Racial Traits, Discussion on Pro's/Con's.

[Will]

Well, my Favorites for Tech Traits would be as follows, in order:
Organic
Temporal
Religious
Crystalline
Psychic

Organic is first mainly because there are so many advantages. The cost is spread between minerals and organics, reducing build times, and making it cheaper if your production is handled by Monoliths. The weapons are a bit powerful, with the Enveloping Acid Globule statistically outpreforming Wave Motion Guns (2 turn reload v. 3 turn), Lightning Ray is best close-combat weapon IMHO, and the Parasites give you a whole lot of seekers, fast. The Gestation Vats and Replicant Centers play a big part in my strategy of integrating enemy populations, especially those that breathe different atmospheres. And the armor rules

Temporal has the Events Predictor, with 30% (!!!) combat bonus, making defense fleets pretty **** tough (30% + 20% ship + 20% fleet). There's also the Temporal Space Yard, 50% faster than normal yards. As for weapons, they're excellent for shield-happy opponents, with the Shield Accellerator and Time Distortion Burst. Tachyon Cannon is a fairly good long range, high power weapon.

Religious has the Shrines, which can be obtained relatively early, and give huge bonuses for a growing empire. Nature Shrine will slowly improve homeworld values (and thus production), War and Death Shrines provide good defense (+15% to combat and weapon damage), Time Shrine gives nice production bonuses that would otherwise have to wait for Computers lvl 4. And Fate Shrine... you don't really see benefits for that, and difficult to test And, of course, the Talisman.

Crystalline's advantages are from the armor-piercing weapons, and the facilities (which I don't remember the names of). One reduces maintainance, nice to beef up defensive/building fleets. Other provides extra shielding to all things in the system, Last I checked that included fighters Shard cannon and crystal torp are nice, but need to be beefed up a bit to make them a match for other weapons.

Psychic... I just don't really like it too much The Psychic training facilities are nice to make quick-training centers (Planet, two moons, all three with normal training facilities, and the psychic ones somewhere in-system). TK projector and Mental Singularity are mediocre weapons, IMHO, and the only really powerful weapon would be the Allegience Subverter, which can easily backfire (I remember taking a Psychic AI fleet of 30 with one insurrectioned ship, Allegience Subverter chain reaction).

Non-Tech traits that I like are Tiny Race (+20% planet space), Propulsion Experts (just one more move...), and Natural Merchants (habit from SE3, actually).

Oh, side note... I think Temporal and Crystalline were made for each other. That combo ties Organic.

[Spoo]

Does the maintenance reduction from chrystaline allow you to get 0% maint after ratial points?

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Assume you have a 1kg squirrel
E=mc^2
E=1kg(3x10^8m/s)^2=9x10^16J
which, if I'm not mistaken, is equivilent to roughly a 50 megaton nuclear bomb.
Fear the squirrel.

[Fyron]

It shouldn't, cause MM said that all ships will have a minimum maintenance of 5% a while back.

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It's not whether you win or lose that counts: it's how much pain you inflict along the way.

[Suicide Junkie]

Whatever price you're paying before, you pay 85% afterwards.

[Rusty_Nail]

I have been doing some all-tech testing of the special races from the point of view of one-on-one combat to see which is best (Dreadnought size maximun). The results depend on whether you are talking tactical or strategic combat. In tactical, the talisman combined with long range direct fire (Anti Proton) and a worm seems to kill anything with a shorter range if you handle it properly, even bigger ships. The enemy seldom even gets off a single shot before being destroyed. Of course you need a few PDs for missile defence, but that is elementary. Conclusion: religious by a mile.
In strategic, it is different because there is no suitable movement option to control distance to enemy ships at end of turn.(This could and should be introduced by MM). So even the talisman gets beat out most of the time(about 75%) by a well-fortified allegiance converter. Conclusion: Psychic.
In my strategic simulations, none of the other races has anything to even come close to the AC. This could be changed if MM introduced some new movement options. These are my tentative results. I would like to hear your comments. Have I overlooked anything? If anyone wants to suggest an even better design, please publish your design and I will test it against mine.
Of course there may be other reasons for choosing one of the other races. Also working with two or more ships each could conceivably change the above results.

[Mephisto]

Remember, you will 25% maintanance and if you reduce this in the setup by 5%, you only pay 20% maintance on a ship, i.e. you don't pay 1/4 but 1/5 of the whole ship!

[Suicide Junkie]

Rusty Nail: Any ship even remotely near a Psychic race should always have a Master Computer to block AS.

Then, you just have to stay outta range of the computer virus, which is potentially easier.