So the current guides are old as dirt, and don't include many of the new races. I wrote one up not too long ago and figured I'd post it here. Discussion is welcomed! I'll also point out that this guide is probably best for players that have a couple hundred levels under their belts. For starting players, many of the races will be inaccessible, and many late-game concerns like upkeep won't yet be much of a factor. When I started playing I saw everyone talking about Builder and how great it was, so I was like a level 65 builder, which was totally unnecessary. Anyhow.

Choosing a Race

When picking a race and profession combo, there's a couple primary purposes you should consider:

Maximizing Time

Many choices help you be more efficient in your production, and this an excellent reason to pick a race. GL is an engine-building game, and the engine is your planetary production. More production = more artifacts = bigger engine = more production. Time is the essential commodity of the game, and when you pay a cost, you should measure it in time, not resources. High-level players aren't strong because they have high attack scores - they're strong because they generate artifacts quickly, which means more purging crappy planets, more scanning good planets. *Reducing the time it takes you to do things makes you stronger*

Thus, races and professions that make your production vs time more efficient are solid picks. This includes

Vygoid (+20% Research)
Excavator (+10% Artifacts)
Miner (+10% Mining)
Builder (-50% upkeep)

If you're low level, Vygoid is great, but research will eventually become almost useless. Miner is pretty weak, but Builder is excellent. Although it can create a 'crutch' where you come to depend on it, Builder can save you billions a day, letting you keep more of the money you earn. If you can afford it, get to Excavator. Artifacts = Power, flat-out. You want to be producing artifacts, and lots of them.

The other races that will reward your time spent are Kronyn, Mylarai, and Taltherian. They reward time a little more indirectly - rather than a flat, passive bonus, they add efficiency by letting you improve your planets. Every 40 hours you can bump up the production of a planet, although realistically it's every two days. Some people don't like them - folks like BinaryMan will tell you that it's mathematically more efficient to be conquering planets. This is true, provided you've got lots of planets to be conquering! A Konqul with nothing to conquer gets *nothing* for their time, whereas a Taltherian still gets a boost even if their scans are crap. When you get to level 1000, you might have such high artifact production that you can purge and scan a *lot,* meaning you can conquer like crazy. We're not there yet, so the planet-booster races are still very viable. (Note how many Dyso's are Taltherian)

That said, I'll say something possibly controversial: Mylarai and Kronyn are crap - be Taltherian or pick some other kind of race. If you're NPCing, you can make 16X toxics fairly regularly, so Mylarai isn't needed. And as I said, research will eventually become useless. Artifacts are *always* good for you! Boosting a planet with these races takes a *long* time, it's an investment. Roughly a month to get a planet from ER to 15X. That means that you could spend months making 17X plasmas and then suddenly realize you don't need research any more. You've thus almost completely wasted months of time, and we just talked about how time is the game's currency. Get rewarded for your time by being Taltherian - use the ability on the giantest planets you've got and make them into artifact factories.

Leveling

Production might not be your concern - maybe you just need to level. In that case, you want to maximize your efficiency at gaining experience, not producing stuff. To level fast, you need to kill NPC's -they're the most efficient way to spend your energy. Leveling races include:

Inergon (+10% Energy)
Human (+10% Experience)
Drannik (+40% attack vs NPC's)
Konqul (+20% attack vs *everything*)

First off, forget Inergon and Human completely (Human especially, since their professions are all garbage). To level fast, you want to kill lots of NPC's to get the kill bonus xp, which on things like Dark Runners is 35 or so. If you kill a Dark Runner in four shots as an Inergon, and have 1000+100 energy, that lets you kill 275 Dark Runners, or 25 more than normal. But if you're a Drannik, and this lets you kill a Dark Runner in *two* shots, with 1000 energy, you can now kill *500* of them! 225 more kills, with the added bonus of 35 xp *per kill!!* Massively more efficient. And as you can now see, Human sucks for exactly the same reason as Inergon.

