The Hydrans are a race of short, tripartite methane breathers in the South-West corner of the explored galaxy. They have one of the smaller nations, bordered on the north by the Lyrans, on the east by the Klingong, on the south by the Galactic Barrier, and on the west by unexplored territory. The Hydrans are at near constant war with their two neighbors and have a rather weak mutual defense pact with the Kzinti. Weak in that it's tough to help your allies when there is no friendly route to them.

Historically, the Hydrans are quickly smashed at the start of the General War. They make one stab at getting a fleet to Federation territory to bring in the Federation into the war. When defeated, they retreat to their "Old Colonies", the four worlds where the Hydrans originated. Those worlds are carefully hidden in the unexplored territory and although the Klingons and Lyrans search for them, they are never found. The Hydrans continue to harrass their Klingon and Lyran occupiers, forcing those nations to keep substantial fleets patrolling the conquered territories. Eventually the other Allies are able to defeat the Coalition and free the Hydran Kingdom.

The Hydrans were the first to develop attack shuttles, which later became fighters. Kzinti are another race well known for their fighters, but the Hydrans take it to another level. Most early Hydran ships carry a few fighters, and the Ranger is no exception having nine. With a speed of 15 and a phaser-G, those nine fighters can pack quite a punch at very close range.

The Hydran have three racial weapons: the fusion beam, the hellbore, and the gatling phaser. The fusion beam fires every other turn, only requires two points of power, and does about 10 points of damage at point blank range. Unfortunately, it must fire on the turn of arming and outside of range two it does very little damage. The Ranger has four fusion beams.

The hellbore is another two turn weapon, requiring three points of power on each of its two turns. It has good range and does about 10-15 points of damage per hit, with a cruiser carrying four hellbores. On a hit, the hellbore envelops a ship and does half of its damage on the targets weakest shield (or two/thirds of its damage if there are two weak shields). It can also be fired as a standard direct fire weapon, although it will only do 1/2 damage.

The last racial weapon is the gatling phaser, or phaser-G. This phaser takes one point of power to arm, at which point it can fire four phaser-3 shots, all at once or spread out over separate impulses. It's a great point defense weapon, alhough most ships have the phaser-Gs covering the rear arcs. The Ranger has two phaser-Gs covering the rear (RA) arc.

Each Hydran ship type has two different variants. There is the fusion variant, which has fusion beams and fighters. Then there is the hellbore variant, which carries hellbores instead of fusion beams and extra power instead of fighters. Some of the bigger Hydran ships have both fusion beams and hellbores. Then there is the infamous D7H Anarchist, which was a Klingon D7 captured during the General War and converted to Hydran use by replacing the Disruptors with Hellbores and the wing phasers with Fusion Beams. Hydran ships tend to use the phaser-2 as their main phaser armament.

The Hydran Ranger is a conceptually simple ship. Due to its very short range fusion beams, the tactic is to fly up next to the opponent and then fire all weapons. To whit, the ship has 21 center hull to absorb a great deal of damage. It also has a 33 point #1 shield and center warp to ensure some amount of power remains even after taking massive damage. Finally, it can also (as with most Hydran fighter-carrying ships) launch all nine of its fighters in one impulse. You can either launch before engaging or after, the choice depending on whether you want the ship or the fighters to take the brunt of the opponent's attack.

Note that even if it gets to range 0, the Ranger will barely do more damage than a Klingon ship at range 1. Then the Klingon can fire its Disruptors in the next turn while the Ranger waits for the Fusion Beams to cool down. But there are those nine fighters, which can do 12 points of damage each at a range of 2.