[@Nate1008] This won't be particularly pleasant but I want you to really read it carefully. I've written an all-consuming hivemind race before and I am trying to help you out, even if it may not feel like it. Your sheet, in its current form, is almost certainly not going to pass GM certification. All-consuming hiveminds tend to be difficult races to play. I personally recommend them as a second race only to be used as a primary antagonist (this generally requires special GM permission). Otherwise, you're cutting yourself off from diplomacy and making yourself a common enemy. It walks a fine line between being too weak and being promptly annihilated by a coalition of other players, and being blatantly overpowered making the game unfun for everyone. That said, this fine line that can be walked and I can attempt to help with this. [b]Overview[/b] [hider=Expand:][quote]Population: 718 Queens: 8 Hives: 0 Infested colonies: 1 Infested space-stations: 0 Infested bases: 1 Infested planets: 0 Infested systems: 0 Military population: 718 Navy population: 9 Ships: Infested Civilian Ships: 5 Hive Strike Craft: 0 Infested Strike Craft: 2 Hive Corvettes: 0 Infested Corvettes: 0 Hive Frigates: 0 Infested Frigates: 1 Hive Destroyers: 0 Infested Destroyers: 0 Hive Cruisers: 0 Infested Cruisers: 0 Hive Battlecrusiers: 0 Infested BattleCrusiers: 0 Hive Battleships: 0 Infested Battleships: 0 Hive Dreadnoughts: 0 Infested Dreadnoughts: 0 Hive HyperDreadnoughts: 1 Infested Hyperdreadnoughts: 0[/quote][/hider] Nuke these numbers into oblivion. These are absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of a galaxy-spanning NRP. Numbers that do not reflect the true scale of space are going to be a theme of the sheet here. You list population as "718" when a relatively moderately sized nation like my own has population in the hundreds of billions. That's the kind of scale you deal with in grand interstellar space opera. As an aside, population is also a bit of a fluid concept if you have living ships and/or take up the ability to bio-engineer life forms. Generally speaking, less is more with numbers. The number of main battery turrets on warships I consider important. Exact numbers of ships may matter for large classes like dreadnoughts, but cruisers and sub-capital classes should just be left ambiguous. Having played games with excessive stats tracking, [i]never be in a rush to keep track of statistics you don't have to.[/i] Its a large amount of work that, in this case, offers no real reward. [b]Infection[/b] The entire idea of using other people's assets that you've infected is not going over well. It's widely viewed as lazy. You're not going to make any friends going around stealing ships & population, and I don't just mean within the game. It incurrs ire out of game too. In the past you've implied that your faction posesses the ability to secretly infect high-level individuals within governmental structure and bring down whole nations through a little sabotage. Suffice to say, that didn't go over well. If you wish to retain the ability to infect beings, I would strongly advise keeping it limited. As a general rule, there should never be any doubt to anyone (both infected person and other members of their race) about whether someone is infected. When I wrote my all-consuming hivemind, I opted for a more Tyranid (from Warhammer 40K) route by which they capture living creatures and consume them for raw biomass. This raw biomass is then used to artificially construct new life forms following genetic blueprints engineered from the best traits of species they've come across in the past. I also incorporated the development and usage of advanced cybernetic technology here, however that remains optional. It is worth noting that the idea of consuming or converting a person's own population into more of you is arguably more nightmare-inducing and is therefore very much in line with the OOC goals of playing this archetype of faction. [b]Consistency[/b] You have a number of places where you contradict yourself, both in some of your responses to inquiries and within your sheet. At the outset you state the infestation is interested in infecting all, but a couple sections later you claim it leaves some be to be prisoners and slaves (which seems inefficient when it could infect them and integrate them into the collective consciousness for easier control). Consistency is vital in sci-fi writing. I proof my work for consistency as much, if not moreso, than I proof it for grammar. I would therefore ditch the idea of slaves. Prisoners is worth keeping, as a way to store still-living beings you've captured prior to processing them in whatever way you choose to. Choosing to process live individuals rather than recently slain corpses requires more care on your part during invasions to minimize casualties for maximum return, but can also add significantly to the terror factor. [b]FTL[/b] The rest of the techs will