[mod] Xenomorph Species Expansion

[Xenodragon54]

3 hours ago, Doomsday8931 said:

Playing the megacorp again and for fun I turned the infestation back on and noticed that I am spreding the infestation as well. Am I supposed to do that?

 

Is the starting event with the escapee leading somewhere or is it just a for flavor? Didn't see anything as I didn't play for long as the infestation got a bit out of hand.

The event should've created an outbreak scenario on your planet. And it is possible to spread infection as a megacorp or regular empire if its focused around xenomorphs and the spread of them. I should make it into its own civic though so that'll be my next plan for the update

[Doomsday8931]

I see I totally missed that connection, all good then. I only thought I had normal infestation problems. No wonder things got out of hand so quickly 😄

 

As a megacorp I could see it as a chance for a containment breech happening on a planet with a branch office mor then strait out speeding the infestation. I'm no coder so don't know if that would be hard to do.

Edited August 15 by Doomsday8931

[Xenodragon54]

4 hours ago, Doomsday8931 said:

I see I totally missed that connection, all good then. I only thought I had normal infestation problems. No wonder things got out of hand so quickly 😄

 

As a megacorp I could see it as a chance for a containment breech happening on a planet with a branch office mor then strait out speeding the infestation. I'm no coder so don't know if that would be hard to do.

Ive been using Claude code to help me with everything. I fully expect it to miss a few details and bugs so its good to receive feedback and get identification on things that are a issue or unbalanced. 

[Akashi_1944]

On 8/15/2026 at 12:36 PM, Xenodragon54 said:

Ive been using Claude code to help me with everything. I fully expect it to miss a few details and bugs so its good to receive feedback and get identification on things that are a issue or unbalanced. 

Mod descriptor is borked again.

[Xenodragon54]

Version 5.7 Hotfix included! Please report any issues and bugs you find. Even if you think they might be intentional. 

 

# Two Thrones: Mother or Empress #

 

-   The mod now knows who rules your hive, and every text follows suit.

 

    -   If the Queen Mother's throne is occupied - her unique job, held only on a Queen Mother

        origin capital - your Queens, Matriarchs and Empresses report to "Mother", and events

        are written as reports flowing up to her.

 

    -   Without a Queen Mother, the Empress is the highest royal, the reports address her, and

        the narration speaks with her voice instead.

 

    -   This is live, not fixed at game start: lose the throne world and the voice of the empire

        changes with it - and the war-fleets begin to degrade until a Mother reigns again.

 

# The Voice of the Hive #

 

-   A full rewrite pass over the mod's text to a consistent consciousness model.

 

    -   Xenomorphs are not one mind wearing many bodies. Individuals think; royals command;

        brood networks carry signals, scent and instinct between them. Text that treated "the

        hive" as a single thinking person has been rewritten to name the actual mechanism -

        pheromones, queen-signals, imprinted patterns, synaptic command.

 

    -   Rulers speak in the first person: "My children require more hosts", not "The hive

        requires more hosts."

 

    -   Queens address the Queen Mother as Mother; lower castes call their own Queen Mother;

        equal Queens speak to each other as rivals, not sisters.

 

# A Story Layer: eleven new event chains #

 

-   The Crown Must Hatch. When the Queen Mother dies, the succession is no longer a quick

    dialog. Rival claimant lines rise, the brood divides, orders slow, warrens turn territorial -

    and how you manage it decides the ending: a new Mother crowned cleanly, a violent contest

    that leaves acid on your own walls, a decentralized brood, or the abolition of the Queen

    Mother entirely - after which the empire is permanently Empress-led and every text in the

    mod follows. Whoever wins, it is the favored line's champion Paladin who enters the royal

    chamber and is rewritten into a Mother. Defeated claimant lines can return, years later.

 

-   Too Many Voices in the Blood. Consume enough host genomes and the genome starts arguing

    with itself. Ends in purification, controlled strains, or embracing the thousand forms -

    each a permanently different empire.

 

-   Something Lives Below. For everyone else: the flagship colony-horror chain. Missing

    personnel, resin in the ventilation, sealed lower levels, and a nest that was already there.

    Not every ending is survivable, and the queen your teams find may not be the source.

