Remit: I've been thinking about switching the Antarans off for the next game to see what the difference is. I probably won't turn them off forever, though, because they are part of the game. So far they have only slowed things down by destroying my colonies, but I guess they will add more unpredictability on higher difficulty settings. What I wish I could turn off is the leaders. They seem unnecessary to me and add some unneeded micromanagement to the game.

Avogadro6: These are some good suggestions, I just want to point out that that some posters were suggesting to use Death Rays to kill their marines before boarding. That does NOT work in the GOG version. Not even Death Rays can kill marines on Antarans ships (or any other ship that uses Damper Fields for that matter).

H2IWclassic: I thought that change was already made by patch 1.3?

crazy_dave: Ah I was playing a Mac version for years - then when it stopped working (MacOS classic) I didn't play for a long time. So I never saw that patch.