Actually the Arceans have the all powerful first strike ability, and nothing can stand against that!

The next part.
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Some people say that the the custom races are the strongest. You can't get a maxed out PQ bonus with a speed bonus with the normal races, or vice versa. That and some other powerful possible combinations are only possible with the custom races.

What you need to do is find your race a niche that isn't being being covered by the other races. Lets try to make one right now.

Many people complain that military starbases are useless, but I think they're wrong, so lets show them how scary they can be. First, to build military starbases, we need to be able to quickly build constructors to build them, and we need the money to do so.
-Economics +30% (4 points)
-Military production +50% (4 points)

It cost money to pay for starbase modules... unless you are evil, so make your custom race evil.
-Alignment: Evil

To gain bigger benefits from your starbases, you want a bonus to weapons, and a luck bonus to increase your minimum damage you deal. As such, you need to select the universalists party for their luck bonus.
-Luck +50% (1 point)
-Weapons +20% (2 points)
-Party: Universalists

Now, to get all those useful modules, you need to research them. A +20% research would be quite useful for that.
-Research +20% (4 points)

Now for a super ability. Out of all the super abilities available, only 2 appear to be ideal: the "super isolationists", and the "super warrior". The super isolations will slow down all ships that are within your area of influnce to at most 3 parsecs per turn, but the down side is, you might want to build your military starbases outside of your territory to aid you in your invasions. The super warrior would do nicely. Any enemy ships you manage to destroy in the first turn will not be able to shot back, and you already have considerable fire power with the weapons and luck bonuses.
-Super ability: super warrior

Now what to call them? I know, since there are many fans of the Snathi, but what to call them so they have a different name than the minor race version? Nutty Snathi, Berzerk Snathi, Crazy Snathi? (the name should be something Squirrely !?! the Squirrely Snathi!).
-Name: "the Squirrely Snathi!"

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Sorry about the long post. So, what do you guys think? Too squirrely for you?

I'm more puzzled by the lack of balance between the stock races, say, the Drengin vs the Korath. Korath have clearly superior base stats, the same 10 pts to spend and a much more potent super ability. Their advantages run precisely in the direction the Drengin want to go as well (mil prod, weapons, easy planet conquest), so it's not even a question of being "different"... they're simply better.

Was someone asleep at the wheel, or was balance simply not a consideration in this case?

Well on DA, I noticed that the Krynn are way overpowered, and the Altarians have been nerfed big time.

Yea, your right. The Iconians have never done ANYTHING major in ANY game ive played, except get killed, and beg for help.

Doesn't help the Yor. i kill them pretty early in the game.

I don't think you can have perfect balance and I'm not sure you really need to. If you want more of a chalange play against the Korath instead of the Drengin.

If everythings else in the game remianed equal maybe it would make more of a differenece, but to me it depends so much on the other AI opponents and the layout of the map. Now with the changes to colonization, everyone has a shot. And those economic and research treaties can keep an agressor off your back; i'm theorizing that point, haven't palyed enough to see it though. QUESTION: does the AI know better than to declare war on you if they have a treaty with you?

I'm newer to DA but in the game I'm playing, the iconians have the biggest chunk of the galaxy and no one is picking on them. The Krynn decided to declare war on me early on they were #1 in almost everything, now they're #6 (out of 7) in military, economy, and a few others. They gave me 13 planets to have peace. So i didnt exactly see them as being overpowered. I've noticed the AI doesn't go for improving soldering too much.

As another question, using and exoisting race, can't you clear ALL the bonuses and pick your own. Thereby having a customized race but with all the points that a regular custom race wouldn't have?

In my other games on DL, the drengin alwqys declare war on me and meet the same fate. Yes im only playing on challenging but the point is, even with all those bonuses the game is still pretty even. A good player can beat any AI and a bad player can lose to any AI.

In the game Alpha Centauri, the different faction abilities are compensated with dissadvantages to create a balance. That way you still get the interesting abilities but you have to pay for it.

Even so, for anyone who knows that game, the faction with the big economic ability is extremely pathetic (the Morganites). They get beaten every time, but only because the dissadvantages imposed on them for the economic bonus were too severe.

The moral is - few games ever get it right but DL was damb close, DA pretty much went south of the boarder on this issue.

Summering the reactions of all of you, I learned that some say the Iconains are weak other say they are tough, idem with the Yors etc….Ok, it’s pretty sure nothing is predefined, every time you launch a new game everything turns out to be different, I like that. What I experienced is that races’ strength is also strongly influenced by the level you are playing. F.ex. on tough the Dregins are easier to be taken out than on painful, just in comparison of how every opponent is claiming his power in the game (independently of the game difficulty). I found that similar happens to other races….On further levels I don’t know ‘cause played only twice and got pretty struggled (once became event the 3rd left out of initially 5   , but was wiped out then quickly   ….). So, back one level to learn…

The loyalty bonus should be the Yor super ability, and their current isolationist super ability taken outside and shot.

Why? I haven't found the Yor to be so difficult. Right now I hate encountering the Korath, Krynn, Terrans or Altarians. The Yor and the least of my worries.