Apologies if this has been mooted/discussed before:-
I will probably never use the expansion's facility to play up to a 9-player game and would probably not wish to play with more than 4 in order to keep game length and chaos at the levels I prefer. All of the extra new modules and new races do make for great variety and add to the game.
It did however strike me that the base game +expansion would essentially support two 4-player games at the same time. You would be short a galactic centre tile and would need to share purple damage cubes, dice and need to find a way to distribute tiles and techs between the two games, but nothing insurmountable.
I will probably never use the expansion's facility to play up to a 9-player game and would probably not wish to play with more than 4 in order to keep game length and chaos at the levels I prefer. All of the extra new modules and new races do make for great variety and add to the game.
It did however strike me that the base game +expansion would essentially support two 4-player games at the same time. You would be short a galactic centre tile and would need to share purple damage cubes, dice and need to find a way to distribute tiles and techs between the two games, but nothing insurmountable.