[Influence]

If however you are really inclined on deleting ships/races i would suggest instead of taking out races, taking out classes. While having multiple classes of pods per race opens up some nice advanced tactics (faking mainly), i feel it is complicating the gameplay for new players mostly.

It might be a good idea to review the way we look at hull researches. Right now it is the same for all races (small->medium->big) no matter if they have big or small ships. I suggest reshuffling it to (basic hulls -> advance defence hulls -> advanced attack hulls) where the basic hull opens a mix of natural ships suited for both attack and basic defence, for each race(terran gets big ships, xan gets small ships etc), then the 2nd hull research opens up ships that are regularly used to defend yourself/your ally, and the third hull research opens the 2nd class of attack ships.

This makes sure every player gets an easy/allround set of ships to build rather soon, suitable for all basic tactics. And then gets additional tactics/protection opened up when additional research is done.