Meanfishy,
As for your overwrite messages (and possibly mine as well..), from your screenshot I'd say that the ROM includes certain baseline files - Such as welcomehead.96.png, which if I'm not mistaken is a splash screen you chose in a drop-down menu to see while your ROM is booting - Is being overwritten by your other choices later in the build, such as your choice of "Colonel's Custom Theme". I'm betting that the other overwrite errors are for the same reason. To test this theory, you can build a ROM and answer "No" to the overwrite prompt. If I'm right, the splash screen will be whatever you chose in the drop-down menu, and not the Colonel's Custom Theme.
It still seems to me that your best bet is to answer "Yes" to the overwrite prompt, although I too wish there was a bit more guidance for when to answer yes or no.
1) I don't think it matters, as the kitchen is 'smart' enough to not let you select incompatible packages, and it automatically adds required packages. They are greyed out/yellow in the list. However, you can test it by loading the original "Titan_WM6.1_20748 Selections.txt" (At least, that's where I started..) and without making any changes, build the ROM. This will produce an extremely stock/clean ROM, but I don't think there will be anything in it. No dialer, no comm manager, no camera, etc...
2) I have never run into that 'rule'. However, let me quote a section from the "tips.txt" file in the PPCkitchen folder on my HD...
"There is not currently any way to tell how much space you are using while selecting OEMs. However, BuildOS should present you with one or more signs that you have selected to many OEMs once you start the build process. If this has happened, you will see "out of memory" or "failed" messages in the status window, and a dialog box saying "Error making file system". If you see those error messages, unselect some things and try to build again. Even if you do build and flash an overfull ROM (main symptom being a completely white screen during and after boot) then simply build a new ROM with less items selected and re-flash with phone in bootloader mode."
3) I generally don't use precooked ROMs, but they are available in this forum. Look under "HTC Titan Upgrades". Here is an example thread, which should link to the ROM:
General - nueROM 2.2 Bleeding Edge General Discussion Thread
The nueROM line is cooked by no2chem, and he is recognized as one of the most "push the limit" type chefs around here, having coded several tools that make our phones do amazing things.
Also, I'm curious - How are you flashing your cooked ROMs to the phone? I'm not sure if the procedure you use can affect the speed, but here is what I do - It assures the most error-free flash possible as far as I know.
A) Copy
nueSPL v2.47 to phone storage and run with a non-SDHC microSD card inserted. Allow it to format the card, and complete the update to your bootloader.
This allows you to flash ROMs from your microSD card, which is a faster and less error-prone way to flash than a USB cable.
B) Rename the ROM image (Found in "C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\hIq Inc\PPC-BuildOS\9.05.2.7Temp") from "RUU_signed.nbh" to "TITAIMG.nbh" and place it in the root/top folder of your microSD card.
C) Hold down the power & camera buttons on the phone and press the reset button with your stylus. The phone should boot to a multi-colored screen which should then quickly change to a gray screen with "Checking" and "Loading" on it. You'll then be prompted to press the power button to start the update. Do not hold it down, just tap it once. You'll get a progress bar while the ROM is loaded, and when it is done it will say "Update Success".
D) At that point, I remove the battery for about 30 seconds, and put it back in. (You cannot power off from that screen.) Removing the battery at this point also helps because some ROMs do some strange(ish) partitioning to your phone's storage space, and pulling the battery lets the phone drop the old data and read the new data.
E) Hold down both soft keys and turn the phone on. You should be greeted with a grey screen with blue text asking if you want to do a hard reset. If not, then turn the phone on normally, and while it is booting, press the reset button with your stylus (while holding down both soft keys) and it should ask you if you want to do a hard reset. Go ahead with the hard reset.
The initial boot after a hard reset is quite long. Subsequent soft resets are much faster.
Hope this post helped - If so, don't forget the 'Thanks' button!