Super Duper Abilities & more

You could try what I've been meaning to do:   try Super Adapter with Extreme planets set to Frequent.   Or try Korath with the same setting, which would make for an interesting game.

Do we know yet if Dominator is still useless with the new 2.0 weapons costs?

Weapons cost has nothing to do with it.  They're tiny (or were they smalls?) with 1-3 attack, most commonly 2.  They're useless even if you're on Laser V, IMHO.

One guy reported that getting Laser III is hard now.

True, but my bet is he doesn't have >200 planets researching.  In any case, Laser V now should still be at least as "easy" as psionic beams used to be, and probably even easier, which reinforces the point that Dominator is sadly useless.

I'll look into adapter, but it's not normally something I'd call useful.

Since all races get a Super Ability, its not really an unfair advantage if you're using one. But if you want, you can just turn off SA's when you start a game. If you stioll want them on but don't want to be over powered, make sure which even races have the best one that you are not usinbg are still in the game.  That is, if you go with the Yor, make sure that the thalans are in there etc.

Some good ones that arn't TOO powerful are Super Diplomat (Human), Super Maniplulator (Drath) which you can choose to just not use, Super Organizer (Alterians) which helps if you have races of the same alignment in the game.

As you said, Super dominator is usless. You get nothing but cannon fodder. At best it might help your military rating early in the game. Or it could be used in conjunction with a bunch of military starbases.

Yar, it's an unfair advantage when I'm playing Breeder or Hive.

Even if I'm running against 9 other Breeder races, it's still an unfair advantage.

Honestly, I had ruled out Diplomat already, but I admit it could be worthwhile.  It just feels a bit too good to me.

Turn off SAs?  But...but...

I've thought about it, but I've never actually done it.  It would slow the AI down more than it would me, though.  *shrugs and puts hands up*  I guess you can't win 'em all, can you?

You're forgetting the biggest advantage of Super Dominator: money!!!  You can scrap each one of those little ships for a few hundred dollars, enough to quick-buy useful ships closer to the front.

My biggest problem with the SAs is that they're unbalanced.  Some are incredibly weak:

They give HIVE to the Thalan, but they don't have conventional factories in TA!  It should give an efficiency bonus (10% deduction in per-unit cost).

SuperSpy gives one starting spy and a free technology?  That's useless.  How about decreasing the spy cost?  Or making it more difficult to spy on you (takes more turns per spy level, % chance that a "turn" won't be counted, etc)?  Or make it easier to spy on someone else (takes fewer turns per spy level, % chance to get an extra "turn")?  Or make it less likely to be noticed when you actively spy?

Super Adapter only gets 50% colonization of two worlds.  It should be 50% of all, or maybe a new set of 25% techs for all plus reduced research costs for the 50% and 100% techs.

Super Organizer gets all similarly-aligned races flocking to their aid.  That's great, except the AI takes a long time to choose an alignment, short of actually giving away XenoEthics.  At the least, it should also make it more difficult for similarly-aligned races to declare war on you, or it should work based on "leaning" not only declared alignment.

Super Breeder only works with 100% morale.  It should increase breeding rates at lower morale levels, too.

Compared with some which are more well-rounded and complete:

Super Diplomat gets a large diplomacy bonus.  Done and done.

Annihilator gets SporeShips technology, and the ability to fully use the worlds they create.

Isolationist limits ship travel in their space, which should be enough.  Then they get a bonus 50% barren worlds.

Super Trader gets double trade income, plus all the trade techs - everything you need to focus on trade.

SuperWarrier gets a 100% first-attack.  Considering how the game calculates damage, this leads to lots of auto-kills before the enemy gets off a single shot.  Makes defense and ship numbers much less useful, so war can be conducted easier.

I really don't get Super Manipulator, I have never played that way.

I may try that a couple games from now.   I can try a variant of my Spore rush:  a Corvette rush.  Basically, just immediately declare war on my neighbor right in the middle of colony rush (that's a play right out of the Galciv1 playbook), stunt his growth.   Blow away every flagship I see.  Extort.  Yeah, I know, I'm quite the diplomat.

I'm not too optimistic on military starbases working too well, though, because you have to upgrade every Corvette with an ECM module.  But who knows....

Disney, I don't know when the last time you've actually played Super Organizer is, but in my last DA game as them, and I would assume for TA as well, it does take into account what way the civ ethically leans-they do not have to declare.

Super Manipulator is essentially Super Diplomat except that it only applies to starting wars.

Yes, Super Trader gets double the trade.  And double of nothing is still nothing.  That's an exaggeration, but the point still stands.  Trade is not useful for money alone.

Breeder doesn't need to be any better.  Trust me.

Hive isn't useless, nor underpowered.  It's just that it no longer fits the Thalans due to the above mentioned lack of initial factories.

Adapter would be much more useful if it were all of the extreme colonization techs-even just the first level.  The way the game is coded, there is not a way to mod in a 25% extreme world habitable ability, so code would almost certainly have to be rewritten for that purpose, but it's definitely a worthy suggestion.  It may even be relevant that if you simply did a +25% non-tech based and then researched the equivalent techs you'd be at 125% planetary output-but that might be too overpowered.

-

As far as Dominator goes...the ships in question cost <100BC, or at a minimum <120BC.  In my experience, this is going to be approximately 25-30BC when scrapped.  I may be slightly off-it may be as high as 40-45BC, even (it's been a while)-but I very much doubt that you're going to get hundreds of BC from scrapping a single ship that's barely worth one hundred BC.  While it may be worthwhile to use them to start a war during the colony rush, there are other, probably better ways to do that.  Tetley points out that you'd need to upgrade them to have defenses for them to be worthwhile to put under a starbase array-which is going to cost money that you'd probably be better off spending actually building 1 attack/1 defense fighters.

One should remember that the "The Super Spy Training Center" also gives a fairly formidable research bonus (Particularly for early game, if you can get the Krynn to actually trade it to you - I've traded it for sensors III before) - if your plans are based in researching your way to galactic domination, it's both a free research bonus and of course it lowers  your spy costs considerably.

Super-Breeder is (IMO) sufficiently overpowered as is  - just keep your morale high, and it is ridiculous.

I like Hive fine, albeit partly because it goes well with my concept of the Psilon - neither over nor underpowered, but a definite edge up on the competition.

Super Trader, Diplomat, and Manipulator just don't play to my strengths - I have fun creating my lil empire, I don't actually start wars.

Isolationist could be fun, never tried it.

For a challenge, you can also leave SA's on, but pick "None" for your self - {G}.