Your options for leveling are thus just Drannik and Konqul - they both have decent professions. Pick Drannik if your attack is low and you're not doing max damage to NPC's. If you're close to the cap, pick Konqul - this way you get additional help with fighting bases and conquering planets and aren't wasting your bonus.

PvP and Bases
The following races/professions help in PvP:

Konqul (+20% attack)
Lazuli (+50% Hull)
Xecti (+40% to attack and defense when attacked)
Aerlen (+30% to defense)
Fixer (+30% to hull)
Hacker (+30% to hacking strength)
Physicist (+30% to shields)
Raider (+30% to raiding)

Most of these only help you if you're getting beat up. If you're not at the computer and someone's fighting you, they *will* disable you, so what difference does it make if they have to go through a couple thousand more shields? Pick Konqul to boost your attack for when you're on the offensive, then go out there and raise hell. The defensive abilities can be good if you're fighting a high-attack base - more hull to chew through means fewer repairs, and this can also be welcome when fighting NPC's. You should ideally get your artifact production and defense high enough that you can NPC for quite a while without needing to repair, and you should *never* pay for full repairs if you can afford it. I haven't used a 200 mil repair in months - nanos and restorers all the way.

Hacking and Raiding are both pretty easy provided you have good cloak and good crew - don't waste your profession slot on them.

Base Defense

Some race/profession combinations don't really help with efficiency or PvP at all, but they help defend your base. Those are:

Aerlen (+30% to defense)
Physicist (+30% to shields)
Fixer (+30% to hull)

When you’re attacked, your base's defense buff improves for every Aerlen in the crew. Your shield bonus improves for every Physicist, and Fixers improve BOTH your hull buff and the strength of emergency repairs. Other races affect other base abilities, but those abilities are all useless. If you want to be a class that helps the base, be an Aerlen Fixer or Aerlen Physicist.

Special Abilities

Some race/class combos have unique special abilities whose awesomeness sets them apart from the others. Those are:

Zolazin Saboteur - Destroy planet defenses
Genetarr - 50% attack debuff on an NPC
Xecti Governor - 3X more planetary events

Saboteur is the only one worth a damn. It's great and very powerful. If you're playing a Zolazin as anything *but* a saboteur, you're doing it wrong. That's the entire reason to play the race. The Genetarr bonus is nice, but pretty weak compared to others. The only thing worth putting it on is an XRP station, but you'll eventually get to a point where attack from NPC's doesn't hurt you. When I fight an XRP, I just leave the debuff on and fight through it - I still only have to use repair nanos once or twice if I've got the hull and shield buffs active. Governor is just crap - planet events are rare and usually useless, so you get *three times more uselessness!*

So that's that. Decide what your priorities are and pick a race and profession combo that matches them. You may have noticed that there are some races and combos I didn't mention - that is because they are *awful.* Do not be a Biologist – just get the damn Astrobiology Ward. Do not be a Sillix - you will hate your life. If you can afford to switch to Explorer for scanning runs, more power to you, but don't have it as a permanent profession.

My guides not that old.http://galaxylegion.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21400

The breaking down of races into groups of what there good at is nice , but there is a major lack of info on each race.

You don't have all the races , missing Sillixx.

One issue with this, and it stems from the fact that i'm an Inergon Explorer right now.

I already 2-shot dark runners, and with over 10k energy the bonus energy i receive would allow me to kill 480 additional dark runners.

At a low rank with really poor attack & energy, it is kinda sucky to be Inergon, but if you've got a high attack and a large energy bar it works wonderfully well.

As a plus too, it grants me the comfort of not having to switch race/profession whenever i want to do a scan run, as i have that permanent 20% boost at all times.

sillixx fails in everything

there, that's all that need to be said on that topic for LEGIT game play(yeah, sillix can be used for cheating, if u see one, beware of it)

@ Toastar! great advice, thanks a lot!