The nekojin are easy. Make then powerarmor speiciallists... Battletech elementals to the rest of the mechs. They like up close and personal, hunting instincts carnivores, minus a few herbs and medicines. The males tend towards techs and medics, the females towards warriors.
As up in your face specialists they tend to get injured repeatedly. Limb loss is common, a missing eye is a fact of life by your 20s. Ripped ears and areas where their light fur is permanently burnt off are normal. Medics try to save lives not limbs. Cybernetics are functional but ugly and clunky. You can tell they are dangerous if they have all 5 original limbs and most of their facial features intact, by their 30s... making it into your 40s is the near legend status, especially for active ground troops. As a side effect they are notoriously hard to kill, not damage or take down so much, they live through most not instantaneously fatal wounds if not functionally.
Females must have a certain level of kills/medals/battles before they are allowed breeder status and not be sterilized from injury. Pregnacy without an upper rank is not an excuse from combat. Males tend to live longer, but as capital ship/fight pilots, techs, and medics they tend to die mainly of when the battle is already lost or from random collateral damage... or maintenance issues. As a people theyre rather Darwinian.
Command and ruling jobs are merit based (you have to survive long enough to get the chance for these positions) and available to both sexes. Ranking females aren't offen not pregnant as number of offspring and how long they survive is a status symbol. Gambling on which offspring of who survives a battle are common. litters (3 or more offspring) are common and a single child pregnancy (1 kid no still born) freak them out and they are considered bad luck or cursed until they prove otherwise. Which considering your not getting much help in combat at first in a swarm tactics race, means living long enough to get your name. Getting a name as a single kid is a ticket to squad commander... you must be good.
Getting your own name (and not a number or a hey you) is a rite of passage involving living through enough battles or getting enough kills in one battle. Basically like much of Africa, breed a lot and hope some survive... only the main cause of death is early combats and not infant mortality. The race raises kid as a group (segregated by sex) once past the age they think sticking your hand in the shiny, shiny energy field is a good idea. This leaves them fickle on relationships that last less than a few year past first combat.
In general they are rather human with extra bits, cute until they start getting messed up, by human standards. Humans tend to throw them off for social reasons rather than looks. Humans invented bizzarre things like scarless surgery and not obvious cybernetics. They hide wounds and take people off combat duty to heal limbs (a few days as even slow medical nanos heal fast). Where these nekojin would cut off the offending lib with a fracture and slap on a replacement.
The first time they encounter an human going avenging berserker for a lost or wounded team mate they freak. The concept is alien to the combat class, the older one kind of get the idea. Already cut off from most smells in their suits (in space is the worse) they have a proficiency in sound equipment... they have constantly open channels so they can hear each other and always hack into other communication frequency(partially for background noise)... the silent enemies they fight in space freak them out. Listening to trivial banter of human troops baffled them and hearing a human flip out and get far more dangerous in combat due to the avenging berserker caused routs at first. It was just so alien to them.
The older ones deal with humans much better... living long enough to get a breeder/command job is rare enough. At that point they have free time and constant companions, so they get more cultured at that point. Human culture fascinates the older ones, though the idea letting the younins hear about the concept of a 'teenager' is freaky. That would FUBAR the social order. Its was bad enough the young males learned all those human tricks of engineering that gave them free time. Letting the over-large number of females get the concept would cause civil wars and chaos.
This lets you toss a lone survivor female nekojin into a pack humans and watching her endure culture shock. Kind of like in Great Teacher Onizuka where he puts all the students in rooms with people they won't get along with, specifically the genius girl who ends up in a room with the Gundam freaks and couldn't understand anything said in several hours of conversation. 1 subculture is brain melting enough, having several in a squad is a nightmare till she snaps and fits in or goes mad. Day by day that changes.
Humans boggle over the fact every official they run into is competent. The hideously mangled percentage throw humans off to. Their human looking enough to cause issues with their damagedness.
Their supply ships are large and have several levels containing herds of food animals they raise on board. These often end up command ships as they are to be protected anyway. Their weapons are a swarm of single man (male nekojin) gunpods coating the ships and fighters that have melee weapons and heavy shields with one or two powerful, but short range (for space) range weapons.
For smaller than Battletech mechs look up Exo-squad.
