Is there a way to spread out the major races a bit?

from Stardock Forums
Ok so I've started four or five games... and promptly been shoved into a small star cluster in the corner with a handful of useable planets and am crowded in by at least 4 other races... who don;t want to be friendly enough with me to let me extend my ship's range. I end up sitting in my small corner of the galaxy unable to progress very fast till one of them gets a hair across thier rear and decides to randomly obliterate me. This even happens when I only have one or two other races playing against me. Is this a game feature to stick you in a corner and leave you with dozens of sub-14 planets to colonize while all the other races have 20+'s all over the place? I'm bout ready to whip out the cheats and clear me a path to the hundreds of unused stars in the rest of the galaxy I have no way of getting to. >:(
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
So... I found a "tactic" (it's a cheat but doesn't spoil your submission) To jockey for position at the beginning of the game.

Start a new game with whatever settings you want. As soon as the game starts up... save it. I used "Game Start Clean" as a title. Then go in and enable cheats and remove the fog of war. (you can figure out that bit for yourself) Check out your position on the galactic map. Don;t peek at any of the stars... just look how close your neighbors are. If both of your game's "evil" major races are right on your doorstep and blocking you from being able to expand beyond the handful of stars in your particular cluster... make a new game. If you're good with how crowded your neighborhood is... simply reload your "Game Start Clean" file and play away. You're going to find out who your neighbors are and what there true holdings are in the first few days of play... it just helps to not play for a few days and find out that your game is now stagnant because you can;t build out through a particular empire before they can run through and scoop up all the prime real estate. I did notice that the game loves to back you into a corner as over 90% of the games I started put me up against the wall in a small cluster with the two evil races (regardless of what races I made evil) in bigger neighboring clusters. I figured it out that I would need 6 starbases to go around them in many cases, or seriously beef up 3 or 4 of them in enemy territory to go through them. In both cases they could easily split my empire and cut off one group or the toher just by nailing a few starbases.

So... take a sneak peek and make sure you have room to breathe before jumping into a 3 year campaign that becomes a 3 day waste of time because the game doesn't distribute the races intelligently (or very randomly for that matter)

I once set up a gig/tight map with 5 pure evils and was placed in a 2 star cluster with no habitable planets other than Earth... 15 parsecs away from the next star...
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I remember someone once posted this tactic before. It's handy for ensuring that you have enough nearby planets to settle. (I like to have at least 7.) It also helps to know where the minors are - it's a huge benefit to find them in the early game, so you can tech trade with them.