My Iconians need quite a bit of tuning, I drastically change the attributes and even the shipset......but I think their race logo is the coolest.

Okay, I'm going to add a question here. Why ever play as humans? They get the least techs? Or...why play with any race other than the Torians who have logistics 8?

Or, is the answer simply that it's a single player game, so balance isn't really a huge deal. In other words, you can always make a custom race that's "better than the others" but part of the fun is winning the game as your preferred race. I don't care either way, but it's been a long time since I've seen a strategy game that doesn't pull its hair out trying to balance all the sides, lol.

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Well again it's all about playing to your desired strengths. Playing as the Terrans means that you've got a really great start on diplomacy. This means that you can basically wine and dine all the other races from the start of the game. You know get them to give you good tech deals or even go to war with the others. Sometimes I like to see if I can get all of the empires at war with everyone else but me. It's tricky to say the least but if your diplomacy is high enough you can pull it off.

So yeah the great thing about this game is that there are probably hundreds of thousands of viable choices in terms of what race you prefer to play. And on top of all that because of the customization allowed you don't have to be pigeon holed into the devs vision of how a particular race should play.

In terms of balance again its about play style. As Alfonse said with the +25 miniaturization of the Yor you can really build some nice ships in the early go. However this is only a bonus for you if you play that way. So for some that might be war mongers that +25 is huge in terms of being able to pack ships with weapons in the early go. Hence it can seem *overpowered* or unbalanced. But I think in general all of the races have strengths and weaknesses. Your play style can emphasize one or the other

[Edit: I see now that I screwed everyone up with a typo....sorry!]

Okay, I meant to say, why play as anyone but the YOR. And, by that, I wasn't referring to racial bonuses. What I meant was, why not choose the Yor every time and make up your own bonuses? If you like the humans, then pick the Yor and give them all the human bonuses. You'll be playing as a human who has logistics 8 and more than 2x the techs.

Except for that one comment you made about the humans getting some kind of relational bonus with the other races. That isn't a racial ability. Is it some kind of special thing they get?

Thanks for being patient, sorry about the confusion.

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Well, I'm on dialup, so I'm waiting to get to a wifi location to update. And I'm waiting until 1.1 to do that. Unless the updates are less than 10MB. Anyone know off hand how large they are?

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I play the uncustomized Drath sometimes.

if you edit a race, how do you restore the default bonuses? currently whenever I start a new game it never resets the defaults and I can't find a means to do so.

What works best for me is to choose a race that has bonuses that make up for my downfalls.

For instance, I tend to have issues keeping people happy, there are plenty of other techs that I want, and I like the high pop for the money. So I like to chose a race that has high moral bonus, or make my own with one.

Im a big stickler on balance, being a hard core warcraft 3 player. Honestly, most of my games feel the same regardless of who I am playing. What makes the games feel different is how I play it.

The two traits that I have noticed make a game feel really different are the speed upgrades, and planet quality 30%. Both of which cost plenty of ability points. Nothing really feels unbalanced for me.

In the same subdirectory that holds the save games, delete the *.raceconfig files that were created when you edited the races abilities. The game will create new ones when you edit abilities in the game. iirc there are some downloadable editors that will do his for you. I just use the delete key

In the 1.1 beta the population ability starts to have real meaning. It was about worthless in the 1.0 release.
Economy. moral, diplomacy, and population in 1.1 beta are my favorites.

I noticed that the different races have a different number of points left over to spend. Are these points supposed to be spent, or are they just there because the race has some abilities that cant be bought normally (+8 logistics, +100 loyalty, +25 miniturazation, ect.). Typically, the races with lots of unbuyable abilities have the most points leftover, so I was thinking this was the case.

While I've played as the Terrans once, for the most part I've created custom races, either of my own devising or based on other science-fiction TV or books. I create them according to what I think fits best, and try to play that way, rather than fitting the race to the way I'm most comfortable playing.