Name: The Kongregate

Faction Traits: Biological Adaptation and Assimilation

• Does not use industry
• Buildings and ships instantly "built" from population
• Pop may be bought with Dust.
• Ships generate additional food income in home systems. Ships generate additional food, and industry for other faction worlds if stationed over their system.

Infestation

• Kongregate ships, and trade generate "infestation" points within a system.
• 25% infestation generates 1% diplomacy bonus with target faction
• 50% infestation generates 3% diplomacy bonus with target faction
• 100% infestation generates 5% diplomacy bonus with target faction.
• Each system infestation diplomacy bonus stacks with each other.

Biography: Once initially believed to be a type of hostile parasite, the Kongregate soon made their full presence known. They are a hive mind race and have mastered the art of biological engineering. Each part of their “cities” are highly specialized members of their own species. Even their starships are fully organic, having been modified to an incredible degree. They are firm believers in the sanctity of life, in all its forms. They seek to protect and promote what they consider the natural process of all lifeforms. However they do not like leaving such decisions to chance. Hence they have developed a form of mind control using spore based chemicals. Some species consider dealing with the Kongregate worth the risk of their infestation, since their kind make excellent additional workers, allowing their own kind to refocus their own efforts into the sciences and harvest of dust. 

I don't know if its too late to put in my own idea for a faction, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to at least try and make my own. There has been three races so far that operate without one of the main fids sources. The Harmony don't use Dust, The Broken Lords don't use Food, and The Forgotten don't use Science. So why not have a faction that doesn't use Industry? Thus the whole biological production came to me. The Kongregate primarily function by turning their population into whatever it is they need.  The next aspect was their diplomacy mechanic. One thing that was always annoying to me was that diplomacy was almost useless, because you never really had that much control over the other factions disposition to you. So you couldn't really influence them much to like you or not. With the Kongregates focus on bio-tech, the possibility of them "influencing" any race they helped was obvious. This was the Kongregate spread, they can more easily influence other factions to do what they want. Since they won't use Dust as much to build stuff like other races, the infestation diplo bonus plus the surplus Dust would make it very easy for late game Kongregate to make what is essentially a massive joint empire with other factions.

Cool base idea. Agreed, this would fit well into the Endless games. I am unsure what you mean by "diplomacy bonus". Do you mean something like less Influence cost on diplomatic actions?

Keep it up!  

Well in Endless games there is a little bar that shows exactly how likely a diplomatic action is likely to succeed. The diplo bonus would add an additional positive modifier to that bar. That way you can offer less in a deal and the ai would be more likely to accept than they would otherwise normally. So eventually if you infest enough of their planets you can offer deals that are horribly in your favor and give barely anything back and the ai will still be inclined to take it.