Sorry Andres, I was evidently typing at the same time you were. Here's an extra post then:
If we want some races that do not have any colonization capacity, the only way to pull it off is to produce a trait that lacks colony ships (ie. Ancient races of B5). That means we'll have to produce another racial trait (ie Normal) that does have the capacity to colonize. Well heck, if we're at it, we could throw in a "Nomad/Pirate" race type while we're at it... and I personally think it would be a fun and worthwhile effort.
In the case of the SW universe, it seems from the movies and the books that "minor races" and Groups often have a huge effect on the balance of power between the major combatants (for example the Rebels and the Empire). Of course it would be hard to make an AI that would successfully affect major empires as the AI is not intelligent enough. However, there are many people who would love to play a minor race, and just go about buggering up things for the major races (wouldn't it be fun to play the weapons dealing Hutts - sure you're not going to "win", but you can have a lot of fun affecting the outcomes for the greater empires. Personally I'm all over playing the Jawa
). For those of us that love to be @%$# disturbers, we would love to have the tools available to do this, while maintaining some semblance of balance.
Edit: oh, and I read your post a little closer. I didn't realize that
every race has it's own set of colonization techs! I just assumed it worked a bit more along the lines of the P&N or Proportions systems: one set of colony techs. I suppose that if you do it your way it would be fine too... and I guess you about break even on the number of components that need to be added:
three colonization components x # of races
versus
a separate couple of traits and 3 x ship sets.
[ June 26, 2003, 22:26: Message edited by: jimbob ]