star in the system. The star that is several billion kilometers out from the primary star. AKA the one where the jump point lands you. However, if I ever had a reason to pursue hyper-drive technology, this would be one of them.
Anyways, wish me luck.