@ Whizkid: Think of how named bounties scale (which I think is too fast). At one moment, player does fine, then all of sudden, they spike and become too hard until player catches up much later, if he catches up. I suspect expeditions are the same way. First expeditions may be doable with a mid-game fleet (they are on par with a 150k-200k bounty), but they will eventually peak at multiple ten capital death fleets (350k+ bounty), possibly sooner than you can deal with unless you were already at endgame.
I consider early game when player is driving frigates and destroyers, or maybe starter Apogee, and simply neither has the crew to build his first colony nor the money to build the bare necessities (orbital station, waystation, hq). I consider the game starts midgame when player can afford a cruiser and can barely afford to build his first colony. I consider endgame when player is powerful enough to destroy any single fleet, including ten capital deathball, without much difficulty. At that point, I consider the game won. The ideal time to build a colony is endgame when player can destroy any single fleet, 350k+ bounty or equivalent, without much difficulty, but as I just wrote, the game is basically won by then. If I want a colony before I win the game, I need to build it early and do everything to avoid expeditions, which is not very obvious.
I would not use Free Port until my colonies are ready to deal with expeditions from major factions. Eventually, colony will need Free Port just to have decent population growth after colony reaches size 5 or 6. Free Port is nearly half of all possible population growth bonuses.