 

-   Deck Seven Is Silent. A shipboard incident that can end cleanly - or appear to. The false

    ending comes due months later, when the ship docks somewhere populated.

 

-   The Lost Brood. A feral, independent nest discovered on an isolated world - one chain if

    you are the Hive that feels the strange weak daughter, a different one if you are the colony

    government that found it first.

 

-   The Black Resin Station. One per galaxy: an abandoned station coated in resin older than

    the station itself, with a sealed central chamber. What is inside varies. Sometimes the

    station was not the nest - it was the cage.

 

-   Plus four medium chains - a Queen who stops answering while her colony runs perfectly, a

    dead Queen whose brood keeps working her orders, a season of eggs that will not hatch, and

    a captive who predicts xenomorph movements too well - and a pool of ten small ambience

    events in the More-Events style, several of which reward nothing and explain nothing.

    That is intentional.

 

# Vanilla events know what you are #

 

-   29 base-game event texts now render differently for a xenomorph hive. Colonists stumbling

    on ruins become hunters tasting wrong ground; "our scientists theorize" becomes the analyst

    castes reading residue. Every other empire sees the stock vanilla text, byte-identical.

 

-   New xenomorph-only options in vanilla content: claim the newborn Voidspawn as kin instead

    of recoiling; harvest an asteroid's burrowing colony as a rival brood.

 

-   Titanic Life: the base game ships a hive-specific option in this event that hive empires

    could never reach - vanilla's own dispatcher excludes gestalts. Xenomorph hives now

    receive the event, and the option works.

 

# The brood has names #

 

-   Full namelist overhaul from the naming guide. Fleets muster as the First, Second and Third

    Hunting Brood; new fleets follow as War Broods, Brood Guards, Hatchling Broods. Ships,

    colonies, and leaders draw from brood-signal name pools instead of consonant soup, and

    conquered worlds keep names the brood would actually give them. Eight species identities

    ship with fitting homeworld names - including Xeno-314, for broods that keep the number

    humans gave them.

 

(-- Fixes/changes --)

 

# War #

 

-   "Unable to go to war" - fixed. Eradication Mandate empires had an empty war-goal list: the

    base game grants total war through an explicit civic list the Mandate is not on, and every

    normal casus belli excludes total-war empires, so the Mandate qualified for nothing. It now

    has its own Extermination total-war pair - and the defender side existed nowhere either, so

    other empires also could not declare ON a Mandate hive. Both directions work now.

 

# Queen Mother starts #

 

-   The -50% fleet debuff at game start is gone. "Insufficient Royal Oversight" was being

    applied permanently on day one of every Queen Mother start, with no way to remove it. It is

    now what its name says: a penalty for the throne standing empty, applied only while no

    Queen Mother reigns and lifted when she does. Existing saves heal on their next yearly tick.

 

# Buildings and colonies #

 

-   The last of the vanishing buildings. 5.5 fixed the building slots; this build fixes the

    deeper cause - nothing ever placed a city core on most xenomorph world types, so alloy

    foundries and friends still had nowhere to live on some colonies. Every xenomorph colony

    now guarantees its core district, new colonies get one on settlement, and existing saves

    are repaired monthly.

 

-   Royal Jelly starts no longer open in an egg deficit. Egg upkeep on the pods now begins at

    year ten instead of day one, so the early economy is not paying for infrastructure the

    brood has not grown into.

 

-   The prebuilt royal package (jelly pods and chambers) now appears only on Queen Mother and

    Xenomorph Prime starts - other origins no longer receive royal infrastructure they should

    not have.

 

-   Queen's Chambers can now actually be built by Brood Covenant empires, and no longer

    self-demolish on their worlds.

 

# Traditions #

 

-   Tradition trees now unlock in the order they are drawn. Several trees had a top-row pick

    locked behind the other starting pick, Brood Ascendancy drew a pick above the pick it

    required, and two trees had unlock lines crossing columns. All realigned.

 

-   Every tradition tree finisher now grants its ascension point and says so in its text.

 

-   Sovereign Court no longer refuses hive empires with a "not Gestalt Consciousness" error.

 

-   Leader traits all cost 1 point instead of 0, so ruler creation works like the base game.

