I think we need a place to put in popular house rules. If anyone has interesting house rules, post them in a reply.

To start off: (And if you like the idea, and have any improvements to suggest, please go ahead.)

Unexplored Systems

- To make the game more interesting at the start we play with all the star systems turned down and unexplored. This means that we have no idea whats around each home system. To explore a system you simply have to activate it, then its turned right way up, then you can move into it if you want. Native intelligences now let you look at unexplored systems as well as unseen domain counters. Domain counters are added to planets as they are revealed.

Diplomacy (secondary ability) lets you explore a system and annex any planet in it if there are any to annex.

Pros: The added randomness makes for a suspenseful start as everyone hopes for the best planets.

Strategies have to be constantly changed to fit the changing map, making for a more tense game where you have to think even faster on your feet

Leads to a less well balanced map, which actually makes things more interesting as people often gang up on guys with the nice planets to take them away

Cons: Some people can get screwed by the random map, while others are blessed.

One added rule we sometimes add is to seperate the normal systems from the hazard systems, and then randomly place the hazard systems in the map hex stack, making sure that the hazard systems aren't next to each other. This makes it much less likely someone would get two supernovas or something else nasty right next to each other, though it is still possible.

I like the Hidden Galaxy and use it in my own games. Although I have not allowed Diplomacy to flip over an unkown hex. Also when you activate a Hex you have to show what is moveing in then flip it over and that fleet moves in. There is now choice to turn back. If a fleet jumps into a Supernova they are destroyed with excpetio nto the Muaat who we treat the system as a 1 Die roll against each ships to hit. The bigger ships with better Die to hits will damage themselves but usually most survive but that is the risk. We do the same for Asteroid Fields if the race does not have Antimass Deflectors. This is the onlyl time you can be in either of these two system and the ships must leave the next time the are able to.

It makes it even more suspensful with Distant Suns in the game.