Kha'ak Hive Lord archetype

Vanilla Kha’ak are trickle annoyance — random raids, no concentration, easy to counter once you’ve fielded a decent patrol. The Kha’ak Hive Lord turns them into a deliberate menace. Under a Hive Lord, scattered Kha’ak fighters aggregate into coordinated strikes on high-value enemy targets. When you see Kha’ak going after your Argon shipyard specifically (instead of random freighters), you know one is alive.

The Hive Lord is the Military Coordinator equivalent for Kha’ak — same commandeer-and-command primitive, but offensive-first instead of defensive-first. Kha’ak don’t defend; they expand and strike.

Coverage

1 template — Khaak faction only
Not more than 1 Hive Lord active at any time
Spawn eligibility: Kha’ak has ≥1 hive structure OR ≥1 Kha’ak-owned sector in the galaxy
Disband condition: all Kha’ak hives destroyed → cascade release all subordinates → Hive Lord disbands
Available Kha’ak forces: not commandeered from vanilla jobs — Kha’ak have their own spawn pattern that scatters fighters across the galaxy. Hive Lord collects those wandering fighters.

Playstyle — the psychic matriarch

Hive Lord is a hive consciousness shard — a distributed psychic presence that exists in multiple Kha’ak nests simultaneously. Not an individual being in the physical plane. Immobile in primary nest, controls all Kha’ak in galaxy through psychic command.

No flagship-swap, no fleet-of-their-own — same as Coordinator
Collects wandering Kha’ak fighters — no job structure, just aggregation of what’s already in-galaxy
Cross-sector orders are instant — same primitive as Coordinator
Offensive-first priority — the mod’s ONLY archetype with offense as priority 2 (Coordinator has defence). Kha’ak don’t do garrison duty.

Command capacity per star rank

There is no per-star capacity. The whole power-cap system — power weights, a cap per star, defence and attack power thresholds — was removed. What bounds a swarm today is three ordinary things:

Limit	Value
RP cost to commandeer one ship	10 RP
Hard ceiling per Hive Lord	100 ships
Supply	how many loose Kha’ak ships the galaxy actually has

The ceiling is a performance guard, not a balance number: X4’s commander-and-escort order cost scales with fleet size, and very large subordinate groups hurt the frame rate.

So a Hive Lord grows as fast as its Recovery Points allow, and a rich one can concentrate far more than a star rating would suggest. Its internal state machine steps at counts of 10, 20 and 50 rather than at stars. Without a Hive Lord those same ships would be spread across eight sectors doing random flybys; with one, they arrive together.

⚠ An earlier design used a per-star ladder of 8 / 15 / 25 / 40 with its own RP curve. If you have read those figures, that is where they came from — they are not in the mod now.

Decision cascade (offensive-first, first-match wins)

flowchart TD
  Start[HMW tick] --> Q1{Hive sector<br/>under attack?}
  Q1 -- yes --> R1[hive_defense<br/>recall all subordinates<br/>to defend nest]
  Q1 -- no --> Q2{High-value enemy<br/>target identified?<br/>weak gate / station}
  Q2 -- yes --> R2[strike<br/>concentrate force<br/>at target sector]
  Q2 -- no --> Q3{Sufficient<br/>force gathered?<br/>★-tier dependent}
  Q3 -- no --> R3[gather<br/>recruit more Kha'ak<br/>from territory]
  Q3 -- yes --> Q4{Adjacent<br/>vulnerable sector?}
  Q4 -- yes --> R4[probe<br/>send raid group<br/>to test defenses]
  Q4 -- no --> R5[harassment<br/>scatter subordinates<br/>across raid lanes]

Priority	Decision	Effect
1	hive_defense	Any hive sector under attack → recall all subordinates to defend the threatened nest. Overrides everything else — if all hives die, the Hive Lord disbands.
2	strike	Enemy has identified a high-value vulnerable target (weak gate, undefended station, isolated shipyard). Concentrate maximum force at that sector.
3	gather	Force insufficient for a major strike (per ★-tier requirement) → recruit more Kha’ak fighters from own territory or nearby sectors. Wait for critical mass.
4	probe	Test enemy defences with a smaller raid group in an adjacent vulnerable sector. Learn where the soft spots are; escalate later.
5	harassment	Fallback → scatter subordinates across raid lanes for opportunistic attacks. This is what vanilla Kha’ak do — the Hive Lord falls back to this when other decisions don’t fit.

