[quote=UnseenShade]
Agreed. The ships are a result of their culture. I like to have RPs where culture is either displayed or explained so I can maneuver within it.For my bitching, I hate sci-fi colonization RPs that disallow players to develop an alien race also transitioning into colonization. Humans aren't the only race out there that may begin galactic colonization. (I view space colony RPs much like the game Deadlock)
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But there's a good reason to disallow such thing if the RP only takes place in a few star systems or just one- if one player had a alien race to themselves that had interstellar ability they'd be more powerful than everyone else since where everyone else has to be multiple factions of humans who only control a world or two a player with a alien that's interstellar gets to have entire star systems for themselves.

The solution I see is to make it so the alien race is one that is controlled by multiple players through multiple factions like the human colonists. However you practically never see this, instead it's almost always one player with a alien race that runs a whole species despite the RP not being space opera in scale.

Even when a similar alien exists I have seen players who make a second alien colonizing race that is similar to one that already exists. For instance in Final Frontier there were space elves who were a alien empire that has sent colonists to the world the RP takes place at. Yet a second player decides he wants interstellar matriarchal aliens too, the only difference being instead of space elves they're technicolor women. However both shared so similar a archetype I saw no reason why they couldn't just share a alien species instead of having two separate ones.