The only issue I see with the setup is the 2 player game. Starting points in a 2 player game will be evenly distributed, which gives a high probably of picking up a bonus on the drop, you'll get a lesser probability on 3 and 4 player games when each player gets 2 starting points.
As I'm reading through the starting position XML tutorial it's saying,
Unless there is a way to set remainders to neutral and half of the starting positions in a 2 player game to neutral I don't know if the starting positions are going to be the way to go here.When the game begins these start positions will be split up amongst the players. If there is a remainder, the territories of those start positions are dealt out as normal territories.
The only alternative I can think of is have either the landing points or the ships start neutral, but then your starting with 7 territories as neutral, so that probably won't work either.