Monster Races
A monster race is generally accepted as being one that is capable of producing 25,000 resources or more per year by turn 50. In practice, you can do a lot better than that. Races producing as much as even 250,000 resources in favourable conditions are possible, however, 25,000 is still a good ballpark figure to aim for. The PRTs that most lend themselves to creating a monster are JoaTs with their extra large planets, HEs with their doubled population growth, IS with their ability to grow population in freighters bypassing the usual limits of growth and most especially CAs with their instantaneous free terraforming skill. All other PRTs are capable of producing monsters, although they're not likely to be as powerful as those of the proceeding four, especially the CA races.Hyper Growth
A Hyper Growth race is designed to grow and expand quickly. Therefore a high growth rate is essential. This is usually paid for by lots of expensive research and having only modest factory settings. Most Hyper Growth races will be monsters, but not necessarily all.Hyper Production
A Hyper Production race takes a more long term strategy, swapping early growth speed for eventual potential. To this end, the population efficiency is usually reduced from 1/1000 to 1/2500 to gain better factory settings and also the growth rate might be lowered a little. LRTs such as Total Terraforming and Low Starting Population might also come into play. By consolidating their modest early gains by grinding more out of fewer planets they can be dangerous if they survive into the end game.Quickstart
A quickstart race is designed to expand quickly during the early game at the expense of some later potential. To this end, the factory settings are often weak and a narrow habitable range is a price you have to pay to have both some cheap research and a high growth rate. The IFE LRT is an essential for any quickstart race. However, they'll suffer badly unless they gain an unassailable lead by the end game.Factoryless
This is the most extreme example of a quickstart race. The factory settings are set to the worst possible, with the idea of not building any factories at all. Instead, all early resources are put into research and shipbuilding, hopefully so that the race will gain a huge amount of territory to exploit later in the game when they won't be able to grind much out of any particular planet. Obviously a quick kill is essential with a race like this as they have little long term potential.Long Term
This is the direct opposite of the Quickstart race. Typically they'll have a low growth rate and expensive research, but this is used to buy good hab ranges, good factory and mine settings and a number of long term LRTs such as ARM, TT and LSP. Even in extreme cases MA. Races like this only tend to be good in games with forced generation starts, so they can't get wiped out before having a chance to reach their potentialOne World Wonder
In a tiny universe game with lots of players, chances are you're not going to have many worlds between each player. So, with this race design you have to make the most of what you've got. By squashing the habitable ranges to the bare minimum, you can get high growth, excellent factory and mine settings, and possible some useful LRTs and cheap research into the bargain. Inner Strength is generally reckoned to make the best One World Wonders due to their ability to grow colonists onboard ships.
Claim Adjuster
The Claim Adjuster is the number one potential monster race. With it's free terraforming, it can survive on a much smaller hab-range than most and use that to buy useful LRTs, good growth and factory settings, etc. Against which, it has no real disadvantages and even gets a fair slice of starting tech includinge level 6 biotech.Jack Of All Trades
The JoaT is a average race with no particular specialities or disadvantages, however they do benefit from 20% larger planets allowing them to squeeze that bit extra out of them, some useful initial tech, a good starting fleet and penetrating scanners built into frigate, destroyer and scout hulls. The only things they've got going against them is that they're not Claim Adjustors and they can be a trifle dull.Inner Strength
Inner Strength's main advantage is their ability to grow population onboard freighters. This allows them to overpopulate their planets to get the most out of them and to use "population bombing" by dropping huge numbers of colonists on their enemies' planets. They also get the useful speed-bump mines, the fuel xport hull and the tachyon detector which allows them to locate cloaked ships more easily.Hyper Expansion
Hyper Expansion races get doubled growth rates at the cost of halved planetary size. This can make them either extremely virulent quickstart races if they go for a high growth rate, or live-anywhere monsters if they go for a low one and take three immunities. They used to be the most feared race in Stars but due to a number of disadvantages given to them in later versions (such as the inability to make their own stargates) and improvements in other races (CA instant terraforming being the most obvious) they're not quite what they used to be. Still a very capable race in the right hands though.Interstellar Traveller
