Tim Wisseman, mailinglist, 11th June 2001:

• If you race has very powerful combat stats and ships, they need a big weakness.
• Be different, be wierd, be fun.
• Don't be boring.
• You can make up new ship devices, just make them easy to understand and fun.
• Look at how my races all have something very wrong with them, a big weakness. Follow that example.
• Look at other races in the game and give your race a special weakness and advantages against a few of them.
• Do not add something to a have that requires new screens to be added to PLANETS4.EXE.
• Do not add new metal types or cargo types to the game.
• Do not add new weapon, engines or other parts to the game.
• You can change the stats and functions of existing parts.
• Give your ship hulls special powers.  . . . maybe special powers that only work when your race crews it.
• Pretty pictures and a set of ship stats and devices do not make a race. They need something more.
• Do not do what is expected.
• Do not make yet another clone of the Privateers, I have rejected several ideas for Privateers clones, including the Orions, the Caribeaners, the Pirates and the Black Marketeers.
• Do not clone the Birdmen and just give them ships with lots of armor and long range scanners. ( Grossen Avitors )
• Do not clone the Stormers and just give them ships with lots of armor and shields. ( Neo-Fascists, Clingonians )
• I have seen some very good ideas like the  Solarian Unity and the Children of the Apocalypse. The Scavengers had the right idea, start out a little weak and start turning things up until the race is strong enough. They are an interesting race. The Enforcers turned out really well.

Tim Wisseman, IRC, 4th May 2002:

• The 3rd part races. . . there are 31 of them. . .
• I had a major burn out caused by a 3rd party race ;(
• The problem with some 3rd party designers is I can spend 2 weeks making the race work and then they change everything at the last minute
• Then the race gets released and then they want to change things over and over again. ..
• with 31 3rd party races it gets sort of crazy
• Now the ones that are out right now, the designers have do a good job of keeping things sort of stable
• I know of about 10 more that are going to be added ot the list
• It is really nice when a race can be released and it can just stand as it is without alots of changes
• Most 3rd party race designers would not go for a commitee looking over their stuff
• Heck, many scream if I suggest something to make the race better
• Yes, I can just say. . . all 3rd party races are on hold until after V4 is released. ..
• The problem is all 3rd party race designers are different. . .
• there are some really really good ones that have been a real joy to work with, like the Solorian and Centaur designers
• . . . but others it has been sort of like a mud slinging match
• . . . my race NEEDS 60 Large weapons, you NEED to change host.exe and planets4.exe to support 60 large weapons. . . good lord. ..
• There is one guy that wants 10 super weapons on 1 ship. . .
• There is a ship design that is immune to all weapons except for super lasers
• One ship that takes no damage from enemy weapons fire, but returns double damage to the ship that fired on it
• most "forget" to give there race any real weakness
• Or if they have a weakness. . . they give the race something that nullifies the weakness. . .
• Like the race has low growth, but they have a cheap little tech 1 building that cases the colonists to grow at a rate of 20% a turn. . .
• You guys can see what I do with my races. . . I sometimes give them INSANE weaknesses
• I did find the Solorians to be a wonderful race design. . .
• There is another 3rd party race that I am looking forward to is the Childern of The Apocolipse. . .
• The problem with a point system is. . . there is always "a perfect race" or a "monster race" design that people will come up with over time that spoils things
• I like having fixed races because you can be more flavorful and more edgy in the designs

Robert Weisenburn, mailinglist, 11th June 2001:

Well, I think if anything, the creators should at least lobby the more 'estute' players in checking out the race development page. Looking through the stats and evaluating is a very time consuming process. I've looked at a few myself lately... When I see mine, I know exactly what I've got and what I want each ship and my race to do because I built it from the ground up... When I look at someone elses, its like putting a jigsaw puzzle together: If all the peices are there, you get it, it just takes a while!
I think its great that you can design your race at your own discretion. If it bites totally, noone is going to play it.
 
