They would need to greatly increase the effectiveness of missiles for it to make any difference . Between CM and asteroids I can ' t remember the last time I was hit by one . <| sep |> Generally not for a character referencing written from their own POV though I will make some mention of , say , age or status . Over time I ' ll feed in more details such as sexual orientation , etc and may drop hints at ethnicity through small actions . Otherwise I ' ll just bank on context making it clear what race they probably are even in cases of fantastical races , eg undead , alien , merpeople , etc . For non POV characters I do if it ' s significant . I have one ' middle eastern ' character in my current WIP who gets explicitly mentioned as such as it bears some relevance to culture and continuity , and I ' ve done this frequently in the past . If it didn ' t further the plot in any way I wouldn ' t bother . Since it does , and the specific culture is relevant to the plot but not actually where the story takes place , I feel it ' s worth noting explicitly rather than just vaguely hinting at .