More Newbie Questions

Very normal and while improving your initial planet is ok it is better to buff out other areas mainly because over time your planet will improve with research you do. My personal choices are to improve my military building, trade, social building, research ability and diplomat. The others I more or less leave as they are...but I usually persue a political victory. Everyone finds what works for them so just have fun and try a bunch of different stratigies until you find the one you like best. There is no wrong way to win.

PQ bonuses works best when there are lots of planets for you to colonize. If you are playing on a tiny or small map, it would probally be a waste, but if you are playing large or biger, it might be worth your resources.

You should also note that this bonus only applies to planets you colonize yourself. Buying or capturing an enemy planet will not recieve any benefit from this ability. Your home planet however, is an exception to this rule. It gets full benefit from this bonus.

I would however recommend economic and morale bonuses instead. They provide you with more money, thus allowing you to support more labs and factories. Not only that, you will require less economic structures to maintain you economy, thus freeing up more tiles.

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Long story short, you need a bigger bang-per-buck to make PQ more worth while.

I appreciate the advice, and looking back it definitely makes more sense to invest those points in other areas ... my planets may have room for 1 or 2 less buildings, but the ones that I do have can be made much more productive if I put the points elsewhere.

As for the other question: on average, ballpark figure, what percentage of habitable planets do those of you who have played DA a few times find that require one of the special environment/gravity techs?

That's hard to say. Some games it seems like there is very few special environment planets and others it seems to be an overwhelming amount. Could just be perception though. Average I would guess to be about 60/40, the 60% being normal planets. I believe it can fluctuate quite a bit though from map to map

Experience is the best teacher. As you play games, your style of play will encounter difficulties. The Race Abilities you choose can help to mitigate those difficulties.

For example [Harsh Environments]: These planets cannot be colonized by any races right away (unless they have a super ability). This allows you to eventually colonize planets that you would not otherwise be able to. This is a great design feature that keeps the game from being just a huge land grab at the start of the game. If you give yourself some extra pts towards research, you can research the techs that you need to colonize these planets before anyone else.

For me, Diplomacy & Economics each get 4 pts. I also put 2 pts each to Military Production, Repair and Research.

Repair can be especially useful. If you can also get "Micro Repair Bots" your ships will repair themselves very very quickly. This has three benefits: It keeps your ships alive longer (preserving your hard-earned credits), the ships that can survive - survive with all their experience pts intact, and your desperately needed ships can fight more often!

With experience, your question becomes a moot point. It will soon become obvious where you need to spend your race pts. One thing that I do is to keep a record of what settings & abilities I use for each game. As my play style has changed (& hopefully improved) I have been able to optimize my Race Pts & game settings to give me the most satisfying game experience.

Good luck in your gaming.