Having designed a larger ship that launches fighters on command, Reiche and Ford decided this would be a dominating race. These antagonists would be called the Ur-Quan, with a motivation to dominate the galaxy to hunt for slaves, and an appearance based on a National Geographic image of a predatory caterpillar dangling over its prey. They decided to organize the characters into nominally "good and bad" factions, each with seven unique races and ships, with the humans on the good side. The cowardly personality of the Spathi were inspired by their backwards-shooting missiles. After deciding that the game would need more humanoid characters, they created the Syreen as a powerful and attractive humanoid female race. A more robotic ship inspired an alien race called the Androsynth, whose appearance was imagined as Devo flying a spaceship. The Shofixti were inspired by concepts in David Brin's The Uplift War. Reiche and Ford asked themselves who might be uplifted by the Yehat, a fierce warrior race, and decided upon the Shofixti as a ferocious super rodent.