Hi Steve,
For the first 4 question regarding the reactor. I personally develop settings by feel, I often start out pretty strict but if after an I notice that I am only really getting say 1 strategy every hour I will then ease up a bit. I usually run several reactors to make the most of whatever computing power I have. Collection size set to 300 but that’s rarely filled and to be honest I usually just leave mine running even for days sometimes.
As to your question regarding broker data, given the lack of data I would suggest the following:
1 – Use Premium Data for the reactor
2 – Run your collection through the validator on however much broker data you have (form 2020 is plenty)
It is completely okay to generate your strategies using the premium data as long as you validate on your broker data for what you have also. Make sure to also set the swaps to you broker data for the premium data when generating.