Mod idea: How hard would this be?

[Cyrien]

Have a super powerful race (like the Borg, say, in the TNG TV-series era) where I would need a good-sized fleet to defeat just one of its dreadnoughts.

Quite possible.

>>I’m thinking this wouldn’t be too difficult.

Not difficult... just involved.

Just give it extremely powerful unique components and facilities. Is it possible to create a wholly new unique racial trait? If not, I could just edit an existing one and make sure only the super race has it.

Indeed it is possible.

Try to make it so I would have time to develop my empire to a high level before having to take on this super race: Play in a huge map, where the super race and I start in opposite corners. Place some standard AIs in between for fun in the early part of the game.

Easy, with the map editor. (What I’d really like is to have this race just show up out of nowhere after the game has run for a while, but of course that isn’t possible.)

You could try having them start in a small cutoff section of the galaxy with no warp points to the rest of the galaxy. When they develop warp point opening tech they will move out into the other unexplored systems. That could be used to simulate them just appearing.

Develop an AI for this super race.

>>This, for me, is the most daunting part. I’ve never tried developing an AI. Maybe I could edit an existing one to use the super race’s unique facilities and components?

What do you folks think? What pitfalls am I facing?

Developing an AI from scratch can be quite a big job. I would only reccomend doing that if it is going to be big time different from anything existing out there. Otherwise you should take an existing well written AI and edit it in the key areas you need to be different.