Just an idea I had.

Ok first of all, I love SE V, its a great game, though I have never played it fairly, I always just activate Alltech and play around that way.

If this has been done before I am sorry.

Anyways, I had an idea where racial triats could be unlocked during game play.

For instance, the Deeply Religious trait can come in if a coup occurs on your homeworld, and suddenly your current leader is replaced by a religious one, or certain cultural events just push your society to religion (maybe mass plagues, or whatever)

You could unlock Temporal Technology by say, building a special station near or at a black hole, or a warp point. The station researches the odd spatial distortions around the black hole/warp point, and you can unlock Temporal Technology that way.

Organic manipulation could come about by landing on a rock planet, and you "discover" some crazy animals there that attacked your initial explorers. You land troops on the planet, and then you study the animals, who may or may not be Zerg/Tyranid look alives And from your research you get Organic Manipulation. Crytalline tech could come about the same, you land on a planet and find some odd mineral formations, and as you study them, you gain the ability to create these formations yourself.

You could even unlock other racial traits too I guess, such as Mechanoid and Emotionless, if you research, say Cybernetics or whatever.

However, you could suffer some side effects. For instance, that coup that placed the religious leader at the head of your government? Nothing stopping the remnants of the old government from coming back and abolishing the religion (or it just suffers penalties, such as minus 80% on all religious effects, with maybe a population loss)

That Advanced Spatial Research Facility you have at your black hole or warp point? Not only does it cost huge amounts of resources, but there is no guarantee it wont be crushed/teleported away before it completes its research.

You research Emotionless or Mechanoid? Suddenly your religion is destroyed as no one has any emotions to believe in such things.

Those organic/crytalline structures and weapons you built? Without proper care, they may release deadly viruses or radiation on your people. You quarantine the system as monsters roam around it.

Mind you, I just realized that this may make the game super unbalanced or hard to play, especially since its just easier to just buy the trait with no side effects before the game, but I thought it sounded cool. Thoughts?

Oh yes, sorry about the long post, I got carried away.