The above is a bit rambling, I'm guessing but it took like 5-10 minutes to think up and far longer to write. Sorry if parts contain plothole equivalents.
As up in your face specialists they tend to get injured repeatedly. Limb loss is common, a missing eye is a fact of life by your 20s. Ripped ears and areas where their light fur is permanently burnt off are normal. Medics try to save lives not limbs. Cybernetics are functional but ugly and clunky. You can tell they are dangerous if they have all 5 original limbs and most of their facial features intact, by their 30s... making it into your 40s is the near legend status, especially for active ground troops. As a side effect they are notoriously hard to kill, not damage or take down so much, they live through most not instantaneously fatal wounds if not functionally.
Females must have a certain level of kills/medals/battles before they are allowed breeder status and not be sterilized from injury. Pregnacy without an upper rank is not an excuse from combat. Males tend to live longer, but as capital ship/fight pilots, techs, and medics they tend to die mainly of when the battle is already lost or from random collateral damage... or maintenance issues. As a people theyre rather Darwinian.
Command and ruling jobs are merit based (you have to survive long enough to get the chance for these positions) and available to both sexes. Ranking females aren't offen not pregnant as number of offspring and how long they survive is a status symbol. Gambling on which offspring of who survives a battle are common. litters (3 or more offspring) are common and a single child pregnancy (1 kid no still born) freak them out and they are considered bad luck or cursed until they prove otherwise. Which considering your not getting much help in combat at first in a swarm tactics race, means living long enough to get your name. Getting a name as a single kid is a ticket to squad commander... you must be good.
Getting your own name (and not a number or a hey you) is a rite of passage involving living through enough battles or getting enough kills in one battle. Basically like much of Africa, breed a lot and hope some survive... only the main cause of death is early combats and not infant mortality. The race raises kid as a group (segregated by sex) once past the age they think sticking your hand in the shiny, shiny energy field is a good idea. This leaves them fickle on relationships that last less than a few year past first combat.
In general they are rather human with extra bits, cute until they start getting messed up, by human standards. Humans tend to throw them off for social reasons rather than looks. Humans invented bizzarre things like scarless surgery and not obvious cybernetics. They hide wounds and take people off combat duty to heal limbs (a few days as even slow medical nanos heal fast). Where these nekojin would cut off the offending lib with a fracture and slap on a replacement.
The first time they encounter an human going avenging berserker for a lost or wounded team mate they freak. The concept is alien to the combat class, the older one kind of get the idea. Already cut off from most smells in their suits (in space is the worse) they have a proficiency in sound equipment... they have constantly open channels so they can hear each other and always hack into other communication frequency(partially for background noise)... the silent enemies they fight in space freak them out. Listening to trivial banter of human troops baffled them and hearing a human flip out and get far more dangerous in combat due to the avenging berserker caused routs at first. It was just so alien to them.
The older ones deal with humans much better... living long enough to get a breeder/command job is rare enough. At that point they have free time and constant companions, so they get more cultured at that point. Human culture fascinates the older ones, though the idea letting the younins hear about the concept of a 'teenager' is freaky. That would FUBAR the social order. Its was bad enough the young males learned all those human tricks of engineering that gave them free time. Letting the over-large number of females get the concept would cause civil wars and chaos.
This lets you toss a lone survivor female nekojin into a pack humans and watching her endure culture shock. Kind of like in Great Teacher Onizuka where he puts all the students in rooms with people they won't get along with, specifically the genius girl who ends up in a room with the Gundam freaks and couldn't understand anything said in several hours of conversation. 1 subculture is brain melting enough, having several in a squad is a nightmare till she snaps and fits in or goes mad. Day by day that changes.
Humans boggle over the fact every official they run into is competent. The hideously mangled percentage throw humans off to. Their human looking enough to cause issues with their damagedness.
Their supply ships are large and have several levels containing herds of food animals they raise on board. These often end up command ships as they are to be protected anyway. Their weapons are a swarm of single man (male nekojin) gunpods coating the ships and fighters that have melee weapons and heavy shields with one or two powerful, but short range (for space) range weapons.
For smaller than Battletech mechs look up Exo-squad.
The above is a bit rambling, I'm guessing but it took like 5-10 minutes to think up and far longer to write. Sorry if parts contain plothole equivalents.