Race Mod Reviews - Sabin's Race Mod

Major Additions:

• Adds a pick, Military, that costs 60/30/0/-20. The best of these gives +3 to Military Efficiency and -25% to fleet maintenance; the worst lowers Military Efficiency by 1 and increases fleet maintenance by +10%. I like this idea, because it's a modest and easily understandable pick, but wonder if it isn't overpriced.
  
• Ethos Goals, Ethos Society, and Ethos Divinity are added from Invader Mod. He alters the points minutely, adding 10 to all of them, so that the cheapest pick is 0 instead of -10, and the most expensive 40 instead of 30.
  

To keep its relative position, a race would need about +20 points.

Evaluation of Race Balance: Sabin makes the Humans an industrial powerhouse in addition to a diplomatic and trade one. They also get a big chunk of points, and with their new hard-wired bonuses, leave the Evon in the shade. Humans will be fun to play here, but not balanced. (Humanity Uber Alles!) Sabin really hates the Silicoid. Not only do they lose points, their manufacturing and mining both drop, and they retain their awful pop growth rate. Furthermore, the AI Silicoid has both Manufacturing and Research set at Poor! It makes me wonder if his Humans got pounded by some AI Rocks in a game he was playing. His Gasbags take another huge punch, getting massive negatives to research and production, making them the worst in the game at these. Since removing their bonuses and giving them no negatives seemed to leave them balanced over at GameSpy, I'd be willing to bet they're way underpowered now. The Psilons look weaker, the Lizards get no help.

Sabin's mind wasn't so much on balance as on correcting what he thought were errors, both in the spreadsheets and in race conception. For instance, here's why he gives the Meklar -10 points of Unrest: "Lowered Unrest for Meklar minutely [???--not so minutely] as they all have a common goal and all hate fleshlings. There is no plot deception in a cold clear cut, although calculating, society." That's fine, but in gameplay terms how does he compensate the practically identical Cynoid? He doesn't, and consequently there's no reason to take Cynoid in his mod when you can have Meklar and get free Unrest reduction. Unlike some mods, the problems with balance aren't sloppy changes or oversights. I just disagree with his evaluations. One thumb:

Evaluation of Race Differentiation and Creativity: Sabin doesn't make a lot of effort to distinguish races. That simply wasn't in his plan. I admire his attempt to make the Psilons viable while retaining their low pop growth. He seems not to know that the accuracy and damage modifiers are broken. His would be a fun game to play as the Humans, who look stronger than just about everybody.

Would I play this one? No. I don't play Humans, and if I did, I'd want a more level playing field.