Wade said:
Like I said, I've always found reason behind the designers "plan" in many games.
Honestly, the reasons are primarily arbitrariness.
In the stock race creation there is already options (although simplified) for regular tech, organic tech, and mechanoids.
I think they are boring and shallow compared to fleshed out racial tech traits in Eclipse, STM, B5 Mod, Adamant, and others.
Homeworlds already start with a good infrustructure.
Stock HWs are just another planet that has had 30 turns of building put into it. Mods like Proportions are totally different.
"Least refined" is an opinion.
Most of the mods have had a lot more time put into their data files than the stock data files did. There are a lot of unpolished facets in the stock files; boring progressions, under-utilization of a lot of uses of damage types and abilities, rather unbalanged racial trait costs and weapons, etc. It is unfortunate that the stock data files have not changed in 5 years (other than the addition of drones from Gold).
But those are just my opinions and I'm just a newbie to you all.
Newbies are the best kind. This isn't some silly mainstream game forum where the opinions of people are weighed by post count or membership date.