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[Dostoevsky]

Probably better to ask on the official forums about that, but from taking a quick look at the innards of one of the portraits packs looks like it's not too complicated for a mod.

Aside from the basic version numbering content and adding in the graphics files, the bulk of it is adding faction files for everyone who gets to use the graphics. That includes the player faction, looks like. No complicated code, just long lists of file names (the portraits that are called up).

[Blue_Dwarf]

I sometimes try to “Go Dark”, but the enemy can still spot my fleet from a fair distance, and I get in trouble with governments for switching off the transponder.

Check your sensor profile. If it's over 600, you can probably be spotted by off-screen ships. You can pause and hover the mouse cursor over any fleet to see their sensor range, that's the range at which they can see you.

You can reduce that range by turning off sustained burn, flying in a nebula or magnetic storms, or stopping in asteroid belts. You can also install the Insulated Engine Assembly mod, I use that early on to smuggle goods. When they can't see you, turn off the transponder or go dark.

[zaimoni]

How do I attack fleets that keep hitting the “Emergency Burn”  on me?

....

The boost that the “Sustained Burn” provides is nice, but when the enemy boosts away they usually make a very tight turn - one my fleet can’t make.

StarSector is a fast-twitch game here.  So you need to minimize how much fast-twitch is needed.  What you do is sustained-burn towards the fleet when it's heading towards you, then "just before/after it starts to flee" (details depend ... if you're speed-matched with the target then letting it e-burn for one or two seconds before starting e-burn yourself can work): PAUSE, turn off sustained burn, turn on emergency burn, UNPAUSE.

All of the action hotkeys are "scheduled" during pause, but take effect when unpausing.

[Zangi]

Your fleet moves as fast as your slowest ship.  Consider not fielding ones slower then the big tankers, if you can manage it. 
D-mods may also slow down some of your slower ships too.

[JimboM12]

yeah, if you salvage wrecks, avoid "degraded engines" like the plague. look for mods that increase burn level, like militarized subsystems for civilian ships and the other one i can't remember the name of right now. my personal preference is also to slap efficiency overhaul on all my ships but im primarily a carrier player, so recovery shuttles and expanded deck crew are musts as well.

[Majestic7]

I put drive modifiers on all support ships (tankers, freighters and troop carriers) that are not supposed to see combat anyway for the strategic movement. Tugs are good if you want to field a couple of slow battleships later on.

[AzyWng]

Estabilshed a terrible mining colony that somehow has a million people on it.

Bought drugs for the miners (because apparently they need those).

Got a spaceport, which is apparently basic colony fundamentals that are not constructed when you establish a colony(?).

Did some jobs to support both a fleet and a colony at the same time.

Fought off a fuckoff big pirate armada to defend a space station thingie (you know, the battlestations that are fuckoff big, extremely durable, and are capable of fending off small fleets all by themselves?) and now people like me even more than they already did.

An incoming pirate "attacK" turned out to actually be somewhat small, and also it "failed" because it was a few days late after I showed up and made them run? In any case, I now have those fools to deal with, so that's all well and good.

So yeah. I'm playing on easy, but all the same, things aren't going too bad.

[EnigmaticHat]

I sometimes try to “Go Dark”, but the enemy can still spot my fleet from a fair distance, and I get in trouble with governments for switching off the transponder.

Hide in nebulas; the stealth bonus stacks with going dark and you can still slowly move within the nebula.  You can also pretend to be space junk by being stationary in an asteroid field/planet's ring.

The enemy might not actually be seeing you.  Once you escape their sight they head towards your last known position and then keep going in a straight line for a while.  Think of going dark as like hiding in a closet in a stealth game; it only helps if no one saw you go in.

[Astral]

Thanks for reminding about this game... I had installed it sometime around 2015 and hadn't checked up on it since.

[AzyWng]

Turns out I didn't need to buy drugs for the miners, since smuggling/trade took care of that for me.

Same goes for food, organics, and pretty much all the raw materials the colony doesn't already produce.

So, quick question - how terrible of an idea is it to establish a colony on a planet that has nothing of interest (no ores designated, no hazards, etc.)?

[WealthyRadish]

So, quick question - how terrible of an idea is it to establish a colony on a planet that has nothing of interest (no ores designated, no hazards, etc.)?

It works. The basic population income will pay for itself at 100% hazard rating, assuming you don't build other buildings for defense etc. In this version, you can make a colony on a planet with no resources and have it be profitable purely by enabling the "free port" option, allowing income from exporting illegal commodities (you'll get money from harvested organs that come from population level and from illegal drugs produced by light industry; these goods are always produced, but having free port enabled gives you excise/tax money from it or whatever that income represents).

I did something amusing with having a colony in the billions on a hellish gas giant in the center of the populated sector doing this, but those planets without any attributes only exist due to a bug/placeholder. Interestingly, even a colony that has literally no industry buildings can be targeted by punitive expeditions; mine got targeted while it had nothing but a spaceport for producing too many organs, even before I made it a free port.

It's sort of nice to have your base be in the middle of the sector instead of out in the boonies, and unfortunately in this version there aren't many reasons to care about controlling access to the commodities themselves, since basically everything is just reduced to income and expense (e.g. you don't need resources to build things or whatever, you just need money).

[Zangi]

Maybe once NPC factions can establish colonies, there'd be some more point to the ability to genocide them.  And allow them to have more ability to choke fledgling colonies of each other out.

As for your colony production and demand, it seems kinda hand-wavy. As in you still export the full amount produced, even though the colony demands all/most of the production.  At least as I remember it.

[zaimoni]

The economy was intentionally revised to be openly handwavy in order to cut the CPU requirements down (and increase predictability), per developer blogs.

[Egan_BW]

It's nearly 2020, how have CPUs not advanced far enough to accurately track the movement of all goods in an entire galaxy? Moore, you've failed us.

[Culise]

It's nearly 2020, how have CPUs not advanced far enough to accurately track the movement of all goods in an entire galaxy? Moore, you've failed us.

Wirth's corollary (paraphrased): Software always manages to outgrow hardware in size and sluggishness.