Another idea to toss out to those that play multi -- I haven't yet, but an idea still hit me.
How much would you charge another player for a building contract? Some of the racial traits lead themselves to offering *very* valuable services. Want to maximize utilization of a planet? Lend it to somebody with Advanced Storage Techniques, pay him to build what facilities you want there, and resume control of the planet; the limit will return to normal, but the extra facilities won't vaporize.
Need to boost population in a hurry? Lend a colony -- any world will do -- to an Organic player, and get him to build a Replicant Center III. Then contract a Religious player to build some handy-dandy shrines, if you're willing to pay what he's willing to charge...
Need a pricey Stellar Manipulation ship built quickly? Maybe a Temporal player would sell you ships that might take *you* a long time to build, but don't with his Temporal Shipyards.
Need a spy to do your dirty work? Heh. If you can pay 'em in something that they can't steal...
Hrm. I wonder what happens if you give a plagued planet to Mechanoids. Maybe that cures it? *shrug* Otherwise they don't have that much to sell... and neither to propulsion experts, unless it's critical that a ship get somewhere in the shortest time possible and they can use the bonus if given control.
Just tossing out an idea. I suspect that this game has a LOT of possibilities for wheelin' and dealin'.
(And if there were planetary scanners, it might be possible to dupe an AI into building a nice system-wide racial facility in a gifted planet, which you then take back once it has the desired building(s).)
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-- The thing that goes bump in the night