"Best" tech field and fun with Psilons

[Reformations]

Ray had hinted that one of the early changes to Psilons after the classic version is finished is focusing on their pacifist nature and turning their weapons research to Poor.  Fair enough.

I think a fun angle with Psilons would be to let the player choose one of the remaining fields to be Excellent at rather than the typical Good.  This adds some replayability and some racial flavor (as long as they are the only race to have this customization at the beginning of the game).  

My question to the MoO gods here is: Would there be an obvious go-to field? (I'm guessing not force fields...).  Construction, Computers, and Planetology all seem to make decent arguments.

If there is a no-brainer, best field then perhaps this modded version of Psilons needs more work.

[Zeraan]

In my opinion, Computers is the obvious choice for several reasons:

Higher tech level in computers make it harder for spies to infiltrate and steal their technologies.  On the flip side, it makes it easier for them to pick off technologies from other races.
As a concept, computers aids them in research (neural AI, etc) which explains their "research bonus"
They'd have good AI to aid with targeting of enemy ships, and to block enemies from targeting their ships.

I guess it just fits in lore-wise for me.

[Reformations]

Thanks for the comment.

However, maybe my question wasn't clear.

I want the player to be able to choose which area to specialize in at the beginning of the game (turning that area from good to excellent).

My question is if there would be an always-obvious-go-to-no-questions-asked answer. I can rationalize computers, construction, and planetology as being reasonable (and hence, this would be a fun/interesting mod for players to add on to the game).

However, there are some gosu players on this forum and I'm curious if after a few dozen plays this "unique racial ability" is actually no different than giving psilons innate excellent construction tech by default because it is the only sane choice.

[RefSteel]

If prompted to boost one field at game start, I'd go Planetology every time, except for variant purposes. No other field compares to the power of Terraforming, Eco Restoration, the native production boost from Planetology tech level, and Controlled Environment for expansion, to say nothing of Soil etc.

If that were taken off the table, I'd probably go Propulsion to speed expansion, but Construction may at least be in the same ballpark with its waste reduction, factory speeding, and long-range colony ship miniaturization. Computers would be a distant fourth for me, at least in the base game; I don't want Robotic Controls until I have a decent level of colonial development and/or good factory construction technology, and the Computers field has no other economic benefit. (Spying doesn't shine even for Darloks until the later game .)

That said, making them Poor at Weapons (or even Weapons and Force Fields) is not nearly enough compensation for giving the Psilons yet another research benefit. The ones they already have are plenty!

[Reformations]

Thanks. Great feedback.

As for psilon mods. Some other ideas include not counting ground weapons towards combat rating. (Armors and shields still count). This goes with pacifist theme and the nerf hits harder in the late game compared to a flat -20 ground combat.

Also, a possible mod is that ship slider cannot exceed 80% for psilons. This is a pretty big knock to rich planets and forces some of the "regular" planets to pick up the slack. The theme is due to political unrest. Pacifists don't want to be responsible for massing war machines. Here are some other 'slider based' proposed mods. https://www.reddit.com/r/rotp/comments/5...ers_in_15/