a few pointers when creating a race

[Dutchgamer1982]

*when selecting the atmosphere and planettype, there are things to consider :

*the game generates equal amount of "fields" for every atmosphere type when generating a map (if you count a tiny planet as 5 fields, a small planet as 10 fields, and so on)
*however it does not generate the same number of planets for every breather type every breather type, some get small but numerous worlds, others get less but larger worlds.
*it does also not distribute the number of field evenly over each combination, hydrogen-gas gets a lot more fields than hydrogen-ice for eample, and since none-gas does not excist, both none-rock and none-ice get something extra.
-larger planets in the end are much more productive per field, due the fact that you need percentual less tiles wasted on non-production facility's, and are also a lot better to defend, and because their larger population give also a larger boost to production over these fields. (if you get the 120% size increase trait, the effect of it is more effective on larger worlds)
-smaller planets on the other hand alow you to expand quicker and claim more ground quicker in early game)

Atmosphere types & average planetsize :
none : tiny/small (average size = 7 fields per planet) divide (nr of planets) = 55% rock, 45% ice 0% gasmost fields go to rock.
hydrogen: small (average size = 11 fields per planet divide (nr of planets) = 40% rock 25% ice 35% gas
most fields go to gas.
oxigen : medium (average size = 12 fields per planet) divide (nr of planets) = 40% rock 30% ice 30% gas
most fields go to gas and rock (about equally as much), ice gets a lot less.
co2 : large (average size = 14 fields per planet) divide (nr of planets) = 45% rock 35% ice 20% gas
fields seem to be about equally distributed.
methane : huge (average size = 17 fields per planet) divide (nr of planets) = 40% rock 25% ice 35% gas
most fields go to gas

gasworlds : huge/large (tiny/small gassworlds do not excist, nothing smaller than medium), divide seems to be about0% tiny 0% small 10% medium 50% large 40% huge
rockworlds : small/medium (a lot of them are tiny none breathing moons, the remainder seems to be mostly of medium size moons, causing the divide to be : by 40% tiny 20% small 30% medium 5% large 5% huge
iceworlds : medium (a lot of icy moons take the average down, for the remainder a lot are of large worlds, but not many huge)
the divide is about : 40% tiny 10% small 10% medium 35% large 5% huge

Best picks :
Hydrogen-gas (most fields available from any type at game start and a lot of gasworlds breathe it)
Oxigen-rock : fairly well balance between early fast expantion and later large productive worlds
none-rock : most planets possible, very quick early expantion placing lots of systems under your control.
Methane-rock : while most methane fields go to gas(only slighly less than for hydrogen) the size of the average methane-rockworld is larger than the average rockworld in the game, giving you both large productive planets and fast early expantion.
Co2-ice : both are rare settings, making you have less competition for the worlds you want.


Next selecting your traits.
-this depends on how many points you allowed for in game settings, I presume you selected 2000 points to distribute

*you rally want the temporal trait, it unlocks temporal shipyards that are much more productive than other types.
*you also want the 25% shipyard production trait.

we add also 20 points to shipyard production in race ability's (at 25 per point the cheaperst option)
see it this way :
increasing race trait for shipyard from 100->120 costs 500 points (25 points per %)
temporal trait adds 50% to shipyard production for 1500 points (30 points per %)shipyard trait adds 25% to shipyard production for 1000 points (40 points per %)
increasing race trait for shipyard from 120->150 costs 3000 points (100 points per %)
(100 per % is to expensive but the other 3 are sensible picks)

next we add the biological trait
*this gives you acces to the cloning vats, facility, that with only 1 of them boost population growth for all planets in that system by a flat +40 per turn (no not %) This is INSANELY fast as normally growth is a percentage per YEAR (so per 10 turns..) to get that same +40 per turn you would need a planet with 2000 population and 20% population growth, and it takes VERY LONG to get there..
oh and the growth of the cloning vats is ADDED to normal population growth.. so it's even better!
in short without the population vats it will take you 800 turns to max out population on all your planets, with the cloning vats merely 100 turns.

