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Kxeziskiene Freenest [Mod Jam 2025 February]

This is my submission for the 2025 Mod Jam (Theme: Insects / Ruins & Decay)
This mod follows both theme.
Balance is intended to be stronger than vanilla, somewhere in the range of the strengths of normal modded factions, however it may be stronger in areas.


Cvar changes
The above cvars are changed to increase the bloom which contributes to the visual appearance of the mod. To disable, use Fix Your Mod.

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Kxeziskiene Freenest faction, unlocked by default
- Unique (as far as I know) 11-rose shape palette suited to organic insectoid ships
- External hair-like thrusters, alongside larger conventional engines.
- Tough armour
- Externally mounted, low capacity, very high regen shields
- A selection of turreted and spinal cannon and laser weapons, shrouded, and most weapons having custom sounds
- A few missiles and drones mainly in a supporting role.
- A fleet of 17 ships of varying sizes from light fighters to heavy cruisers.
- Some stations, including large Nestrings, surrounding ancient black holes.
- Decorative blocks including vents and lights
- A (small) agent
- Inhabiting a region filled with the ancient debris of a long gone civilisation (not entirely final due to time constraints)

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The Kxezis are an insectoid species, originally averaging around three quarters the size of the standard human, breathing an atmospheric mix of 35% oxygen and relatively high concentrations of ammonia. Their species communicates through means of both sound and pheromones. Extensive genetic modification is present in the modern Kxezis populations, with the result being somewhat larger size and intelligence than biological standard.

Once, the Kxezis had ruled a powerful empire, with a large sphere of influence over their local region. Many local species were their tributaries, feeding vast quantities of resources to the Kxezis capital - the Nestworld. A massive megastructure built around their original homeworld - shells upon shells of habitable space and a staggering population, centralised in one location, around the Kxezis leaders - the Nest Queens, who had absolute power over all Kxezis in all areas of life. All Kxezis were hatched from the genetically engineered eggs of a Nest Queen, each in some specialised, biological caste designed for a certain role, a certain job - workers, warriors, scientists, engineers, everything, never to deviate away. When a Kxezis was not needed for their role, they would be stored, frozen and awaiting the time their Nest Queen would need them again.

The only ordinary Kxezis somewhat freer were spacers - those who lived and worked primarily in interstellar outposts and nomadic fleets - genetically granted greater freedom of thought and less specialised forms - if only because the slow speed of Kxezis ships (even with the best FTL at the time) meant that far away from the Nest Queens (who were far too valuable to risk the dangers of space), their agents needed greater independence and creativity. Kxezis Spacers explored far beyond the edges of their territory, acquiring powerful new technologies, developing and engineering new methods and techniques on the fly, surviving in hostile space, and expanding the edges of their rule - this independence and creativity was too useful to restrict.

It was not expected by any Kxezis, that the empire of the Nestworld would ever fall. Those local powers that had opposed them had been subjugated, and those who were too powerful to subjugate were appeased, or deterred by the growing armadas of Kxezis biomechanical warships.
Yet it had happened. The sun - a main sequence Class G, that warmed the Nestworld detonated in an unnatural, impossible supernova. The cause? Unknown.

The Nestworld was a single point of failure. 99.9% of the Kxezis population, and every last Nest Queen inhabited it, and burnt with it. Those polities they had subjugated, their tributaries, their enemies, rejoiced and invaded what remained of their empire, now without the leadership and vast resources and fleets of the Nestworld to thwart them.

All that survived were several Kxezis spacer fleets that escaped and left the region entirely in what would now be known as the Exodus.

More than thirty Nestfleets fled in the Exodus. Some fell prey to sabotage, rebel warships or otherwise destroyed by enemies of the Kxezis. Some fell prey to the natural dangers of space. Some to poor maintenance. Others drifted away, becoming short lived swarms of pirates. The rest continued Kxezis civilisation. They had lost much - their advanced technology, most powerful warships, all had been destroyed, lost or abandoned in the chaos. Without the Nest Queens to produce and engineer eggs, artificial means of reproduction were designed, the genetics modelled on the spacers themselves, and with it, their adaptability, ingenuity, and freedom of thought leading to greater individualism among these new Kxezis.

The fleets wandered like swarms of locusts - stripmining resources to survive. Conflict grew with those whose territories the fleets passed through. Wars broke out. Many fleets had turned to opportunistic piracy - raiding for scraps of technology and resources to sustain their fleets.. They survived and adapted. Yet by a few hundred years since the start of the Exodus, many wars had dwindled their numbers to merely eleven fleets, tens of thousands of lightyears away from the old Kxezis spatial volume, resources dwindling.

Scouting flotillas from one of the largest surviving Nestfleets detected a region, now known as the Skiene (from Ceskiene, what nearby local polities called it, from Cenaskiene, what the local Hameridan nomad cityship called it, from Cene Skiene, the name given to it by the Confluence GEV Gravitas-ional Constant), containing many stars, roughly spherical, thirty lightyears in radius, with several star systems each with anomalous concentrations of ice, organic molecules, gravitational distortion and waves, stellar dimming and other oddities. Investigating, they found several systems full of the debris of some ancient civilisation.There were once megastructures - ringworlds that had long been destroyed. Artificial black holes produced the gravitational distortions that led them here. Seeing this opportunity, the fleets converged on this region, hoping to salvage its resources and technology.

For many years they studied and deciphered what they could. This dead civilisation was known as the Naieskiene. Their civilisation had lasted tens of thousands of years, and they had access to advanced technology. They were aquatic - their rings were once filled with more water than many tens of thousands of planetary oceans. They were guided by another species, one they knew as the Benefactors. Now, the husks of the ringworlds were empty - the water frozen in the massive system-wide clouds of ice that had led them here.

The Skiene was a lifeline to the Kxezis Nestfleets. It was unclaimed territory, promised ancient technology and massive resources. From these ruins, the Kxeziskiene Freenest was formed, with advanced Naieskiene technology, growing and expanding in influence and power over the local region.They built colossal Nestrings around the black holes, siphoning matter and energy.