Unlike Admirals or Coordinators, there is no “idle patrol” for Hive Lord — they always have a target. Kha’ak don’t do peace.

Strategic targeting — “smart Kha’ak”

The strike decision uses a target scoring algorithm that goes beyond “closest enemy sector”:

Player shipyard / wharf — high value
Faction shipyard / wharf — medium-high value
Trade waypoint — medium
Isolated station — medium (easy kill)
Well-defended sector — low (avoid)

Result: a ★★★★ Hive Lord will repeatedly strike Argon Prime shipyard’s outer perimeter instead of random Argon freighters. Player learns to reinforce specific targets. The Hive Lord learns to switch targets after a few losses.

This is what changes Kha’ak from “background noise” to “hostile intelligence”.

No player-vs-Kha’ak Order Board interaction

The Kha’ak have nine order types of their own on the shared Order Board, and they are split between the two Kha’ak archetypes. The Hive Lord claims four:

$swarm_summon — spawn additional Kha’ak fighters at a random hive location
$gate_defense — hold a gate against incursion
$call_for_help — request Kha’ak reinforcement in a threatened sector
$fleet_defense — coordinated defence around a specific hive

The other five — $big_resonance, $expansion, $system_resonance, $small_resonance and $hive_development — belong to the Seeder, which takes them in exactly that priority order and will not touch any of them until it has banked enough Recovery Points to afford the expensive tiers.

Players don’t interact with any of the nine — they are Kha’ak-internal state. Both archetypes process them on their normal cycle, generating threat activity as a side-effect. See screenshot below.

About the headings in that screenshot: the board prints only three section labels, and the Kha’ak types are declared into the admiral one because there is no Kha’ak section to declare them into. The label is a display bug; the claim gates underneath are correct, and no admiral of any faction can take one of these.

Kha'ak Order Board — no coordinator or raider tasks; admiral-type order types: $hive_development 26 tasks, $swarm_summon 1 task, $small_resonance 1 task, $big_resonance 1 task, $system_resonance 7 tasks, $call_for_help 3 tasks, $fleet_defense 3 tasks. Active heroes: Manifold-of-Spires (hive_lord ★★, idle) and Brood-Mother (seeder ★★★, guard_hive)

Kha’ak “recruitment” mechanic

The Hive Lord’s gather decision uses local Kha’ak scan to find wandering fighters:

Every HMW tick, the Hive Lord runs a galaxy-wide scan for Kha’ak ships without an active commander
Those ships are added to the Hive Lord’s subordinate list at no RP cost (they weren’t earning anyone else RP anyway)
The subordinate list has no per-rank cap. The per-star capacity was removed with the whole power-cap system; what limits a swarm now is the RP each commandeer costs, how many loose Kha’ak ships exist, and a flat hard ceiling of 100 ships per hive lord to keep X4’s fleet-order cost bounded.
Excess fighters remain wild (vanilla behaviour)

This is NOT commandeering in the vanilla PCS sense — Kha’ak don’t have a job system. The mod simulates aggregation via ownership swap in the mod’s subordinate registry.

Behaviour example — a ★★★ Hive Lord strike

Manifold-of-Spires (★★, 278 XP, 72 kills) — Kha’ak Hive Lord.