 

# Devouring Swarm #

 

-   The Eradication Mandate now also excludes the lithoid, nomadic and wilderness variants of

    Devouring Swarm, not just the base civic.

 

# Captive scenes #

 

-   Several picture events spoke with the wrong side's voice - the victim of an abduction was

    offered the captor's options, and captured-leader scenes described your own leader lost

    when the Hive had just taken the enemy's. All corrected to the side actually playing them.

 

-   Out-of-universe editing leftovers (a decision list and an author's note) removed from two

    scenes, and assorted scene text repairs.

 

(-- Under the hood --)

 

-   The story layer runs on self-gating yearly pools - quiet by design, roughly one story

    beat attempt per empire-decade, so it seasons a campaign instead of flooding it.

 

-   Vanilla text variants use the game's own scripted-localisation switch: non-xenomorph

    empires render verbatim vanilla copies, verified byte-identical, so nothing changes for

    anyone who is not a hive.

 

-   All overridden vanilla records are registered internally for re-sync on Paradox patches.

 

# The Hive Command Menu #

 

-   A proper windowed mod menu, opened from a single zero-cost edict: Evolution Chamber, Captive

    Pits, the Captive Queen, Queen-Network Report, Galactic Infestation Report and the Infestation

    Settings all live in one hub with their own buttons. The old edicts still work; a toggle

    inside the menu hides them once you trust the window. No UI Overhaul patch needed.

 

# New species rights #

 

-   Ten new rights across slavery, purges, living standards and military service - War Stock

    (fighting slaves restricted to the armies and garrisons), Study Stock, Cocooned Reserve,

    Menagerie Specimen, Husbandry Broodline, Larder Consignment and more. War Stock and Pleasure

    Stock unlock from their civics at creation or through research for everyone else.

 

# Infestation: strengthen, spread, and control #

 

-   Three new espionage operations to STRENGTHEN an infestation you started: Feed the Warrens,

    Awaken the Clutch, Sabotage the Response. War assaults now also press harder on already-

    infested worlds.

-   Cults spread through espionage; corporations through a new branch-office building, the

    Ovomorph Tithe Chapel. Outbreak-brokerage megacorps gained access to the seeding operations.

-   Sixteen corporate xeno buildings are now research-gated in tier order instead of all being

    available at game start.

 

# The Taken Ark (Nomads DLC) #

 

-   A new hive origin: a settler species launched a generation-ark, and the brood took it

    mid-voyage. Begin aboard the drifting vessel with thousands sealed in cryo below decks,

    decide what the sleepers are for, and choose between the endless voyage and planetfall.

    Requires the Nomads DLC; scene text arrives in a coming update.

 

# Identity color #

 

-   Every Xenomorph Domain trait, species right and edict name now renders in the mod's

    green-yellow, the way you can spot Calcifire content by its color.

 

# Fixes and performance #

 

-   Infested ring worlds no longer stretch and twist the ring segment model.

-   District icons no longer overlap with vanilla district icons on hive worlds.

-   Megacorp captor empires now get council positions from their civics - seven new seats.

-   The Brood Covenant's Cultivate Ovomorph Cluster decision actually delivers its building.

-   Victim empires can no longer recruit xenomorph leaders, commanders or spies out of pops the

    infestation converted, and infestations politely wait for your colony ship to land.

-   A performance pass over every recurring script: nine verified optimizations to the monthly

    and yearly pulses, with zero gameplay changes.

 

-   The launcher file in the 5.7 download carried an absolute path from the build machine again,

    which breaks installation on any other PC. The download now ships the correct relative path,

    and the packaging step was changed so this cannot regress a third time. If you grabbed 5.7

    already, re-download or just edit "Hive mods.mod" so the last line reads: path="mod/Hive mods"

[Schmee]

Can confirm in some situations in 5.7 buildings are still being deleted. I can't build a sensorium site on my capital because the monthly tick after construction finishes it gets wiped.

[Xenodragon54]

36 minutes ago, Schmee said:

Can confirm in some situations in 5.7 buildings are still being deleted. I can't build a sensorium site on my capital because the monthly tick after construction finishes it gets wiped.

