Questions about racial abilities

Courage - helps your invasion strength.

Creativity - one of those things that no one can pin down as to exactly what it does. I have tried it with some insane numbers ranging from 20% to probably 2000% and saw no difference in game play.

Attack/Defense - increases your ships (Starbases are counted as ships, I think) attack and defense numbers, but not hit points.

Luck - another one of those evasive bonuses, although not as much as Creativity. You are more likely to have planet bonus tiles, better rolls for invasion, that sort of thing. Maybe even better resources around the home planet.

PQ - increases the number of buildable tiles. If you colonize a PQ10 planet, the PQ number will be higher after colonization and you should have 11-12 tiles available depending on the bonus amount. But then again, the PQ does not always reflect the number of usable tiles. Might be better in 1.3 for this.

Range - I think it is 1 parsec, not sector. So it is a small increase. Probably better to get the life support techs than take a point hit for +1 sensor range. PQ or Population Growth would be more useful.

Thanks for the answers, but it is range bonus, not sensors I was asking about. What does creativity do then? Do you just suddenly get a tech? And does a 10% attack/defense bonus matter at all in the early game when you have values of 2-4 for example?

I don't know if the defense bonus rounds up or not.

No one knows what creativity does. No dev has answered that question with any certainty.
Some people say that you will advance an extra tech from time to time, or get one sooner. But simply adding research facilities does that, and I have never noticed any faster results with Creativity cranked up. IMO it is a waste of a bonus.

I just looked in AbilityBonuses.xml and the units are sectors for the Range bonus.

Just so you know the creativity bonus gives you a chance to research two techs at once, for example if your researching lasers, once you research it there's a chance you'll get lasers2 at the same time, it can really help speed up early level military tech research (as it really seems to work only with weapon and defense techs).

The thing is, you get the same effect if you have enough research facilities. I can get several techs in a single turn, not just 2, by having several NLC's at 70% or so. You get more than 1 tech because the research capacity overflows into the next in line. So if you have the research capacity to research 2 techs, or 3 or 4, in a single turn, it will happen.

And since Creativity does not increase anything on a turn by turn basis, it is basically worthless. It is too random, if it works at all, to be of any real use. Just build a few more research buildings and it will get you researching fast at a steady rate, instead of wasting bonus points hoping to get an extra tech here and there.

The answers are helpful, but alot of people I think would like tooltips or explanations for alot of things in game.

I've taken creative before and run a long game without ever seeing any effect.

I still am not convinced it does anything, except other people tells me it does.

I can get several techs in a single turn, not just 2, by having several NLC's at 70% or so

What does NLC stand for?

And does anyone know for certain what the exact numerical effect is of having +10% to attack or defense? If say your attack is only 2 then it equals 2.2...so does 2.2 have any effect in game?

NLC: neutrality learning centers. the super high tech research thing you get my being neutral.

You mean if you always choose Neutral, we always get NLC's?
That's cool.

Didn't know the game worked that way. It must be psychic.

Unfortunately all floating point calculations in GalCiv2 round down!
POLL: Should FP Calculations Round to the Nearest?

In v1.2 NLCs cost 300 but in v1.3 they cost 500 and still output 22, compared to a DiscoverySphere costing 250 and outputting 18. I think they made NLCs too expensive in v1.3!

Easily moddable.

I've only had Creativity work once - out of many games. It's pretty much useless. I've found Luck to be worthwhile, though.

Luck can be mega useful, especially if you pair it with Universalist. Lots and lots of good "lucky" events/anomalies/bonuses.