Final Frontier "best" map settings

[TravellingHat]

Greetings all!

What are people's opinions on the best map settings for Final Frontier? I am using BuddhaBubba's movement mod (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=237627) which boosts all movement by 1, although I've changed PDS and standard battleship movement back to 1.

Currently, it seems large size with all 8 factions, dense features all else normal, is the best setting. However, I still find this can lead to crowding, and the universe is explored a bit quick, making upgraded scouts rather redundant. I'm considering going to huge maps and making features normal and everything else sparse, but am not sure my poor old pooter will cope (can't handle normal civ on huge, although sparse systems etc may reduce the load).

By the way, I can't determine exactly what "feature density" applies to. I want to only up the occurrence of resources, but I think "features" also includes wreckage. No empirical evidence to prove that, so if anyone can set me straight it would be appreciated.

Opinions sought!

Edit: realised I wasn't James Joyce so added some punctuation to make it legible

 

[Toni1]

Try raging barbarians on huge map

In my current game of marthon/huge the barbs have destroyed 14 of 15 AI's and are bearing on last one and I'm bottled up in my small corner of the univers with just 12 colonies surviving only thanks to my starbases in vital choke points. Having well over 1000 kills so far, all pirates and they keep on coming. I estimate pirates hold over 30 worlds as well so they have 3 systems to every one of mine more than 10 times the ships too at any given moment.

 

[TravellingHat]

After a few games I reckon large with 8 teams, dense features is best for me. My poor old pooter just kicks it's legs in the air if I go up to huge

 

[Nayazu]

I only play normal speed -- because I appreciate so much being able to now play this game in a few hours instead of a few days.
Large map, 8 Civs, everything else on random (pretty wild to have star systems so close together they are one over the others but no ressources around!)
No Barbarians. No brokering techs.