The masters of stargates. They can gain a huge tactical advantage out of being able to deploy heavy warships over long distances and by being able to gate colonists can expand rapidly in a low-micromanagement manner over a wide area by reducing the transit times to a minimum. An extremely capable race in the hands of an expert.Space Demolition
Minefiles are the speciality of the SD races. They can make conventional minefields explode and can also lay the speed-bump and heavy mines which makes them the most capable race in a defensive war. Another good race in the hands of an expert.Warmonger
The natural aggressors of Stars, they can field powerful warships in the Battle Cruiser and Dreadnaught and get a speed bonus in combat which makes their ships difficult to outrun. On the downside their planetary defenses are poor making them vulnerable to invasion and packet attack, which is compounded by their inability to lay minefields.Super Stealth
Very sneaky customers here. All ships get a 75% cloaking bonus and they also have two useful specialist hulls in the Rogue and the Stealth Bomber. Aside from not being a natural monster race they don't really have any disadvantages, but it can be hard work making effective use of their stealth abilities.Packet Physics
Very good at throwing lumps of rock around the universe. A hard race to get much out of, as they need good mine settings and a lot of energy research to make use of their mass drivers, which aren't greatly useful in the usual routine of building warships.Alternate Reality
AR races are certainly the most oddball in Stars and therefore not recommended for beginners, although they have unsurpassed ability at piling up minerals which can make them extremely powerful if they survive to the endgame. Given that they live on vulnerable space stations this could be a tall order though.
Improved Fuel Efficiency
This LRT is so useful, that it's more of a case of "Can you do without it?" than "Do you need it?" The main benefit is the Fuel Mizer engine which is low tech (prop 2), ludicrously cheap, uses little fuel at low warp and most usefully is extremely efficient at high warp speeds. Without this engine, most races are going to get stuck at warp six until they can do a blitz on propulsion technology, whereas with it, warp 9 is easily achievable. If you think this doesn't sound too drastic, consider that a warp 9 engine allows your ship to go 324 light years in 4 years, as opposed to a warp 6 engine that'll do a mere 144. This more than doubles the zone of control around your homeworld. The races best equipped to deal without it are those with the IT PRT as they start with fairly good prop tech anyway (The DLL7 is available to them right from the off, and a short sprint can get the AD8), the IS PRT as they can use population growth in colonizer fleets to offset the slower speeds. Lastly the HE PRT can use a few tricks with the Settler's Delight engine to get early warp 9. Even these races call all benefit to some extent from IFE though.Only Basic Remote Mining
At first glance, this might look a pretty bad LRT. You lose the ability to make all but the most basic mining robots. However, there are a couple of less obvious benefits to this. First is the points you get in the race wizard, the second is the ability to squeeze 10% pop per planet. This results in 10% more factories, mines and therefore resources and minerals. So, if you intend to inhabit most planets, this is a very good choice. The only cases where I'd strongly recommend not taking it is if you go for the AR PRT, since they need to make the most of their ability to mine their own homeworld and don't get the benefit of extra population since they live on the space station.No Ram Scoop Engines
Another one that might look bad to start with, but isn't really. The lack of ramscoops is compensated for by a slew of points in the race wizard and better still the earliest warp 10 engine in the game - the Interspace-10. This effectively allows you to forego all Propulsion research past level 11 There are a couple of downsides, namely that a lot of the ramscoop engines are cheaper in minerals and resources so it's a bad move if you intend building huge amounts of warships for a "horde" strategy. (Note that since chaff don't usually use ramscoop engines, they won't count.) The other being that the IS-10 is heavy, so ships using it will probably weigh more than those going for the Trans Galactic Mizer Scoop as their main engine. This however, requires five more tech levels, and the ultimate engine, the Transtar-10, is available to all. It should also go without saying that this is a bad LRT to choose if you want to have large numbers of ships operating autonomously in enemy territory (a must for SS races) as they'll have to make periodic trips back to your stations for refuelling.Total Terraforming
This is an expensive LRT, but one well worth having in the right circumstances. Those circumstances being, if you have a race with narrow hab that is prepared to put a lot of resources into Biotech research, such as a CA monster race. Hyper Growth or other long term races, can also potentially benefit a lot from this LRT.No Advanced Scanners
