Omni Scale Hiver Barb-2 and Barb-H Fighters MGL

The Omega Octant is east of the Alpha Octant empires seen in the Star Fleet Universe (beyond the Inter-Stellar Concordium), on the other side of a galactic void. That void is a dead zone where life is impossible and ships fall apart, marking a separation between Octants. The Hivers are comprised of an insectoid species resembling outsized Terran bumblebees. Most Hiver phenotypes are approximately one-half to three-quarters of a meter long, with a one-meter wingspan for those individuals which possess wings. By stark contrast, a Hive Queen grows to perhaps 15-20 meters in length, and cannot leave her chambers without extensive effort once matured. As with the arachnid Vari Combine (prior to the Vriss unification of Vari space in the Seventh Cycle), the Hivers are divided into distinct political entities, with each hive ruled by a Hive Queen. However unlike the Byzantine degree of political intrigue within each Vari cell, each Hive Queen rules her subjects with a totalitarian degree of authority. This provides the Hivers with a near-total degree of internal political stability -- so long as the Queen is alive, at least -- yet at the cost of a lack of individual creativity.

Each Hive Queen maintains a “mental network” which establishes a latent connection to every member of her Hive. She has the ability to extend this network to communicate telepathically with other Hive Queens, and (rarely) to actively contact a single Hiver individual and recover its lifetime’s worth of information, for whom the experience is akin to divine intervention. This latter ability became crucial to the Hivers’ survival as a space-faring species prior to the First Cycle, when the Vari captured several Hiver exploration ships and, finding their crews to be inedible, put them to work as slaves. In a daring move, the Hive Queen of the exploring Hive was put aboard a ship and moved close enough to the surviving captives to make mental contact. This enabled the Hivers to adopt Vari particle technology, which was complemented by Maesron tachyon technology salvaged during the First Great War. 

Alas, the ever-present Hiver mental network has a near-fatal drawback: if the Hive Queen is killed, the vast majority of her subjects opt to commit suicide rather than endure life without her. On average, no more than about 5% of a given Hive remains: some crews “go rogue” and attack all ships, Hiver or otherwise, which they encounter; others, led by a captain with a tiny spark of individuality, become pirates or raiders; yet others, seeking a new purpose, join other Hives. This fate is known to have befallen at least three Hives through to the end of the Seventh Cycle; two were destroyed when their Hive Queens were killed by the Andromedans during the Invasions, while the Unihive (formed by a Queen who fled what remained of Hiver space during the Sixth Cycle) fell when their Queen committed suicide rather than fall into the hands of the mysterious Echarri Dynasty. Remarkably, a larger than average number of Unihive survivors survived to harass the Echarri, some operating out of friendly Hiver bases; this would soon draw the Hivers at large into a broader war with the expanding Dynasty.

Hiver ships are built two sizes smaller than those of most “metal-hull” empires; for example, what they call a heavy cruiser is the size of a Maesron destroyer.  After experimenting with Vari and Maesron weapons technologies, most “orthodox” Hives settled on wide-angle phasers as their primary weapons, with the Sting torpedo, a hybrid of tachyon gun and particle beam technology, as their heavy weapons of choice. However, a number of “heterodox” Hives went their own way, adopting particle phasers, tachyon guns, and/or particle beams instead. The Hivers adopted special sensor technology into their favored jammers, and developed distinct jammer power reactors to operate them. A “command staff” of senior Hiver officers is able to function as a “mental node” in their Hive Queen's telepathic network; all Hiver-built ships possess equipment enabling them to extend this ability from its natural range of a few kilometers to as far as fifteen thousand kilometers. As with the Hydrans and Souldra, the Hivers routinely function as a “casual carrier” force, though they consider their Barb fighters to be frigates.

In keeping with their pattern of treating each unit type as being two sizes smaller than their counterparts in most other “metal-hull” navies, the Hivers consider their Barb fighters as frigates. In fact, Barbs are indeed something more than a typical attack shuttle; each possesses such an array of sophisticated systems to as to be treated as a miniaturized starship. Each Barb possesses its own array of internal power systems, which its crew may direct in a number of ways: to arm (and re-arm) weapons, though only certain types may overload their Sting torpedoes; to generate an emergency shield; to generate additional electronic warfare points; to perform an additional high-energy turn; to generate points of negative tractor; or even to boost the fighter's maximum speed. (The latter ability is why most Hives chose not to adopt warp booster pack technology when it became available, though a few Hives made use of it in certain situations.) Remarkably, the Hivers were even able to deploy Barbs from one side of their territory to another as and when needed, via a network of landing pads crisscrossing Hiver space.

First appearing in the last few years of relative peace prior to the Maesron Collapse, the Barb-2 fighter was an evolution of the earlier Barb-1 design, although was considered by the Hivers to be an “improved frigate.” The Barb-2 may generate five points of energy per turn; the “orthodox” version is armed with two wide-angle phaser-3s and a single Sting torpedo which it may overload after enough time has passed after the last overload shot fired. In addition, the craft is faster and more durable than its predecessor. 

The first size-2 heavy fighter type to appear in the Omega Octant, the Barb-H was nonetheless considered by the Hivers to be their “heavy frigate.” The Barb-H may generate six points of energy per turn; the “orthodox” version is armed with one wide-angle phaser-1, two wide-angle phaser-3s, and a pair of Sting torpedoes (one of which may be overloaded in a single turn, but not too soon within the time of a prior overload shot). Unlike heavy fighters deployed by other empires, the Hivers are not obliged to deploy special “heavy fighter carriers” in support of their Barb-Hs; they may deploy any mix of size-1 and size-2 Barbs from the same ship at their discretion, shuttle bay space permitting.  

This comb of fighters includes four Barb-2 fighters and two Barb-H heavy fighters and is available in a variety of materials. Ships are unpainted, use standard flight stands available from many sources, and, while designed for gaming, make fine display pieces.