They have no "weaknesses" but they have no strengths, either. That's not "nice," that's mediocre. And you can't compare them to gnomes, which are hands down the weakest warrior race.

Here's the deal: if you set the perks aside, why would you play a svirf over a dwarf? You wouldn't. Even if you set aside the vulns and size factor, too, and just looked at stats, you would still take the 25 v 22 con over the 20 v 18 dex, almost every time. That's why svirfs keep getting the sweet loving to at least make them remotely desirable - or in the case of Battle, legitimately desirable.

I'm not trying to bash the little guys, I'm just trying to make the case that all the little perks are pretty necessary based on their size, stats, and oh yeah, that's right, the most exploitable vuln in CF. Whenever you think about a svirf build, you are building it around the perks.