what do you think of the racial techs?

Puke · #1 January 16th, 2002, 04:46 AM

okay, this topic has been bantered about before, but lets break it down tech by tech. i have been getting frustrated with them lately, and here is how I see their value:

Temporal: i used to like it for the increased production, but you get faster production out of organic tech, and the temporal weapons are good, but not as nice as some of the standard weapons or as some of the organic weapons. the facilities are the best thing about it, but are mostly usefull for a defensive play style when you have a long time to establish your empire

organic: fast production, good weapons, the best population reproduction in the game (especially good for making small portions of alien population multiply quickly) and the best armor.

crystal: an organic killer. weapons are not the best, but you really put those organic player in check with the crystal shards. also, the resource facilities are (only) good in an ancient-game. other than those two things, this tech has no use.

psych: A-subverters are great for abusing the AI, or even human players that you meet late in the game and catch with their pants down if they are not aware that there is a psychic player out there. the training facilities are nice, but not worth the cost of the trait. the other psych weapons are nowhere near as good as standard weapons.

religious: good as a counterpart to another trait, the talisman is handy as an addition to some of the other racial trait superweapons, or even with just standard weapons. the facilities are usefull since they are cheaper than their standard counterparts, but will eventually be obsolete as research progresses. this is a nice utilitarian tech tree.

Fyron · #2 January 16th, 2002, 04:52 AM

I agree with all of your points except the one about crystalline being an organic killer. Sure, if the organic player doesn't alter their ships any, then he'll lose. But all it takes is 2 or 3 levels in shields, which can be gotten fairly quickly, to nullify the crystalline weapons. They do an infintesimal amount of damage.

Organic manipulaiton is way too powerful when compared to the other racial techs.

Skulky · #3 January 16th, 2002, 05:32 AM

i think organic arn't too cheap. You can check them pretty quick in the start with crystalline and later on their weapons arn't that amazing. I mean think about, you could spend that 1500 points on some improvements in the normal bonus area. Think about no maintnence? or how about really great construction without temporal? or reproduction. Religous is also really great if only for hte talisman. Think about it. Your ship will always hit the enemies, how sick is that? And now about something else for one of the underpowered racial abilites? a great ECM? There's my $.02

Phoenix-D · #4 January 16th, 2002, 05:40 AM

"or even human players that you meet late in the game and catch with their pants down if they are not aware that there is a psychic player out there."

Two words: computer virus.

Phoenix-D

Fyron · #5 January 16th, 2002, 05:44 AM

If you get a few levels in shields, then you have nothing to fear from crystalline races. Yes, the organic weapons are underpowered in the later tech tree, but so what? Organic races are designed for the over-whelming horde strategy. They are supposed to destroy your enemies before the late game. And if each individual weapon is outclassed, big deal. You can always build more ships than your enemies. I always take at least 15% maintenance reduction, which allows me to support all those extra ships that I build.

CW · #6 January 16th, 2002, 11:34 AM

quote:
Two words: computer virus.

If you survive that long or you start with max tech, talisman + virus + subverter is THE killer combination in the game.