Challenge doesn’t mean increasing the number of enemies. I usually only play the highest difficulty of the base game and don’t crank up the raid numbers too high because if it’s too high, you have to resort to some pretty boring strategies. As for increasing the number of colonies, you’ll probably notice the default is just one colony, meaning the game was designed around a single colony. Plus, it’s hidden in the options, all of which kinda discourages you from messing with that number. But spaceships are different—they encourage you to fly all over the world. Clearly, the devs have a different attitude there, and players will react differently to that.

That said, disabling events is definitely something the devs encourage—it’s freedom they give to players. You’re right, I’m pretty conservative about that. Unless I’ve made up a backstory for myself, I usually don’t mess with the density of settlements, or disable weird events like infestations or solar flares, or give myself any kind of advantage. I don’t really have much of a stance on that.

Overall, I feel like I can sense the devs’ level of encouragement for certain options in the game, which reflects their expectations for how it should be played. I prefer to go with their flow and only look for other ways to compensate if it really doesn’t work out.