The planet replacing and deleting is becoming a pain in the ass lmao. I'll work on pushing out another hot fix as soon as possible today

[Schmee]

23 minutes ago, Xenodragon54 said:

The planet replacing and deleting is becoming a pain in the ass lmao. I'll work on pushing out another hot fix as soon as possible today

I can only imagine. Progress, though! Now it doesn't just straight up clean house like it used to. Made it twenty years or so before noticing anything disappear.

[Xenodragon54]

3 hours ago, Schmee said:

I can only imagine. Progress, though! Now it doesn't just straight up clean house like it used to. Made it twenty years or so before noticing anything disappear.

Well that's good to heaar XD Let's hope this next patch is a permanent solution

[Doomsday8931]

Queen Mother origin start, all buildings except the queen mother hive get wiped on start. Normal alloy foundries on hive world still disappear on completion. Colonised infested world loses all starting buildings instantly. 

 

I wonder what it is that makes Xeno type worlds purging the buildings and not normal ones. 

 

Tried playing a xenomorph empire starting on a normal world and got a normal hive mind hive core starter building and nothing else. Is that intended?

Edited August 17 by Doomsday8931

[herrzog]

Not currently supported by the !!!universal resource patch?

[Xenodragon54]

My screen now lmao. Now I'm organizing this like a whole approval chain system instead of having it all done through one chat. I have high expectations that this will work far more efficiently. 

[Doomsday8931]

Thank you for all the hard work 👍

[RandomLich]

How do you even manage to keep Xenomorphs as slaves, even with the Xeno Keepers origin and the specific government civics? My planets keep getting tons of negative events that cause a lot of crime and make me lose stability.

Also, thanks for all your hard work on this mod btw!

[Xenodragon54]

1 hour ago, RandomLich said:

How do you even manage to keep Xenomorphs as slaves, even with the Xeno Keepers origin and the specific government civics? My planets keep getting tons of negative events that cause a lot of crime and make me lose stability.

Also, thanks for all your hard work on this mod btw!

So the idea is having xenomorph slave pops is supposed to be as challenging as it is rewarding. Gotta work on spacing out the events and decreasing the impact they can have on stability if they happen soo frequently. 

Also planning on adding more techs that'll give players more control over xenomorph pops.

[Xenodragon54]

On 8/18/2026 at 3:30 AM, herrzog said:

Not currently supported by the !!!universal resource patch?

sorry for getting back to you late. No, it conflicts with the top bar icon. I personally haven't seen any large issues with it enabled but it does conflict. 

[herrzog]

11 hours ago, Xenodragon54 said:

sorry for getting back to you late. No, it conflicts with the top bar icon. I personally haven't seen any large issues with it enabled but it does conflict. 

 

Currently not able to see the number of eggs or other resources I have, so I guess thats a conflict with one of my UI Overhaul mods.

Also, the Hatchling Swarm point defense structure has 0.00 cooldown, so its averaging 2500 dps.  Starting outposts are basically undefeatable in the very early game when defending against AI empire invasion.

Edited August 20 by herrzog

[Deathclaw Cock]

Very cool, but god that AI writing is just awful. Fun mod all around, though.

[Xenodragon54]

1 hour ago, Deathclaw Cock said:

Very cool, but god that AI writing is just awful. Fun mod all around, though.

Working on the AI for the mod. Should be a lot smarter and a lot more functional in the next update 

[Xenodragon54]

1 hour ago, herrzog said:

 

Currently not able to see the number of eggs or other resources I have, so I guess thats a conflict with one of my UI Overhaul mods.

Also, the Hatchling Swarm point defense structure has 0.00 cooldown, so its averaging 2500 dps.  Starting outposts are basically undefeatable in the very early game when defending against AI empire invasion.

What UI mods are you using?

 

And i agree about the defense. The defense is supposed to be a bit stronger in early game but its currently too strong so I'll be scaling it down and changing how queens spawn defenses 

[Zermelane]

Regarding the event writing, one thing you might try is tossing that task to Opus 4.6. Claude has had an incredibly distinct writing voice ever since Opus 4.7. It's not a bad voice IMO, but it just has really distinct mannerisms that you notice quickly if you're used to them, and that get old if you work with Claude a lot. 4.6 still has an AI-like voice, it's just a lot milder and less obviously Claude.