For most races this will be pretty bad. Since this LRT stops you from making any penetrating scanners, you'll have to constantly be checking out all the empty planets around your space by hand. It also makes it much harder to spot minefields. The plus side is that you gain plenty of race wizard points and get double the normal scanner range. For the JOAT PRT, this is effectively no penalty, since they get a inherent scanning with scout, frigate and destroyer hulls. The SS PRT also gets a couple of penscanners in the Chameleon and Robber Baron, so they can also cope with this quite well. Other races taking this LRT will need to either change their tactics or trade for scanners with a race that doesn't take it.Improved Starbases
This gives you the extremely useful Space Dock starbase hull, although it does cost you a fair few points in the race wizard, so you'd better make sure you need it first. Space docks are ideal for frontier refuelling posts especially for races that took NRSE and are good for PRTs like PP and IT who can throw them up quickly and put something useful in the orbital slot. This LRT is also pretty close to essential for AR races, since they fairly regularly outgrow the Orbital Fort before you've got time to build a fully fledged Starbase.Regenerating Shields
This one is a bit of a hit and miss affair. If you can regularly design your warfleets so you don't use much armour ("horde" type fleets of Frigates/Cruisers, Battleships protected by mountains of chaff, and endgame Nubians generally don't have much call for it) you can maximize the potential of your shields with little cost. However, this halves the power of your armour, making your fleets extremely succeptible to missile attack, so if you like to design your battleships well armoured, look away. Worth a look at for races such as AR and PP that will be pumping a lot into Energy research though.Advanced Remote Mining
If you're not going to inhabit most worlds, this is well worth a look at. In the early game, you get a couple of cheap mining ships to start you off, and you can build much more efficient ones later on too. However, it does cost you a bundle of points in the race wizard, and mining ships will take up slots that will limit your abilites to counterdesign warships in the endgame. AR races, should probably take this one, but see also BET.Low Starting Population
Only consider this one if you hare going to design a race with a high growth rate, and by that I mean 18% or better. Late developing resource monsters can probably use the points this gives for investment elsewhere in their economy. Of course, this LRT will effectively be free points in a forced generation game where your population will get pushed way above the optimal 25-33% level.Cheap Engines
This is micromanagement hell, so consequently not for the faint hearted. Actually, if you can cope with it, the benefits are potentially huge. Races that take this get their engines at half-price, so it does sit rather well with a "horde" strategy, although it does make tactical combat manoevers, interceptions (especially the mystery trader) and even simple colony runs a nightmare to organize due to the fact that 10% of your ships at warp 7 or above will simply not move on a given turn. IT is the PRT best equipped to cope with this, since they'll be moving most of their ships around via stargates.Generalised Research
On the face of it, this one looks rather good. You get a 25% research bonus for free, possibly even some race wizard points too, if you didn't pick too many other LRTs. However, it's going to take twice as long to research any particular field, you'll be throwing resources into fields where you don't need them (who needs biotech anyway?) and you won't get the full benefits of tech trading in multiplayer games. Effectively, this one is only useful in force-generated starts and single player games against the AI.Bleeding Edge Technology
This is a particularly difficult LRT to get the best out of. The downsides are fairly obvious: Whenever you've researched a new technology, it's twice the price, so you've either got to fork out the extra to build it or research an extra level past it. Worst of all, this means that Tech 26 items such as the Nubian and Anti Matter Pulveriser will always be twice the price. The benefit is only in miniaturisation, so you're going to have to get the best out of obsolete hardware.Players going for a "horde" strategy can sometimes do this, however it's a marginal thing, as you'd have to delay your warship production until you've researched at least a level past all the hardware you need. The PRT with most use for this though is AR, as they can keep building obsolescent remote mining ships for an increasingly lower cost as their technology improves. This is almost as good for them as ARM and saves a lot more points in the race wizard. They still have the problem with double-priced Nubians mind you...Ultimate Recycling
A pretty useless LRT here. I suppose you can use it by scrapping fleets at small planets to jump-start their economies, but the algorithm used to calculate the amount of resources and minerals you get doesn't make it too economical. You could also get some use of it, if you find yourself scrapping large quantities of ships, but again this is unlikely if you plan your race's development right as most ships either end life by being blown to pieces in a fight.Mineral Alchemy
Another fairly useless one. I suppose it might come into play once all your planets are mined out (remember that the homeworlds always stick at 30% concentrations though) and you've got lots of resources but hardly any minerals, but most games are all over bar the shouting by this stage and you still don't get great efficiency out of it.
