eleazar wrote:I don't remember what Androids were like in MoO, or if you detailed those ideas.
MoO2 had android farmers, workers and scientists. They would need to be built with production, and never breed themselves. Once built, they could not be reassigned (i.e., an Android farmer could not be changed into an Android worker). They consumed production instead of food, and had greater output than any playable species (without considering morale bonus).
em3 wrote:The problem with the robotic species is just that: they are literally creations of a high level tech. They didn't emerge because of some physical or chemical reactions. They were developed, technologically. Then again, we could assume they were created by a high-level species, but have little technological knowledge themselves.
What you say is true, but I don't see this as a gameplay problem - we just need a plausible theory why that is the case, and it is not a hard one to invent. If I understand the backstory correctly, all playable species had intrasystem space flight capabilities when the starlane techs are revealed to them. We obviously haven't achieved intrasystem flight yet - who knows what humans will be capable of in terms of robotics/cybernetics when we successfully sends a human to Mars, Jupiter or Pluto? It wouldn't be far fetched to pose that the creator species were far advanced in robotics so that it could create robotic species. but not so great in terms of other techs. As you suggested, we can also adopt the Terminator scenario - once the robotic mind awakened, it terminated all creator species, and hence lost much of the knowledge regarding robotics.
I think we do want robotic species (or digital minds) as one or more playable races - they do fit one of the oldest archetypes of aliens.