Races are not inherently "Good" or "Evil".
That is somewhat naive. Granted, having a Darth Vader/Maul type in his floating "Death Star" seems pretty evil, so I am not suggesting scrapping the entire idea of Good versus Evil. Only 'evolving' it.
This would be a fairly simple system. You probably already track alignment on what I call the "X Axis". A straight up and down line that says something like +100 is good, 0 is neutral and -100 is evil (something like that.
Just add a few other values that you track, and perhaps consider them on another axis (like Y) for instance. Then you'd have a grid of four sectors and you could scatter plot the person.
In game play terms, it also means that a person has to be more careful about answering those wonderful moral dillemnas, because now its not as simple as 'good on top, middle of road in middle and evil on bottom'. The choice could shift two values instead of one.
Below, is a really cheesy illustration of what I mean
Good
|
|
Evil
Just add
Peace ------ War
Have it intersect at 0 on the Good versus Evil Line, for determining certain technology availability, but essentially all it is, is a second value that is tracked allowing you to see the tendency towards warlike behavior.
Peaceful doesn't neccesarily mean artsy-fartsy helplessness, though as I intend to illustrate;
If you think about the line between Good and Evil, it would stay the same. By introducing this other line straight through it though, you still only store one number, someones relative value from Peaceful to War.
Good people can and have had tremendous military organizations. Just because they don't build doom stars, doesn't mean they would not neccesarily have access to war like technologys.
In practical terms, what it could mean is that someone with an alignment in the upper right grid (Good Military) might gain access to technology that lets you build something akin to "Starfleet". Ships manned by the best and brightest officers, full of inclusion and diversity, that are like good at exploration, all purpose craft, that actually supply some research.
Naturally, the grid underneath, (right lower) would be traditional evil.
The left upper grid, is good peaceful. This is the traditional good tech tree.
The lower left grid is an evolution in thinking as well. We don't think of 'evil' people being 'peaceful', and maybe they aren't, unless you think of it like this;
Exploitation of resources, building DEFENSIVE craft, Pirates and Privateers, Mercantile efforts.
Technologies that allow them to build special Greedy Capitilistic structures, gathering of resources, they can build "Privateer" fleets that operate like a merchant (in that you have so many routes, but they don't attack your merchants. They travel between two points, periodically capturing and then selling their cargos, without diplomatic penalty to your empire. It could be your best allies! they cant even be traced to your empire, so as far as the players getting hijacked are concerned, they are only sure its not their pirates that are doing it.
World Transformation that isn't so 'green'. So where a planet can be made into a Gaia, maybe Evil Peaceful don't do that. Instead, they show up in their vogon constructor fleet type ships and harvest resources..permanently destroying it. Finding a use for those size 3 planets after all.