Central
This is the normal one most races would go for, and you basically just leave your hab ranges in the middle. Maybe trim and shuffle them a little to get extra points to spend elsewhere though. The advantage of this is that you get more planets away from the edges of the ranges and you also get more out of terraforming if it can work to both sides. This allows you to get both good hab (say 1 in 3) and a high growth rate of 18% or better.Single Immune
By picking an immunity, you'll get a useful increase in the value of most planets making few of your green worlds marginal. You'll have to pay for this by making the other ranges narrower and/or your growth rate lower which will usually mean less planets, although it's often a useful trade-off as the ones you get are better. As for which immunity to take: Gravity is the usual candidate as that absolves you from having to do much prop research especially if you take the IFE/NRSE combination as you won't need it for terraforming. Temperature terraforming is tied to Energy research, so if you're not going to be doing a lot of that you could consider taking your immunity there. Radiation is also worth considering, as it's the poorest of the three to have a narrow hab range in as it has more extreme worlds than the others, although this is offset a bit by the amount of weapons research most races do which should give you the terraforming.Dual Immune
Taking two immunities usually means you have to have both a narrow third hab range and a fairly modest growth rate (13% is about the best you can hope for) so it doesn't really work that well. The only races that should even consider it are CA and HE and they'll both have a difficult time making it work.Triple Immune
This is a natural for HE races as demonstrated by the Silicanoids canned race. The maximum amount of growth you can get is about 7% (doubled up to 14% for HE) although you might find that 6% is more useful as you can have better factories and LRTs with it. 5% or sometimes even 4% can make for a powerful long term race, although they need intense micromanagement and a lot of room to grow into a truly powerful race that way.Extreme
By shifting one or more of your hab ranges to the edge, you'll save a few race wizard points. This will also lose you the odd planet as they're sparser towards the edges of the ranges. However, if you are intersettling with another race, you'll be able to inhabit different worlds and gain more as a result. Probably not something to try for the novice player though.One world Wonder
By making all ranges as small as possible and shifting them to the right, you get about one in 177 planets habitable, and in effect are just limiting your race to one world in most universes. Since growth rates become cheap at this, you might as well go for 20% growth too. This gives you lots of points to spend on other things, although since your economy is going to be based around a single planet, this tactic is best employed in tiny universes with a lot of players around.
Population efficiency has two basic settings 1/2500 for hyper producers and 1/1000 for most other races. Settings in between don't really give you as good value in terms of efficiency/points as you're always paying the same amount of points for progressively smaller increments. Settings better than 1/1000 are extremely expensive and aren't really worth it unless you have points to burn.Good factory settings are hard to determine generically and will often depend on your race strategy. 10/9/10-15/y is good enough for most hyper growth races, whereas hyper producers will be looking for 12/7/15-20/y or similar.Factoryless races should go for 5/25/5/n settings.
Increasing the number of factories operated is generally a better investment than increasing the efficiency as they'll pay for their construction quickly and it doesn't cost you nearly as much in the race wizard. Doing this excessively though, will make your race a slow starter, so it's a good idea to up the efficiency and/or lower the cost for every couple of factories you add once you get above 15 or so operated.
Moving the factory cost to 9 is perhaps the single best investment you can make in the race wizard. Taking it further down than that will cost you, although since this does lead to faster factory ramp up you should consider it if possible, especially if your race is a hyper producer. Below 7 is cripplingly expensive though. Making it higher isn't really worth it unless you want to go for a factoryless race.
If you'll be builiding lots of factories, you should take the "factories cost 1kt less of germanium to build" as this will speed up your start by a lot. If you'll only be operating, say, 10 or less then you might get away without it.