be covered elsewhere because this deserves a section all its own. Recall what I said about numbers earlier. That goes triple for FTL techs. Based on the values you list, it would take about 25 maximum-range jumps for your hyperdread to leave the solar system. I didn't even bother to calculate how many you would need to reach another star system. Throw said numbers in the incenerator, now. If you feel compelled to have numbers here, I recommend listing speed as a multiple of c (the speed of light). This value typically ends up being a 4 or 5 digit figure for the kinds of travel times generally considered normal in sci-fi NRPs. [b]Bio-Techs[/b] Most people are employing high power energy weapons or some form of railgun-type projectile weapon ... plus missiles I assume. The muzzle velocity achievable by muscle-based projectile launchers is basically nonexistent comparatively. One thing I would consider is to do away with the idea of muscles and consider biochemical. A glob of highly volatile goup is loaded behind the projectile and then ignited, effectively creating a biologic ballistic weapon. You also may have to adopt some technological elements here (perhaps the hivemind is intelligent enough to direct workers in the use of cybernetics) in order to have viable navy forces. Most of your bioweapons appear to be banking on closing the gap. That's not a reasonable expectation when fighting people with railguns and guided missiles. You will never get within 5 kilometers of most people's warships without getting absolutely pulverized. Some technological adoption is again a good solution here. It gives you some nice potent firepower that can actually be effective at long range. Another idea is to have creatures engineered solely to be self-propelled guided missiles. My advice is to make sure you can win the engagement [i]first[/i], and then close in to rip the ship to pieces and harvest the biomass of the crew [i]after[/i]. As a sidenote, bio-electrical tech can be potentially very interesting. Its short range compared to most other people's stuff but putting some kind of biologic lightning rod on corvettes and swarming enemies would be incredibly dangerous, and cool. [b]Warships[/b] I said it earlier but it bears repeating. Don't just go infesting other people's stuff. Creating your own stuff in this version of the sheet is a step in the right direction. My personal favorite direction to go with making spaceships for bio-tech races is to have a technological skeleton that includes the basis of some weapons tech (often plasma cannons), power generation, main drive engines, and potentially an FTL system (depending on if I'm going with technological or biological FTL). The remainder of the ship including armor and any actuation, is essentially grown around it, forming hardened keratinous armor and vicious electrified tentacles, and packed to the brim with dangerous life forms within. Trying to conform to traditional navy archetypes is a waste of time. All-consuming hivemind races work better when they don't and the entire goal is to subvert tradition anyway. Swarming your enemy with smaller "lesser" ships can be extremely effective, especially considering that most warships are built to duel with other capital ships at extreme range. A ton of small agile things up close can be lethal. I feel like your tripping yourself up trying to conform to standard naval classifications. Get creative with this. One idea I enjoy using is a massive capital ship landing craft that crashes into a planet, impaling the ground and unfolding as a massive spire, that then serves as airbase, garrison, and factory to convert collected biomass into more life forms. The size of your destroyer is, for the record, almost triple the size of an Alduuri [i]battlecruiser[/i]. Considering its current lack of long-range armament, you may want to reconsider that. A general suggestion would be to try and keep warships under 5000-6000 meters, not including your hyperdread. I actually suggest setting a finite length for your dreadnoughts, and then letting people assume the size of everything else based on the logical size progression downward. [hr] You can make this work, but its going to require a fair amount of time and thinking. Developing a race that walks such a knife edge is not an easy task and if this is your first sci-fi nation game, you bit off a hell of a lot. It took me months and several iterations to really get the Harvesters (a bio-technological hivemind from the original sci-fi universe [i]Stardust[/i]) into a good place in terms of narrative and balance. People have been harsh, yes, but plenty of us are willing to work with you to get this into a good place. That may come with a lot of critical responses that are less than comfortable, but if you need assistance, you have some good resources here. But you have to be open minded, flexible, and willing to put in the work. Without that, we can't help you.