 

Neville Bowers, mailinglist, 11th June 2001:

If I were a game designer who had opened the door to having other people make add-ons for it, I too would hope to see them meet or exceed my own levels. That said, given what it takes to make a race, I would like to see the following thought and effort put into the design before someone started pestering me to alter my code to accomodate them:

• Coherent and decent history/premise write-up of the race involved.
• A detailed and comprehensive writeup of how you see the race working, as in what sort of resources they will be using, what their main strengths are supposed to be, how they generate food, taxes, etc. You should include in here references and explanations of any special race buildings, special abilities of any of their ground units, or odd features that this race will require (like being able to draw fuel from Stars instead of planets, etc). You get the idea :)
• A useful set of stats for these things (Perhaps Tim or someone could write a short "points weighting system" guide that gives scores for what various ships, their devices, fighter-types, ground units, scan ranges and mount-sizes etc might give the race as regards "strength"). And then have it known that no race with a number greater than X on that scale would be accepted. These stats might not be final: they could simply be proposed, but if I were writing this stuff I'd want to see stats that matched both your premise and your writeup.
• I'd expect to see maybe 2 or 3 pieces of artwork. Sure you will have time to finish up the rest of your pics while the code is added, and the game tailored a bit for you... But if I were Tim I'd be hoping to see a base-level commitment to having thought your race out carefully and put some hours in working on the art for it.

Races should be distinct in their mindset, their philosophy of winning... Devices at to the flavour of a race, but if there´s no flavour, it´s irrelevant. The similarity of the classic VGAP-races to popular TV sci-fi races add so much spice to this game, because we identify with them, when we play them or play against them. Surely there are 3rd-party races that have no absolute addictive flavor, but other ideas are well. I really think that interesting 3rd-party races should be racepacked from time to time, while the Beta-Testers are still looking for errors. But if there is a good race-concept, the race maker should carefully think of how he can realise his ideas within the current system of rules, only adding what is absolutely necessary. Example: I wanted my Arborians to have organic plant ships made of food, supplies and med. I came up with special "Organic Space Ports" that enable to build these organic ships only. But all that stuff was in fact unimportant. Tim can program that anything can just morph into anything. So the food etc. is put into a pod which will transform into a ship (per chance). Not another unnecessary building to code for Tim.
 
 

Some additional thoughts on the issue:
There are race creators that quite openly say they want to create a race that shall beat all the others and give them monstrously high ground combat and ship stats combined with nearly every device in the universe. Then there are race creators that say their race is a group of ... (fill in some non-military term, some general non-combat oriented concept that already exists manifested as a race of Planets4 already) and then this race has all combat advantages, super troopers and super shieldied, heavy weapon starring, cheap, hyp all over the cluster dreadnoughts that the rest of the community gets a real headache about (not to mention Tim himself)...  What is also quite annoying is when race creators just give their race those nice and unique ideas that have already been thought of for another race that´s still in progress... The problem then is that that racial quirk is not unique anymore! So before one thinks about creating a new race one should go through all those web sites with new upcoming races and see what these are like and what they have for special rules, concepts and devices... and then do something completely different. Of course great minds sometimes think alike... But if you see a good idea already planned for a race that´s somewhere written down on the www, don´t take this idea for your own race anymore. Do something unique. I am sure Tim and other race creators (me especially, as I have seen more than one special thingy of my own race taken by other race creators) will thank you for this. Don´t we all want to be proud of our race for being special and unique in as many aspects as possible? Another common pitfall when creating a new race is giving them the possibility to produce minerals and/or money in a totally uncontrolled manner through a chain of devices, structures and/or special units... This can be such a stealthy pitfall that not even Tim always foresaw it for a race he packed together. An example once was the mass producing of highguards which then produced MCs on Pyramind Lounge ships in the millions, billions, megazillions if you´d like to and had four or five turns time to set it up. In my opinion every means of money making should be somehow tied to population. You shouldn´t for example be able to thus buy some cheap contraband, have some racial special thingy at hand that makes other ressources out of this cheap contraband and be able to sell these ressources for five times the MCs you needed to buy the original contraband... now invest five times the money you started with into the buy/production/sell/rebuy-chain and make money out of practically nothing!

Enough nagging... I hope that new race creators get the idea...

Martin Lorenz