The Liir have not been a star-faring species for long. Up until 150 years ago, the Liir were a peaceful race with limited technology. Various agrarian and nomadic cultures operated within the rich waters of their home world and war was virtually unknown to them. Although they had not developed far in the sciences of architecture or ballistics, some Liir societies were extremely advanced in bio-engineering, aquatic horticulture, volcanic engineering and metallurgy.
Being a highly peaceful race, the Liir have developed excellent research techniques but because of this peaceful focus to their early development, the Liir are inexperienced with space combat, and cannot field as much weaponry on their ships as the other spacegoing races.
The Liir StutterWarp is not only their FTL drive, but is also their combat drive, which is both a blessing and a curse. Because it functions more slowly the closer it gets to a planet, this makes the Liir ships seem sluggish in planetary defense and assault. However, because the drive works by repeated short-range teleportation, it doesn't suffer normal inertia like the other races' combat drives- it's roughly twice as fast to stop or change direction with a Liir ship near a planet. You will also have greatly superior maneuverability in deep-space intercepts, where your drive can operate without its usual speed constraints.
Their strategic speed at the beginning of the game is second only to the Humans, which makes it easy to start off the game well. This also makes the Liir a good choice for learning to play the game.
