Just curious how many prefer a casual game and how many like the "hard" settings? I go back and forth.

Just me, but I find the "hard" settings do-able, but everything just takes longer. But I guess it feels better to get everything teraformed when it stops disasters than clicking "no disasters" does? I go back and forth. What settings do you you like?

I pick amateurs almost every time, even on casual play-throughs, just because I like the evolution to training my own specialists.

Don't care much for dust devils because there's not much you can do about them except cheese landing pads and such until they're already on the way where you can build extra infrastructure for the other disasters. Which are also tedious.

Long ride doesn't make things more fun for me.

Last ark I like when I'm not in the mood to see my colony grow fast.

I never play mysteries because they feel like an intrusion on my project and there are better "story games," which I don't play either.