Category pages with different blog format than front page

How might I configure wordpress/atahualpa to list a certain number of blog excerpts on the front page, but a different number of excerpts on the category pages?

Currently, readers have to click to the next page often on category pages to browse because we don't show a large list of posts on the front page and I think it discourages them from browsing as much.


Also, is it possible to set up the category excerpts to be leaner than the front page excerpts? (i.e. to have briefer excerpts on category pages and not include things like how many comments are on that post? I hoped to make it easier for readers to visually scan when browsing category pages.)

I experimented with making my own category pages using the List Category Posts plugin to list 30 posts per page but because it doesn't currently include "next page" options and we have a lot of posts per category, I would have to create a huge number of custom category pages.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Michael