Just played a four-player last night. I selected the Clan of Saar as a kind of nostalgia pick; I always thought they were fun to play, but they were never a terribly high win percentage faction.

They seemed pretty overpowered in our playthrough (just our second of fourth edition). Mainly, it's because the rules seem to permit them to move their space dock and then build at that same dock in the same tactical action.

Did I miss something in the racial ability wording, unit description, or in the rules that would preclude this?

The rules:

78.5 STEP 5—PRODUCTION: The active player may resolve the
“Production” abilities of his units in the active system.

If they can move and build... wow. mecatol rex is theirs early and in force. or they can absolutely jump on someone else's territory early. I had an inexperienced neighbor, so could act with impunity. I ended up focusing a lot of my early effort on the Hacan, who ended up with the two best systems (abyz/fria and bereg/urta4) plus a whole bunch of others. even just by moving over toward him, I was able to tie him up with fleet building instead of him going after objectives. It was absolutely wild to be able to fly in with a small fleet, wave and then build a few dreadnoughts and fighters to boot. (I obviously beelined it for my racial tech upgrading my space docks. pretty much a must-have)

I won with 10 vp; second place had about 4 or 5. It didn't seem right ( a lot of experience playing 3rd edition where that kind of production simply wasn't possible).

Has anyone else played Saar in the fourth edition and found them strong/weak?

It seems that the Arborec ground forces can also move and build.

Also the lack of signal jamming decreases the risk of having your entire force frozen for a turn with a single card.

Wow, yeah, crazy. Coincidentally, the arboric were the fourth player (the newbie was playing jol nar). So even that guy could've been building a lot more often and better.

This edition continues to impress. The command counters are a little more rare, the factions are tweaked in interesting ways; we've really liked it so far. We are kind of stumbling into these situations, however, where we learn the power of hitting just the right tech combo early can have devastating effects, as Robofish has pointed out more than once. In TI3 we just account for those things and do our best to counteract them (don't trade with them, threaten militarily, etc.). It's been a hoot to realize all of the not-so-obvious ripple effects of small rule changes. Exciting!!

Is it that there's only one signal jamming now? (or six or whatever). Because they definitely signal jammed me this game

There is only 1 and it's tweaked:

Signal Jamming

Action: Choose 1 non home system that contains or is adjacent to 1 of your ships. Place a command token from another player's reinforcements in that system.

lucky me Well, they needed it. They even came darn near to wiping me out to prevent my win; maybe another turn and they could've pulled it off!