woah, thank you so much for this level of interest. i'm gonna go through every point one by one, with much worse formatting and grammar than you (sorry <3)

i completely agree with you about the over-saturation of civics and origin-loading of other mods, and i do plan to avoid those pitfalls. without promising things that are subject to change, my current plans are going to be more about re-flavouring and tweaking existing civics and origins to retain the vanilla balance. I want to bring in smaller features from, eg, devouring swarm and aerospace adaptation into one place so it can be paired with, say, organic reprocessing for maximum zergy goodness.

one that i'm currently working on is called 'Swarm Intelligence' and will provide monthly unity bonuses along with access to some lock traits - one called 'Hive Proxy' which hugely buffs leaders, and one called 'Erased Will' which will act as an early game version of nerve stapled. underwhelming compared to some other mods, for sure; but i think it's a nice way to guide gameplay without forcing it. i think it would pair excellently with bodysnatcher or the origin i'm about to describe next.

as for origins, i only have one real idea so far and that's a spin on the vanilla hegemony origin where you would start with 2 vassalised broods (zagara and niadra?) and some of their starting species' (randomised zerg units) as assimilated pops. i want to do a lot with gene editing and specialising species, so this would be a safe option to expand your starting roster without adding too much gameplay deviance.

the zerg city! the city sets intimidate me a lot tbh, so for the short term i'm going to add an opaque room which features a zerg hive. i know it's not excellent since it won't show up on planets, but i'm not a 2D artist and i just don't think i could make a decent cityset (in it's super restricted perspective) in blender. it's something i'd love to hire an artist for, maybe dreaming too big but one day it could be a ko-fi funded splurge if this mod continues to grow the way it has this first week.

the overmind is genuinely the most requested feature, he's coming, don't worry ;p i hope to give him a matching room as well so that in the diplo screen it looks like he's connected to it as one giant growth

namelists, i hadn't considered them at all. it's definitely something i could easily add, but i don't know if i could come up with enough zergy names lol. i'll start a list now and maybe by release it'll be ready.

as for both of your content suggestions, i love them, genuinely. i wouldn't touch the vanilla evolutionary predators for the sake of keeping compatibility with other mods, but i would definitely consider cloning it and making it zergier. i'd say i'm more of an artist than a modder so no big promises, but honestly i only picked up blender and texture painting less than a month ago too - so i'm hardly an artist either lol. if i can find good enough tutorials, something that complex will be added. if not, ehhh, maybe we're stuck with more 'passive' origins.

similar thoughts about the infestation mechanic, i simply don't know where to start making something like that - but the vibe is right. there's some potential of adding a flavoured Holdings system with warring factions? there could be buildings which exclusively debuff the host planet - maybe reducing army build time the same as the overseer's contiminate ability? it might be too clunky of a setup but infestation is definitely a theme i'll take on board. in the far future i want to add the infested as another faction with their own species traits - maybe by then i'll be experienced enough to make a real infestation spreading feature.

i hope i've replied to everything, again thank you so much for taking the time to write this up, it's really meaningful that people want to see this project do well. i've just pushed an update today focused on hiding some of the in-dev mess and polishing things up 'cause i did NOT expect this level of traction, it's been amazing

Some Zerg names could come from the "special" units from Starcraft I/Broodwar. Devouring One, Hunter Killer, Eats the Fallen - stuff like that. I'm sure you could get a long list of names like that. I know those are strains, but I imagine each strain started as a single individual prototype if you would.

that's a good call, thank you,, I'm gonna try to get the namelist in game quite soon & I can just keep adding to it every update