[Paddy]

Obviously you will have to decide what is/are the strongest race(s) and what the best attack/def ships are between your group. However if there is a steal race I feel it will either end up being unplayable or you could end up with half a gal going zik, half going cath and the ziks completely dominating the entire round.

In a speedgame (especially with no xp) stealing is incredibly powerful. If you use zik stats from this round it will be a farce. If you use zik stats from any of the previous 7 rounds it will be a farce. If stealing is used in the speedgame it has to be nerfed hugely. It would only take being away from the keyboard for 10 minutes to have your entire fleet stolen by a zik. After the first couple of hours this would probably be a very regular occurence and a zik who finds the right target or just simply gets lucky would be way too powerful.

In my opinion stealing is just unworkable in a competitive speedgame situation. It would either be too strong or it would be nerfed so much that it would require insane amounts of luck to do well with them. I feel finding a middle ground without serious stat testing (like proper testing from now until the speedgame and even then I wouldn't be convinced) would be all but impossible.