Choosing disadvantages in certain areas in order to free up points for other abilities is something I miss as well. I'm sure it can be modded in, but a single negative choice in each category in the official game would be nice.

Yes, min-maxing is a valid concern. That's why I would propose only one 'tier' of negatives, not several like there are for boni. One tier would be enough to create an interesting racial background and free up some points without giving way to a Space Empires-like min-maxing game.

A single level of negatives in some categories would possibly mean the following variations to both the impression a player has about races and whatever influence they'd have within gameplay;

- Courage; Brave or Shy (Do i read - Good & Evil alignments, indirectly!)

- Research; ... or Dumb! Although, the slow option has the same effect. But, it isn't ---on--- the race definition screen to look at.

- Social Production; ... or Strike. Workers negotiating a new bargain agreement.

- Economy; ... or Recession/Inflation. Well, if YOUR starting condition shows that low of a bcs pull (even if only by taxes), you'd have to compensate with other things.

- Morale; ... or Bored. A pretty much stagnant population at first without any intentions to approve of your methods via ratings--- unless-.

Etc.

The trick is not to perceive this as a way to gain points to spend somewhere else (since, all things being relative... the overall adjustments limit the number of decisions to make, already) but rather as a "feeling" of more competitive startup conditions to cope with.

In any case, negative abilities would probably NEVER be selected by anyone wishing to have at least a worthy edge in specific areas - instead of running away from another (new) challenge. Otherwise, the balance would tilt to show incredible factors and VERY weird activities from what anyone is used to experience.

- Zyxpsilon.

Well, after exploring the library (AFTER this post was initially made)... i found a whole group of "modding tiny stuff" which do exploit the exact same theory about negative abilities.

Which proved to me one important thing, some ideas are (and really have been long before i took GC2-DA for a ride all by myself!) pretty common around here.

- Zyxpsilon.