[rdonj]

Hmm. Well, assuming for the moment that a pirian isn't going to be wearing equipment, the first thing that jumps out at me is that it could be awful hard for them to deal with the nations that do a lot of ranged damage. For example, I'll consider ulm.

Basic pirian stats:
11 hp
11 attack
9 defense
5 prot
11 precision
no shield or way to not take damage.

Ulmish space marine:
10 hp
10 attack
12 defense (10 + 2 from shield)
15 prot
9 precision (10 - 1 from weapon)
parry 2 shield with 15 prot

No idea how strong your race's ranged weapons are, ulm's blasters do 10 ap at up to 40 range.

So the basic ulmish space marine can take a lot more punishment than the basic pirian. Maybe even take multiple hits for a pirian to kill, potentially, depending on how strong their attack is. If it's an aoe attack sort of fireball that will mitigate the problem there a bit though. Meanwhile a good part of the time a pirian will die if it gets hit once. And even in melee an ulmish space marine has a better chance to hit the pirian than the pirian does to hit it, with a 4 AN damage weapon. Of course, if it does it has the fire shield to contend with... the fire shield value may actually be too high, it should be fairly low on the normal guys, ramping up for the higher ones. There aren't many units in dom3k with more than 20 hp. I would say start somewhere between 2-4 and go maybe to 10 for the Firstbloods.

So overall, statwise they are really fragile, but I guess if the cause enough burning it will work out. However, if they do get the aoe attacks they'd need to fight ranged nations, they will absolutely mow down the close combat nations (insectoids, commonwealth). If the pirians are basically thought of as chaff and the true/firstbloods the real damage doers that could work out better.

I think the firstbloods could use a little extra attack skill, I'm thinking of those accursed ice battle suits that jomon has with something like 18 defense skill, you have to be able to hit those with the firstbloods or it's a dealbreaker! I don't think they're worthy of being high level summons as they are though, they have the damage output (theoretically), but not the survivability to really be SCs. Consider the Jomon summonable SC, the oni dragon. Or ulmish capital ships with amulets of missile protection and a pendant of luck. Whatever the firstbloods end up like they have to be able to compare to those for SC quality, if you want them to be a high level summon. And they're just not survivable enough to be SCs imo. Assuming an amulet of missile protection and a pendant of luck, they still need either higher health, higher defense, or higher prot to make SC territory. Or perhaps an innate ability such as ethereality.

Sorry for being so wordy :P