[Growltigga]

SJ - glad you agree, a few individual rampaging starbeasts (a la Starfleet Command II if any of you play that) would be quintessential to this game. The swarm would be the "uber-beast". I would think the following would be prerequisites:

1 no diplomacy whatsoever
2 sole purpose to occupy and destroy planets
3 gains resources by 'converting' population into more beasts, possibly can do the same thing with organics
4 uses organic technology
5 moves slowly, spreads slowly - for this to work it needs to be a creeping death style of thing
6 basic cloaking abilities apply to the swarm
7 needs a swarm mother ie some kind of superbaseship able to create more little rampaging darlings
8 needs to be tip top at ground combat

Would this be hard to mod?