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Racial traits are essentially racial picks updated for Master of Orion.
Some of the traits listed here are "hidden" in the game and not normally available on the custom race screen. They are either exclusive to a preset race, meant to be obtained through one of the special abilities bundles, or used behind the scene by one of the non-playable factions (Antarans, pirates, and space monsters). Hidden traits are listed in a fainter style.
Special abilities are bundles of racial traits. A couple of them, Aquatic and Lucky, also have some special hardcoded effects.
Icon
Name
Description
Cost
Diplomat
Diplomats concentrate on trade with allies and espionage with enemies. They seek a balance between military buildup, ecological maintenance, and technological research.
Expansionists hunger for territory. They emphasize propulsion and planetology technology and the building of colony ships. They tend to be aggressive in border disputes over recently settled lands, but hold less interest in attacking well defended worlds.
Coming from an oceanic home world, this race perspective is skewed by water. They find Terran and Ocean planets ideal for their development, and can even thrive in swamps.
Consuming rocks instead of living organisms for sustenance, this race depends entirely on a planet's mineral richness to grow its population and sees little use for plant or animal life.
Half creature, half machine, these cybernetic organisms require less food and work more efficiently, and also have a knack for taking care of artificial systems.
This race is the used car dealer of the galaxy—smooth, suave, and transparently artificial, but you just can't help feeling like you should be their friend.
The galactic nerds, this race is focused on mind over body, and spends all of their time studying and thinking; science and philosophy are goals in and of themselves.
This race is a bit slow, not very interested in new technology or science, and would rather let someone else do the thinking so they can relax or play.
These fortunate beings must have saved up a huge chunk of karma from a previous life. Negative events never seem to find them and, as luck would have it, they get attacked less frequently by outside forces.
Hardcoded behavior: immune to negative random events.
4
Omniscient
These know-it-alls’ innate abilities let them map the whole galaxy without leaving the comfort of their own home world.
The mental abilities of this race have evolved above and beyond that of their galactic peers. Knowing the mind of others makes them shrewd negotiators, hard to deceive and allows them to take whole planets without resorting to violence.
Coming up from a society of fierce capitalism has prepared this race to excel in trade negotiations, squeezing value from every deal no one else would have even seen.
An unusual genetic alteration allows this race to phase-shift through the space-time continuum, granting their ships extra speed in combat and while scurrying the galaxy.
Invariably sneaky, always quiet, and patiently considering their next move, this race uses their stealth abilities for espionage and penetration of enemy defenses.
By changing their form, this race can pretend to be almost anything they want, making it easier for them to recognize outsiders and infiltrate other societies.
Like birds, this race has an affinity for flight and their natural skills lend themselves to becoming top combat pilots, always pushing the limits of their ships.
With their sights set on the domination of other races by physical force, this race trains extensively in ground combat and maintains a large reserve force of warriors.
While most traits are approximately the same as the equivalent Battle at Antaresrace picks, there are several major differences.
Aquatic in MOO2 also affected the planets' base food per cell, in addition to maximum population. In MOOCTS, it only affects the maximum population, but leaves the base food per cell unchanged: an ocean planet is treated as a gaia planet for maximum population, but still produces just 2.5 food per farmer instead of 4 for a real gaia.
Government traits are not implemented. Although present to a limited extent in the game code, they have no in-game effets, as the implementation was never finished.
Repulsive in MOO2 limited diplomacy to declaring war, while also increasing assimilation time and making mercenary leaders more expensive and less likely to join you. In MOOCTS, it does not include the Diplomacy: Repulsive effect and instead merely makes diplomacy more difficult without blocking other treaties outright; though the older behavior can be modded back in easily.
Subterranean in MOO2 doubled the max population of any settled planet, while giving a minor bonus to ground defense. In MOOCTS it instead allows terraformation of dry planets into cavernous planets.
Tolerant in MOO2 allowed a race to ignore the effects of pollution. The trait with the same name in MOOCTS instead is about ignoring the effects of gravity.
Warlord was in MOO2 mostly a ship combat trait (command points from colonies without having to build a star base allowing for a larger fleet sooner, ship combat statistics improved through leveling up, etc.) while it is purely a ground combat trait in MOOCTS.