Farther afield, Kimi K2.5 is IMO also worth trying for this purpose, and its writing can be quite intense; K3 on the other hand has picked up the claudeslop voice. Or since there's not really anything explicit happening in the event texts, you might even try a GPT model.

(or I mean you can try your hand at writing event texts yourself, but personally I quite like it when AI writing is treated as actually capable of being good, and as worth exploring and experimenting with for that purpose. Unfortunately Opus 5 isn't really in the running on that.)

[Xenodragon54]

1 hour ago, Zermelane said:

Regarding the event writing, one thing you might try is tossing that task to Opus 4.6. Claude has had an incredibly distinct writing voice ever since Opus 4.7. It's not a bad voice IMO, but it just has really distinct mannerisms that you notice quickly if you're used to them, and that get old if you work with Claude a lot. 4.6 still has an AI-like voice, it's just a lot milder and less obviously Claude.

Farther afield, Kimi K2.5 is IMO also worth trying for this purpose, and its writing can be quite intense; K3 on the other hand has picked up the claudeslop voice. Or since there's not really anything explicit happening in the event texts, you might even try a GPT model.

(or I mean you can try your hand at writing event texts yourself, but personally I quite like it when AI writing is treated as actually capable of being good, and as worth exploring and experimenting with for that purpose. Unfortunately Opus 5 isn't really in the running on that.)

Event writing will be getting remade and remastered. Ill be using dreamgen AI for the larger scenes and events and Vanice AI for more explicit scenes and events. At most a lot of the written events and descriptions for explicit things by claude are placeholders.

 

When it comes to more sfw and immersive events and such accurate to xenomorphs in lore. More of that sci-fi horror stuff. I might try rephrasing a lot of the events to be more horror themed with your suggestion.

 

[Saber83]

I am having persistent crashes to desktop whenever I try to start a game as a species created with or without this mod while this mod is active in the load order. Doesn't matter if the species I create is uses anything from the mod, if one of the species that I "have" created previously is selected as available for use by the game, the game crashes to desktop while trying to load into the system map.

 

From what I can tell looking at the example load order you have on the main page, the mod is in the correct position, I just don't have Calcifire's Trait pack installed. Since it's not required as per elsewhere in the main page, and since it doesn't seem to be available for download on the site, I don't have it installed.

[Schmee]

23 minutes ago, Saber83 said:

I am having persistent crashes to desktop whenever I try to start a game as a species created with or without this mod while this mod is active in the load order. Doesn't matter if the species I create is uses anything from the mod, if one of the species that I "have" created previously is selected as available for use by the game, the game crashes to desktop while trying to load into the system map.

 

From what I can tell looking at the example load order you have on the main page, the mod is in the correct position, I just don't have Calcifire's Trait pack installed. Since it's not required as per elsewhere in the main page, and since it doesn't seem to be available for download on the site, I don't have it installed.

Calcifire's shouldn't be required, but if you're looking for it you need to go to Calcifire's Portrait Pack. The downloads for the traits are in there, with either the deluxe which contains the portraits and traits all in one, or just the traits/portraits individually.

[Xenodragon54]

8 minutes ago, Schmee said:

Calcifire's shouldn't be required, but if you're looking for it you need to go to Calcifire's Portrait Pack. The downloads for the traits are in there, with either the deluxe which contains the portraits and traits all in one, or just the traits/portraits individually.

Yeah. At most the Calcifire traits mod is just for the icons. But the mod no longer requires that mod file. Be sure to check your crash log and it might tell you what exactly is causing the crash.

 

Either that or share it with Chat GPT and it should tell you what's causing the crashes. 

33 minutes ago, Saber83 said:

I am having persistent crashes to desktop whenever I try to start a game as a species created with or without this mod while this mod is active in the load order. Doesn't matter if the species I create is uses anything from the mod, if one of the species that I "have" created previously is selected as available for use by the game, the game crashes to desktop while trying to load into the system map.

 

From what I can tell looking at the example load order you have on the main page, the mod is in the correct position, I just don't have Calcifire's Trait pack installed. Since it's not required as per elsewhere in the main page, and since it doesn't seem to be available for download on the site, I don't have it installed.