Friendly fire

[capnq]

I'd profer the names and behavior of various races but I found it more fun to read the Reports and figure it out via experiance

This is one of my biggest criticisms of the Gold manual. If I'd been writing/editing it, I would have cut all the empire descriptions in the Diplomacy chapter, or at the very least put a "spoiler warning" before them.

In fact, IMO the Quick Start Menu gives away too much information.

If I were designing a 4X game, I'd decouple the races' empire names, attitudes, and tech affinities (maybe even the shipsets). You shouldn't know everything about a race as soon as you see one of their ships.