The mining of coins is really completely irrelevant to their use as a currency. Best to vote 1024, get the coins produced as quickly as possible, and move on to using it as a currency which is the real point of it.

The Sustain phase will self regulate by the number of miners falling to a level that makes it generate a small profit for them. This would be no problem for the coin's primary function of being used as a currency, except for that fact that the resulting low network hashrate could make the coin vulnerable to a 51% attack.