About 10/3/15 seems a good starting point to give you the ability to build mines quickly and get a decent amount of minerals out of the ground for builiding spaceships. If your race has OBRM or is a JoaT you can survive with a little less than that though. If you want to take the route of Advanced Remote Mining, you can survive with a lot less, although do remember that you'll need some planetary mines to bootstrap the mineral production by building your early mining fleets. Remote miners are much more vulnerable to attack than planetary mines, so it also makes sense not to put all your eggs in one basket.Making mines cost more will slow down your factory building as well as your spaceship production as you need to invest a lot more resources into builiding them which has a knock on effect on factories which compounds rather nastily.
Also note that pushing the number of mines operated up reaches the point of diminshing returns before 20, as the concentrations will go down much more quickly this way. Going for improved efficiency beyond the 15 mines operated is probably more sensible.
Weapons
Weapons is the most essential technology in Stars, so you're best advised to set it to cheap. Early weapons research is pretty much just for terraforming purposes, but in the mid-game a series of sprints to the next best weapon should be your research priority, as you can't afford to fall too far behind in the arms race. Obviously, just bashing away at Weapons tech to the detriment of all else will not do you much good, as you need to occasionally develop other technologies to back it up. The end game effectively starts once Weapons tech has been maxed out though.Construction
In the early game, Const is most needed for getting decent freighters and colonizers. Whilst HE can scrape by on const 3 and the cargo pod with mini-colony ship hulls, most other races are going to need a quick sprint to Const 4 and the Privateer. After this, Const becomes vital for building warships. Once you have weapons 12 and the Jihad Missile, you should look at getting Const 9 for the cruiser. Similarly Weapons 16 and the Juggernaut Missile go well with Const 13 and the Battleship. These two should give you most of the other hulls and stargates you'll need. After that, though, there's not much needed in Const research until you've maxed out Weapons and want to go for the Nubian hull. The exceptions being IT.which needs Const 18 for the any/800 gate and WM which need Const 16 for the Dreadnaught Hull. Unless you're either of those two races, Const can be taken expensive without too many worries, although cheap/normal const for early Battleships/Nubians is a valid strategy.Energy
Energy research gives you shields, mass drivers and defences, so it's a pretty useful technology for most races. It's vital though for AR races where their production is based on the level of Energy tech and for PP races who get many different types of more powerful mass drivers. Both should consider making it cheap or at least normal. Most other players can take it expensive.Electronics
Electronics gives you scanners, jammers, cloaks and battle computers.This makes it another technology of middling importance to most races but it can be particularly important to Super Stealth races due to the cloaks and scanners they get.Propulsion
Propulsion research usually consists of an quick burst in the early game to get (efficient) warp 9 engines, and then a second burst in the mid-game to get Warp 10. By taking IFE, you can get the former at level 2 with the Fuel Mizer engine. Other races will have to make do the best they can until around tech 9 when the trans galactic drive and trans galactic ramscoop appear. The quickest way to get to Warp 10 is to take NRSE and get the Interspace-10 at tech 11. Other races will have to get the Trans-Galactic Mizer Scoop at Prop 16. Aside from starship engines, Propuslion is the third vital terraforming technology. A lot of race designs with NRSE will deliberately pick immunity to gravity, so as to avoid const research past tech 12 which gives the overthruster. In any cases, most races will stop at Prop16 until the endgame, making it an obvious choice for an expensive tech.Biotechnology
For most races Biotechnology need not go beyond level 4 which gives the maximum amount of conventional terraforming and the mine dispenser. This makes it the least important technology, and usually it's taken as expensive. A couple of minor exceptions are penetrating scanners which require modest biotech, smart bombs that require a lot of it but aren't really needed and the more exotic minelayers available to the SD races. The major exception though is TT as this requires a huge investment in biotech. So races taking it, especially CA who can use it most effectively, should consider setting this at normal or cheap.Whether or not to take the "All "cost 75% extra" research fields start at 3" box mostly depends on whether you can make use of the extra technology it will get you from the start. If you're taking const expensive, this will give you the medium freighter which makes it a good choice for all races exeept JoaT (who get the medium freighter anyway, but might still want it for the privateer) and IT (who get the privateer.) Some races will also get addional ships in their starting fleet (notably WM who'll get a destroyer and mini bomber) and others will receive minor upgrades as better inital technology is available.