Next racial ability's :

*you do want to add 20 points to shipyard production (I already shown you why)
*adding 10 points to population growth is also sensible, 1% extra population growth per turn for 250 points.
*adding 10 points to both ship attack and ship defence also helps.

This all cost 5750 points and you only had 2000, so here is where you can cut costs :

Production :
-set both farming and refining aptitude at 80, you generally get a lot more of these 2 than you ever gonna need, as your society mostly uses metal, and overproduces those other 2 a lot.
this saves 500 skillpoints.
Setting it lower than 80 is pointless, as that would only give you 10 points per lower point, and is a waste.
*you may want to set metal aptitude at 80 too, but if you wish to leave it at 100 for a quicker early start, thats fine.

*trade and espionage
-set both trade at 50 and cunning at 80, this saves you 1300 skillpoints.
trade gives you a bonus 20% of an others empires production per turn, but you need to first have a trade agreement with them, and they get a bonus of 20% of your production, you generally do not want trade agreements, unless you plan to get into an militairy alliance with them, as it tends to help AI more than it helps the player, nevertheless having trade at 50% would effectively cut the bonus you recieve from tradedeals in halve (so now you get only 10% bonus), while leaving what they get unaffected, nothing we cannot handle.
lowering cunning, gives you only 50% for intelligence production, intelligence the resource needed for spy missions.
you can perfectly finish the game without performing ever a single spy mission, I do that all the time.
But even if you want to do a few, even the lowest levels of spy defence are insanely cheap, and unlike other resources intelligence production saves up without storage limit, so your whole empire can be maintained of just a handfull of intelligence centers, as in normally 8-10 of them would be plenty for your entire empire, with this cut back to 80, you might need 9-12, getting 500 extra skillpoints is well worth losing 2 building spots.

*set happyness to 80
Losing a bit of happyness does nothing we cannot handle,
when your people are more happy they reproduce a little faster (but only 1-5% per 10 turns, so negleticable)
when they are really unhappy they may eventually revolt and stop all production, but when you select a peacefull empire, this generally can fairly easy be prevented, having one of your ships cross that system... is often enough to make them happy again. so we just take the hit and take the extra points.

*set fysical to 80
While we rather not lower this, using the 500 points that this gives us to boost ship attack and defence is a tradeoff we can use. Shipcombat is 95% of all combat ingame and before you can invade planets to use fysical strentht you first need to use shipcombat to get there.. so a sensible swap.

*send maintenance to 90
While also rather not done, this gives 500 more points to spend, giving us even more powerfull ships.
So they get 10% more expensive in upkeep, but also perform better in battle, a fair tradeoff.

this leaves you with 50 skillpoints left to spend, I usually toss them in intelligence, raising it to 102, if you lowered metal to 80, you can increase intelligence more.

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Should you have selected in game settings 3000 points per player... you should use those 1000 extra points to select the advanced storage techniques trait and chance nothing to the above.
20% means effectively 1-5 spaces to build for each and every planet and more population allowed to, boost production speed and economy by even more than 20%, as well as improving planetary defence.

Should you have selected 5000 points per player, you can customise more
I suggest adding the advanced storage techinqes trait, the +1 movement point trait (handy for the entire duration of the game and making you perform better in actual combat) And increasing ship defence and offence both to 120%

that combined leaves you with the ability to grow your population fast, produce fast, and have very strong ships, exactly what you want.

[Kiesnowski]

Excellent. Planning to try this.

[pgames-food]

lots of interesting info here - i wonder about the irradiated planets too...
it says that the population of a domed planet which is irradiated, is increased a lot, but usually the amount of building slots are quite low.

what is best for those planets - maybe it depends on how many resources they have but maybe it is better to use them for research or intel?

(i think we can alto put atmosphere improving planets so that they no longer need to be domed and we get more building slots - but maybe that will also stop the increased productivity? :)

[何物萌之哉]

Excellent! But the maintenance part may not work like you wish. The basic maintenance is 25% of it cost per turn. And if you send maintenance to 90%, maintenance will become 35%. It is 40%(10%/25%) more cost actually! When you send maintenance to 120%(maximum) ,maintenance is only 5%.