Tribe. Because I can build cheap cruisers with high speed and moderate survivability.
Plus their fighters are pretty good with 2x HP.
Order just because their ships look awersome
Order ships are amazing. It’s too bad they get so little love.
I picked te swarm but thats because of the fighters, i think they the best.
I dont understand how the swarm swarms because usually i dont deploy many big ships(frigate, cruisers), but i do deploy a lot of fighters.
Another thing i dont understand is the disruptor beam. It doesnt that much damage on sheilds so i usually fit my ships with missles. Maybe i havent tried using the disruptor beam in large quantities.
The Tribe.
I dont like the background, they are space hippies, and i hate hippies 
but their ships are amazing.
Slow but cheap, hard to break and with a lot of firepower.
I like Rebels because they and the Empire remind me of the two sides in Legend of the Galactic Heroes, an old japanese space opera that was the reason that I bought this game.
(I felt like playing through the style of space battles from that show, and this game fits the bill better than any other)
I like Federation and the Swarm too.
That’s all you needed to say. You see from my “Avatar” [ha!] that we have some background in common. Welcome aboard the forums!
Alliance, just because they look cool and are giant six legged space bugs. They rule.
EDIT: Just played as the Empire, the final race I hadn’t played. Completely changed my mind.
Hey there!
Just now made my account for the forums. I bought this game a bit more than a month ago, and completely fell in love with it.
I want the Alliance to be my favorite race. But, I can never seem to use them to their full potential…I’m also very dissapointed with their Lightning beam…I find it lacking compared to the Fusion Beam or the Howitzer, etc.
I’ll have to go with the Swarm as far as weapons go, but the Rebels for the looks.
Tribe fighters are invincible, but the Alliance is cool, the Rebels look like Star Destroyers, the Empire has the best battle music, the Federation is nice and well-rounded…
I can’t choose.
I think zGeneral came up with a rebel fighter design that has yet to be beaten.
http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=4707&start=15
Tribe cruisers scare me much more than Tribe fighters.
Berny
Well I can’t armor my laser fighters anyway so a x2 health bonus is very welcome.
For anybody who hasn’t seen it yet: positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=841 This poll is going to have to be updated again shortly.
damn. I thought Cliff said once he was done with the Swarm, he was going to stop the new races thing… oh well. looks like the scores will be wiped… AGAIN.
You thought that because he did say that. But in exchange for a terrific game, I’m inclined to let him change his mind now and then. 
My favorite race, that is a hard question. I don’t play the other races much. I have all the DLC. I have really only played Federation with one caveat I’m going to explain.
I have two Empire cruisers designed (on this machine), six Rebels ships, and Federation. At home I know I have Tribe as well. My experience has been that the real difference between the races has been hull bonuses. There may be some racial weapons but I have been unaware of them.
In building and playing Tribe (this is the caveat, I played Tribe against half the missions), I was surprized that I could beat all my Federation Honor scores with the Tribe. That seems to me to indicate that their hull bonuses are out of balance. If I could beat 50% of my Federation Honor scores (across all the missions) I would expect that and consider the balance to be good.
I know some people are asking for more diversity between the races. I resist that notion, and would ask for less. If Tribe is unbalanced with just hull changes imagine trying to balance a myriad of racial weapons. I fear (because you guys are such good ship designers) that it would lead to unbalanced play. The race specific hull and weapon combinations would be found and exploited to produce unbeatable fleets. So then we’d all play that race and ship design (like now, with so many Tribe players).
Personally I have stopped using Tribe and switched back to the Federation. I’d like to be able to play any race and get roughly the same results. A test of this would be can each race hold approximately the same number of honor missions across all the missions of the game. Some races might be better at the “Hard” mission another race the “Expert”, and so on.
An example of this is the last mission in the game. On “Expert” I can beat it with 4 squads of fighters (Federation). But no matter what fighter combination I try (Federation) I can’t beat the “Hard” mission with less than 5 squads of fighters. I presume that if I were to try another race I would be able to beat the “Hard” mission with 4 squads of fighters.
Summation: I think all the races should only be able to beat each other race 50% of the time for each given pilot and credit amount. Some amount would favor one race (because of hull bonuses) another amount would favor the other race (for the same reason). Imagine a graph of pilots and amounts, race A wins 50% and race B win 50% as the amount climbs.
Side note: Funny things might happen when the amounts only allow fighters or single cruisers/frigates but those would be the racial differences in macro, ship to ship, mano a mano, squadron to squadron.
And lastly: I am really waiting for the campaign game to force me to play all the races. My plan is to start a camapign for each race forcing my to use and learn each race. With the new race comming out before the campaign, I might hold off on buying it until I have played the campaign through as planned once. Then if having another race would benefit more play, it would be worth the purchase.
Wouldn’t that kinda negate the purpose of differing races? Wouldn’t the game get kinda stale pretty fast?
And for your Tribe ships getting higher in honour on the missions - most of those missions were pre-Tribe. None of those ships were really designed to take on the Tribe. In fact the ships and the missions are pretty easy and after a while trying to eke out x amount of honour gets pointles. Now for the differing race bonuses do you not think it allows players who have differing playing styles to find a race that suits them as opposed to being forced into a single style?
Berny
No, because I think we are closer to my suggestion than to the requests people have for racial difference. The current game, the way it is, except for Tribe and Empire (the round ones) are my argument that the game is good with minimal racial differences.
As I understand the game as it is now, there are only two racial modules: nukes (Order) and Shield Support Beam (Empire). The only racial differences are the hulls. From that (if my understanding of the differences is correct) one can conclude that Tribe are too strong (hull bonuses are too good) and Empire are too weak (hulls just don’t have enough).
Yet the game is rich, not stale, and well liked. There are currently minimal differences.
Granted I have not played the other races much, thus my hopes that the campaign will spur me on to explore each one in great depth. Perhaps I don’t understand the depths of the differences. Does a Cruiser Laser have different values race to race? I don’t think so, only the hulls matter (and the two race modules).
As to the “style” question, I have two trains of thought.
If style = unbalanced then I am against it.
If style = look & feel and optimal points allong the pilot & credit continuum then I am all for it. No one race dominates the others and it is a continual struggle to find those optimal points at which to attack your enemy.
As to the fleets in the original missions. I hold them as a litmus test of balance. The game launched with four races, and I presume the missions are balanced against those four races. If they were not, perhaps a reworking of the missions is in order.
The differences among the Good Race.
Tribe has outrageous HP bonus.
Swarm has disruptor, smart bomb, reduced cost, and frigates that doesn’t totally suck.
Order has the best shield tank and armor tank, and radiation gun.
Rebel has speed bonus, good fighters, and a 140m cruiser hull
Federation has Fusion Beam
No advantages for Alliance and Empire. They are not suitable for competitive play.
We already have that. The challenger advantage is so huge that most challenges can easily be beaten in 1 or 2 tries, no-matter the race.
Mores the pity, I think Empire are the best selling point for GSB graphically. Then you play them and 
I would like to see Empire and Alliance reworked to make them suitable for competitive play.
Yes for the most part I agree with you and would like to see it stay the way it is. I don’t want to see an increase in racial differences.
Also, you must be a better player than most. I look for the challenges with the most attempts and I’ve had to work very hard to beat some Tribe and Order challenges (as have others) 93 victories, 1737 attempts…