Picks:
_+1 farming, + production, +1 money appear to be quite unattractive choices, especially if you compare it with Aquatic (farming), production (vs population/subterranean/unification?), money (vs democracy). As you are likely to have more experience playing the game (and this mod) than I, I wanna know what I'm missing in the logic or a combo I don't have in mind.
- food + 1 is for 3 picks. When it was 2 picks unitol food race was overpowered. Besides at 3 points food can be still useful combined with subterran pick.
- Production is the most important part of the game. The cost of production picks is optimized not to allow uber prod races though.
- +1 BC at 7 points. Well, +1 BC has more considerable impact than +0.5 BC, since it works cumulative with buildings like space port and planetary stock exchange. On the other hand 7 points may seem expensive. However, at 6 points there can be constructed one demo race, which has signs of overpower, namely: demo, aqua, +1 BC, +50 pop, rich hw. Needs more testing.
_-50% pop growth seems to deserve a -10 rating while -1 production maybe -8 rating. Halving pop growth could bring awful developing problems until you bring the cloning center (which I don't find that useful without the negative, I prefer automated factory followed by housing). -1 production isn't too bad due to early pollution and if you play with dictatorship.
-50 pop could be taken by rush races. At 10 points it is extremely attractive.
Production: if you take - prod you never become +prod, it is mutually exclusive. Good production allows you to settle more systems/planets early and hence grow more population, which is the "ultimate arbiter of victory in MOO". Even uncreative is better than - prod.
I'll tell you my pics in my hard game and the current 'impossible' game:
_Hard: +50% growth, oceanic, subterranean, high-G,+20 spying, lucky, F traders. Uncreative. It was a nice idea as I grew quickly then built 50+ spies and stole lots of tech.
_Impossible: +50% growth, oceanic, subterranean, high-G, +20 spying, F-traders, Large HW, -ground combat, -1 research. I should have replaced the negatives with -1 production, but it's working out. Stealing from a creative race is giving me awesome stuff and I have prepared that kind of 'ridiculous' techs that I pointed out in my previous post.
Spying alone is good, but in MP game you need to build fleet and expand fast. Stolen techs won't help you much in this aspect.
What does biomorphic fungi do? I thought all planets would get +1 food, but it didn't happen. It only annoyed me by making farmers in unhabitable conditions. I chose Neutral scanner in the 2nd game: it's awesome.
Yeah, this tech is practically useless. It only allows to farm on rocks, radiated and toxic planets. It could be used to certain benefit by uni +2 food race though.
I feel battlestations could use a bit of improvement on the laser department. Starfortresses might use an hp increase, they just feel like a stationary 'titan' with tons of nearly useless pd weapons.
It would be good if you could refit starbases yourself, but it's not possible now.
I've heard that Siron was working on it to make it possible, but don't know if he achieved any positive results.
Btw, Star Fortress has insane HP in VDC, even more than Doomstar and costs only 1600. Don't know why people complain about Star Fortress
making it a choice to research the 'attack antares' gate is a bit cruel. It could be an entry-tech instead like scout lab for example.
Ye, I didn't think of it, I'll try to fix it in the next update. There is just one place left vacant for "entry techs".
But these are minor observations. I'm very impressed how you managed to make the choices very difficult on research, building ships, among other decisions. While early-game still forces me to research pulson missiles/missile base like before, there are other options like bombers or some lasers, it's good that the first computer is +50 because early lasers were pretty useless in the original game. I'm also surprised how you managed to make the choices difficult with a research tree that makes even more sense than 'difficult choice' mod. This is what made me not enjoy Expa, it was just too different and a harder learning curve do to everything being in unusual places.
While im a tad busy right now and will play less, I'll update you on other observations, compliments and constructive [hopefully] criticism/questions.
But so far, it reminds me of the fantastic master of magic balance mod that I found early this year. (which made the game more challenging, interesting, and surprisingly balanced)
Thanks for positive feedback.