Darwin - As the author of the Darlok AI files (except for the speech file created by John Zamarra), I am not offended at all. Everyone plays these games for their own reasons and has their own personal prefs.
Everyone else - My own opinion and preference is to "immerse" myself as much as possible. Because I have been playing these games for 20+ years there are a great number of races out there in my failing memory
. Already, by my own count, there are 48 custom race/shipsets (not including MM's 20). To me, some of the greatest moments in the past years/games was exploring along and suddenly finding myself bumping up against a really memorable race which I knew was going to cause problems (i.e. Bulrathi or Darlok in MOO, Klingon or Romulan in BOTF, etc.) Then it is the interaction/diplomacy and speech between our races that assist in that immersion as well as sound, characteristic building and facilities (i.e. Darlok with massive intel or EA/Star Wars-Empire with tons of fighters). I applaud others that have time to create totally new races, but (a) I am not that creative and (b) I have a hard enough time as it is preventing the 60+ races from melding together. So my goal is to take those races in my memory from past games or movies and make them as memorable and as "real" as possible. I want the Cylons and the Galactica to form a temporary alliance against the Empire and I want the Darlok and the Romulans to launch intel against each other. Since I am no artist, I am limited to analyzing the AI and data files to make as memorable opponent as I can.
Sorry for the long post, I guess I sort of just drafted my "mission statement" ackkk darn consultants are rubbing off on me. . .
[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 02 February 2001).]