[dmm]

Geoschmo,
I'm glad you "missed the point" with your earlier Posts. It allowed you to come up with some more good ideas. I never thought of giving the TF all of the racial traits. (So, they are what? empaths?) That opens a lot of possibilities. So you could buy ships (at a high price) with racial tech that you don't have. What a nice surprise for your opponent!

The scarce minerals idea was a way to force players to deal with the TF rather than just ignore them. If players don't deal with the TF on a regular basis, then the person playing the TF is going to get very bored.