Subscribe to download
Organic Devouring Swarm v4.x

Want one still compatible with Stellaris v3? Go here.

Gnashing jaws, acidic orifices, fleshy tendril appendages, and the ever ravenous hunger. The singular mind of many looks upon the ocean of stars and opens its maw.

This is an alternative to the normal Devouring Swarm civic for Hive Minds. This is a lightweight mod that only adds a single Civic to Hive Minds in conjunction with Devouring Swarm on race creation. AI factions will not select this Civic. Non-Lithoid races only.

In Conjunction?
Devouring Swarm is nestled in a lot of code. It would take digging through thousands of lines of code to find and add my own exceptions to ensure it works. The best I could do was make this work as an enhancement to the base Devouring Swarm. To compensate for the lack of another civic, it was combined with Ascetic.

Summary:

• Base Devouring Swarm Civic.
  
• Base Ascetic Civic.
  
• Hull +75%
  
• Shields -80%
  
• Assault Army Damage +30%
  
• Assault Army HP -30%
  
• Army Collateral Damage +30%
  
• All Army Build Times -60%
  
• All Army Upkeep -50%
  
• Starbase Ship Build Speed +50%
  
• Additional Hull Regen +35%
  
• Additional Armor Regen +35%

Why?

One: The base Devouring Swarm did not feel like it was biological in nature. I wanted them more along the lines of the Zerg from Starcraft or the Bugs from Starship Troopers.

Two: Stellaris is remarkably well documented and was easy to mod for. The developers are meticulous with commenting their code and the Wiki pages are good references.

Regeneration

My original research and the game text says it is a daily regeneration bonus. However, testing revealed it is not calculated daily. A destroyer with 390 armor was tested with 5% daily regeneration. In one game month (30 days) it regenerated 29 armor, roughly 7.5% total armor. It would require 14 months to regenerate all the armor.

Interestingly, testing showed in 20 days, 19 armor regenerated. Sequentially, after 20 more days, 20 armor regenerated. This repeated every 20 day cycle. This means it was regenerating 19.5 armor points per 20 days. Mathematically, 19.5 is 5% of 390. I will forward this in an official bug report to the Devs.I keep getting conflicting information. Something about this being a change in 3.6 and this is working as intended (5x speed out of combat but only 1/5 rate in combat, but it still is not consistent mathematically. Testing will continue.

How much regeneration do we need to actually achieve 5% hull/armor regeneration per day? Well if 5% regeneration is 7.5% per month, we just need to apply some simple math. A factor of ten would give us about a month and a half before the swarm can, well, swarm again.

To get a more accurate effect, I added 35% more regeneration rate. The swarms will regenerate roughly 60% Hull and Armor per month. In a little over a month and a half, you may resume feasting.

Consider ample salt supplies whilst dining.

Fun Math Fact: It would take 100% daily regeneration rate to meet 5% daily regeneration the game claims (full hull/armor in 20 in game days)!

Notes

Tactics: Build massive armies and fleets, then steam roll. You are able to quickly replace army losses and heal on the front lines. Ships are large biological entities. Shields are akin to energy projections from latent psionics or naturally occurring from some organ that allows for faster than light travel. Do not forget about armor hardening!

Warscore: Lot of things work against Hive Minds. Warscore is one of them. The largest issue, however, is waiting for soldiers. Being bogged down because of major army losses kept me from eating all I deserve. Orbital bombardment takes too long. Large armies, built faster, and with less upkeep means you have more prepared before the war and quickly reinforce during the war. Added damage makes invasions vicious and quick.

Future Updates

My Updates: I have finished my play test of a full game and have adjust as needed. I do not power game Stellaris beyond a casual eat-the-galaxy-and-would-be-friends play through. I do not expect the balance to be perfect, especially in multiplayer. Any player-versus-player environment can swiftly ruin balance as meta builds are achieved. I have zero intent to make this balanced for PvP.

Paradox Updates: Paradox likes to break massive mods. Keeping this mod lightweight and locking everything to a singular civic, in theory, should make this civic update proof. Any new additions cannot touch code that is already baked into the game. Even when Paradox adds new things, rarely does old code stop working (much to the Developers' credit). If it does, only minor tweaking from myself or others will be needed. This mod is 31 lines of code and upkeep should be minimal.

Closing
The Hive Mind is very neglected by Paradox. It is a truly unique concept that needs major development time to be fleshed out and possibly its own expansion.

This was a small evening project thrown together in about six hours of work and my first mod for Stellaris. Balance is hard. Understanding all the mechanics is a colossal task. While it appears to be small changes, one small adjustment at game start can lead to massive changes 200 years later.

I hope others enjoy this alteration to the game play and how much small tweaks bring to a game.

Patch Days
My goal is to patch this mod same-day or within two days as updates are released due to the incredibly minor work it takes.