Hmm, ok that's where I saw the discussion on star types. Good to see it will make it into the game. I would like to hope for a future release that there will eventually be an option for the user to select initial supplies.
There won't be. The original game 'gamified' this but ultimately it was useless and I don't see the value in it with this game. The general idea is that humanity barely escaped the destruction of Earth and so they left with only the very bare necessities. There was no time to do anything else.
When research and technology improvements come into play, that's when this approach will really start to take shape and make sense as most technologies (including solar receivers and solar satellites) will begin to become available instead of having everything all at once. E.g., you'll need to perform a good amount of research to be able to build and launch satellites before the solar receiver arrays become available... and that's even if the planetary system would support that (if you're too far away it's an almost useless technology so you'll be focused more on fusion reactors which are expensive to operate).
... just thinking of a real world scenario, if the world was embarking on a real expedition to another star system there would be so many studies in what should be on board the starship that it would be a hardcoded inventory anyways.
I think you hit the nail on the head there -- those decisions will already have been made. OPHD is going to give you a small population (between 75 - 200 based on difficulty), enough resources to get through the first few months after arrival until you can get mining operations set up and the designs/plans for the structures you'll need to begin the game.
Keep in mind this isn't a clone of OUTPOST, it's an entirely new game using the same premise as OUTPOST, borrowing its ideas and ultimately refining them into a complete game. Well, that's the hope anyway.