I agree that the races are a bit too unbalanced and that is what Spartan and I are trying to fix with our upcoming mod.

The mod is designed to look at all major and minor races, break them apart, and look at all of their default bonuses and penalties. We will re-balance the political parties and the races to make the game more fair so players will actually have to plan their strategy around their race and not view some races as "useless".

The minor races will have more "umph" so to say as well and will be a stronger foce to contend with once we are done.

Once the 1.3 update is out on Thursday, we will see if further changes need to be made and hopefully the mod will be released in about a week or two.

So just bear with it just a bit longer!

Oh, and it is the Yor, not the Korx, who get the Loyalty and Miniturization bonuses.

For example (and if I remember correctly), when you go to modify the terrans, you start having 3 points left over. If you clear those points now you have 10 and the terran built-in bonuses (diplomacy, etc). You lose the diplomancy bonus if you spend points on diplomancy. The original bonus will be replaced with whatever diplomacy bonus you just selected. You also lose the bonuses if you ever spend more than the 7 attribute points the terran race was originally using.

What you're saying is correct however: two races that I really don't understand why anyone would play them except the challenge perhaps are the Iconians and the Arceans. These two when you reset them, have no racial bonuses except +7 logistics which a lot of other races have already. A few of the others are not much better off with getting some creativity and luck, both of which only are worth one point to get +25, but then other races like I was saying get over 4 points worth of racial bonuses and then you get to put 10 more points on top of them. The Yor's   +25 miniaturization bonus is pretty insane by itself, but then they also get logistics and 100 loyality.

Another thing I didn't factor in at all was techs. These imbalance it even more when you look at them. Again, the Yor get a lot of good techs as well, in fact, more than you can get if you try to do it with a custom race without spending more points than you have. The Iconians do get defense tech up to armor theory which is good, but they dont even get ion drive and a few turns of research imo doesnt make up for the complete lack of stats. the humans are just screwed in the tech department. the drath who already have better than average bonuses also get a really good tech start. Just some examples.

If the races are supposed to be imbalanced like this then that's fine with me, I was just wondering if that was the case, if something was going to be done about it, or if I just wasn't seeing it right. I just thought it's interesting to discuss because racial balance is such a big deal to people in most games. Given that this game is single player, I guess doesn't matter as much if it was intended to be that way.

Yeah those Drath get a hell of a lot of bonus's.  

I used to think that Drath and Yor were really overpowered... However morale is so key to the game I find the Torian and Drengin bonuses in this area to be adequate compensation.

I did not realize that some civs got bigger homeworlds, that adds something. Guess I need to change up my playing style and actually try all the races before I judge them lol. In terms of defense, it's expensive but it can be worth it when you create a fleet that becomes virtually invinceable due to leveling I mean defense on small ships or even mediums isn't really worth it imo, but large and huge definitely can make use out of it. I have not tried making ships that have little hp with lots of defense though, not sure if this has value or not.

Yea, same here. Drath never do much, but they're a good one to play because of all the free bonuses. Homeworld size is an important factor too.

BTW, here are the home planets for the races;

Thalan, Thala: PQ 15
Iconian, New Iconia: PQ 14
Altarian, Altaria: PQ 12
Terran, Earth: PQ 10
Drengi, Drengi: PQ 10
Arcean, Arcea: PQ 10
Yor, Iconia: PQ 10
Drath, Dratha: PQ 10
Custom, Custom: PQ 10
Torian, Torus: PQ 9

The high PQ bonus for the Thalan homeworld is, IMO, to balance for the fact that they don't have a secondary habitable planet.

only problem is that the secondary habitable planet is a class 3 or 4, or 5 most of the time, class 3s and 4s generally don't have improveable tiles, sometimes a class 4 or 5 might, and there is a chance you can get a good PQ boosting random event. But if the secondary planet is a class 3 or 4, I usually skip colonizing it because at that early stage of the game, low quality planets like that pull the approval down pretty hard and usually make the citizen opinion box in the details screen show someone basically saying 'this planet sucks!'. If its a class 5, I try to leave it for a little later (or flip the planet if someone else gets to it) because class 5s just about always have improvable tiles.

A few races get slightly higher secondary planet classes, the Drengin have a secondary class 7 (I think) planet, someone has a class 8, at least one or two might have a class 6 secondary planet. However since the secondary habitable planet in thier system is usually not worth much (unless it is boosted by a random event or a PQ boost colonization event), they probably don't affect race balance much.

And Legwarmer does have a point, and I generally colonize all class 5 and above planets that I can get to because of the PQ boost from the terraforming techs.

the races are balanced, just in different ways, like the korx for example, get a PQ 10 and a PQ 8 planet, and fair bonuses, whereas say the iconians, get a PQ14 planet, lots of techs, but no bonuses, see what i mean?

the races are balanced, just in different ways, like the korx for example, get a PQ 10 and a PQ 8 planet, and fair bonuses, whereas say the iconians, get a PQ14 planet, lots of techs, but no bonuses, see what i mean?

I think the only thing I can justify as balanced about the races is the homeworld planet. Some races have bigger homeplanets, but no secondary, and some have smaller ones with a secondary. I'm not even sure if these are all balanced but they seem to be in my opinion. As for techs and bonuses, just read this whole thread or mess around with it when setting up a game: it's pretty imbalanced. Not a bad thing as this is a single player game as said before.