PlanetsCentral

streu in Re: End game condition:

PTScore usually correlates somehow with fought-down enemies. At least, if nobody disrupts the game by leaving prematurely.

Sorry. No, PTScore does no such thing. That's exactly my point. There is no time at all to make use of another player's planets economic wise. There simply is no time to do so and there is no reason to, because you'ld neglect maximising core-territory score. Your frighters can't do both. If you are lucky you got him down around turn 60. Really lucky. But I usually begin preparations for maximising score around turn 40 to 45.

It correlates may be somehow with fleetstrength. Somehow. I can say for sure that FED-fleets are generally overrated concerning PT-score for the simple reason that FED-fulls do cost more money compared to other races hulls. These cost's are there for a good reason and there is no problem while playing without PT-Score. Using PT-score gives the FEDs a higher rating compared to fleetstrength which is usually (actually it's not that simple) a downside for diplomacy but you've got a higher score - which does count at the end of the day.

Furthermore fighting one player down is a surefire way to ensure your fleetstrength won't grow too much. Fighting means you'll loose some heavy score ship from time to time. There is no way around that.

Indeed,

two races are definetely outsmarted that way. And those are Cyborg and Federation.

In few cases, when we have one quitter, a third race may expand wider than usual and consequently makes difference in the statistics. But in general Cyborg and Fed make the score.