The most annoying part is that it warns people you're about to attack, or that your fleet is incoming. There needs to be some system of putting probes out there if you want warning. Just getting a big red message saying "LOL PEOPLE INCOMING, YOU MIGHT WANT TO GTFO" ruins it.
I have a host. I just CBA to do anything until I see enough interest for the game to last a decent amount of time. There is no easy config or setup, it requires diving into the database and poorly translated config files.