HMW tick: Kha’ak hive in Mists of Artemis is fine. No hive under attack. hive_defense doesn’t fire.
Target scoring: Argon Prime shipyard identified as a high-value target (weak defensive posture). strike fires.
Subordinate list: 15 Kha’ak fighters (at ★★ capacity), scattered across Mists of Artemis, Pious Mists IV, Sanctuary of Darkness.
Manifold recalls all to Pious Mists IV (staging point).
Once concentrated: fleet moves through Sanctuary of Darkness → Argon Prime.
Encounter Argon patrols. Fight through some, arrive at Argon Prime shipyard’s outer perimeter.
Engage Argon defensive fleet. Kha’ak lose ~5-8 fighters; Argon loses ~3-4 M/S. Net win for Argon locally, but the Argon reinforcement fleet is now committed here — the shipyard is under real attack.
If Manifold survives, retreat to Pious Mists IV with what’s left, take on gather decision next tick.
If Manifold’s flagship (their Kha’ak Queen equivalent) dies → d100 death roll.

Recovery cycle

Same d100 death roll on Hive Lord’s HQ nest destruction (or on Hive Lord’s own flagship, whichever comes first mechanically). Default 20% KIA / 60% wounded / 20% unscathed.

On death — cascade release ALL subordinates back to vanilla Kha’ak random behaviour. The player sees the difference: what was concentrated menace becomes back-to-normal Kha’ak scatter. This is a positive UX signal — players know when they’ve killed the Hive Lord because the map noise changes.

On KIA, standard lineage vacancy (120 game-minutes) → next clone spawns with the previous bearer’s perks state. Kha’ak-specific perks include Khaak Seed (+1 RP per Kha’ak ship lost, +5 per outpost, +10 per hive) — meaningful because the Kha’ak faction does lose ships regularly, so the Hive Lord accumulates RP from the ongoing attrition.

Relationship to Kha’ak Seeder

Hive Lords are reactive commanders — defence + counter-strike. Seeders are proactive builders — new hives, new outposts. Together they form a self-propagating Kha’ak threat:

Seeder scans galaxy for undefended border sectors adjacent to Kha’ak space
Seeder drops a new hive (via spawn action; see Seeder cascade)
Nearby Hive Lord (if any) picks up the new hive in their territory scan and starts including it in hive_defense rotation
If the player / another faction attacks the new hive, Hive Lord commits force to defend it or counter-attack the aggressor’s forces
If the aggressor gives up, Seeder finds another target

Clearing one Kha’ak sector doesn’t stop the Kha’ak. The Seeder will eventually find another vulnerable position. Over enough time, unattended Kha’ak factions spread. Player is under low but constant pressure.

Design intent

Kha’ak feel like a persistent, adaptive threat — not a static garrison to be cleared once and forgotten.
Player has agency to remove the Hive Lord — killing them turns Kha’ak back into vanilla noise. A Kha’ak-clearing playthrough has a boss-level target: kill the Hive Lord, watch the Kha’ak activity fall off.
No PCS integration — Kha’ak are their own thing. The Hive Lord uses Kha’ak-native primitives instead of trying to force-fit them into human faction command structures.

What’s next

Kha’ak-flavoured decision UI — currently the Hive Lord surfaces in the same menu as human archetypes. Planned: distinct “warfront overview” showing hive clusters instead of individual heroes.
Sector-level Kha’ak coordination — currently the Hive Lord coordinates loosely. Planned: per-cluster “warfront ledger” so the Hive Lord’s own state is more structured.
Boss-tier Kha’ak Hive Lord — future concept: named ★★★★★ Hive Lord for endgame content, requiring player-scale coordination to take down.
Multi-Hive Lord — currently 1 per Kha’ak. Very long saves could see 2-3 regional Hive Lords for territorially-split Kha’ak. Future work.

Kha’ak Seeder archetype — the proactive builder counterpart
Military Coordinator — the human-faction analog (defensive-first vs offensive-first)
Scout-Saboteur — Kha’ak-native user of the saboteur primitive; fits swarm-suicide aesthetic
Death cycle — the d100 roll for Hive Lord destruction
Perks system — Khaak Seed / Prepared / Volunteer / Legendary Veteran and other Kha’ak-appropriate perks