[jimbob]

one thing about raiders is that they never really had a "homeworld". they had bases and bought ships and such from the blackmarket and from real empires. so i think to make it fair make the raider homeworld should be invisible or have alot of shields or something so that i, i mean umm... SOMEONE who plays as the raiders doesnt get wiped out too easily. i mean he/she needs to have a chance

The game isn't really set up for blackmarket buy/sell... mainly because the computer isn't smart enough to keep up with that sort of thing, but especially because you have to sell whole ships - now if you could sell individual components for plug and play... <>

Really, whoever plays the raider/nomad race will have to roll play quite well - and they'll never really be a significant contender. They just need to be happy with playing the roll of "annoying jerk". Of course if anyone gets too irrate, it's byebye Nomad. In some ways it's the main players who need to roll-play accurately.

Val, the nomad fac. look good to me. Until the components can support research and intel, the nomads will just have to be underdogs.