what happens is the science ship goes out and explores all the nearby stars while, at the beginning the construction ship builds on the resources in the home system, then afterwords it just sits there while the science ship goes out and gets intel and then, if the science ship has not been destroyed at 15 years in exactly the construction ship goes out and claims all the territories that were surveyed and they hyper expand, claiming systems without building on them, building more science ships and construction ships, if the initial science ship get destroyed BEFORE the 15 year slumber then the Constuction ship will go out and claim what is already surveyed then just sit there, never building another science ship, and by never i mean i waited another 15 years, then sometimes, like 1 out of 5 starts they will not build colony ships for some reason, if the science ship don't die and the don't get surrounded by an enemy empire they expand quickly from that point on and the game seem mostly normal, so long as the science ship don't die, the 15 year slumber has to be written in somewhere because that never changes, every origin, every empire, every start, reliably.
