FAO Bryan B and Mitch (or possibly Mitchp ).
If you're both still up for trying this on Friday night, I thought I'd do a bit of the setup ahead of time. It's a bit involved, and a bunch of faffing with playing cards, the time is probably better spent playing. If you're OK with that, I'll run through what I drew below:
A Billion Suns Setup
1. Decide on a Scale. - The recommends scale 3 for a first game.
2. Choose a Contract Set. There's only one in the book, so I picked that, Core Systems. (You can get additional sets as expansions, apparently)
3. Generate Contracts. This is done by creating a 'Contract Generator Deck' out of the 12 picture cards in a standard deck of cards. I drew Q Hearts, K Diamonds and J Spades.
This means the three contracts our intergalactic CEOs will be vying for will be:
Queen of Hearts - Supply Contract: This nascent colony world is on the brink of starvation. This means they are willing to pay significantly over the odds for their essentials.
King of Diamonds - Whaling Contract: The Escaldian Mega-Squid is a near-priceless delicacy, but fishing for it is a deadly business.
Jack of Spades - Infowar Contract: Perception is reality. War is information.
4. Set up the System - This is done by the System Administrator, who we roll off for. They'll be setting up two tables (or one divided in half somehow) and one Planetoid, three ComSats and three Space Whales, wherever they like across them, as long as there is at least one objective on each table.
5. Start Round 1