Habitat Start (F**k Planets)

[SeekingEtermity]

BETA IS LIVE: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1881222777
SOURCE CODE: https://github.com/cbhacking/stellaris_mod_voidrefuge

This is an idea I've had rattling around for a while (ever since I saw the pre-2.3 dev diary outlining the changes to habitats) and there have been a number of requests on the main forum for it as well, so I decided to take a stab at creating a mod that adds a civic which completely overhauls how your empire starts out.

Background idea:
Your home planet was predictably but inexorably devastated (by happenstance or terrible mistake? Who knows) at an Early Space Age tech level. You might have developed FTL in another hundred years, but you didn't have a hundred years to wait. Lacking the ability to build starships or terraform worlds, but with juuuust enough tech to build self-sufficient space stations and all the motivation of an intelligent species facing an existential threat, you built some incredibly primitive habitats and crammed everybody you could onto them. Billions died anyhow, and most areas of technology and society regressed, or at least took an extreme turn toward attempting to survive as a species at all costs. A generations-long primitive genetic engineering + eugenics program, plus the selection effort of surviving the hardships of space, meant your population finally adapted to life in space However, this came at cost of being able to live in planetary environments. Slowly, your population rebounded and social and scientific pursuit eventually overtook your terrestrial ancestors. Space has been your species' only home for generations now, and at last the development of the hyperdrive gives you the ability to explore it. The galaxy awaits!

Properties and requirements:

• "Origin" civic (cannot be added or removed after game start).
• Incompatible with any other civic that modifies homeworld type, Agrarian Idyll, Mechanist, and maybe Syncretic Evolution
  
• Start with Habitats and Hydroponics Farming technologies.
• Home system has a normal set of planets but none are habitable at all; one in the habitable zone has had something horrible happen to it.
• Start with three small habitats in your home system, two colonized and all somewhat run down.
• One starting habitat is over an alloy deposit (offsets the alloy consumption of habitat capitals), the other over an energy deposit, food provided by hydroponics and farmers growing food wherever they can throughout the habitat (the capital buildings provide a job that produces some food).
• Start with Habitat preference, giving 100% habitability in habitats but 0% on anything else.
• All planets (except, at present, Gaia worlds, Relic worlds, and Ecumenopoli) have 0% base habitability.
• Compatible with all non-gestalt ethics and standard government types (not megacorps).
• Requires Utopia.

Balance goals:

• Should be balanced against the other civics that cannot be swapped out.
• Should assume an otherwise stock game, changing only what is needed to make the civic work.
• Early pop growth is very good but you quickly run out of space; expanding is horrifically expensive.
  
• Assume starts will always be pretty "tall"; you're not going to have the alloys and influence to build a lot of outposts in the early game because they're going to your habitats.
• Start with small habitats that are worse than normal, but you can build more right off the bat (and they're cheaper). By mid-game, you will definitely have the best habitats in the game, though not excessively good.
  
• Can use planets (especially once you have the ability to mod habitability preference, or once you have other species available in your empire) but you'll always be worse at them than other empires.

Balance questions:

1. Start with size 6 habitats but three of them, or size 8 but only two? Start with a capital station that is bigger than other stations? Start with size 4 habitats (one colonized) and a size 5 habitat as your capital.
   
2. Decreased growth rate to make up growing in two or three places at once from the start? Or perhaps start with a decreased total number of pops? Both? Reduced starting population makes the economy extremely weak. You'll run out of space soon, though.
   
3. Decreased housing usage due to being adapted to close quarters? Perhaps something to unlock? Included in Adaptability tree.
   
4. Reduced habitat cost in alloys, because seriously that's a lot for an early-game empire to outlay? Possibly make the reduced cost something you have to unlock? Early game, you build smaller but cheaper habitats that can be expanded over time. Expansion adoption decreases habitat cost.
   
5. Make hydroponics farms give +1 housing, becoming basically a poor man's farm district? Perhaps make this something you unlock? Current plan is to allow upgrading hydroponics farms to provide housing and amenities, replacing Pleasure Dome. Not yet implemented.
   
6. Make Habitat Administration (tier-1 capitol building) provide +1 "Colonist" job, so it gives two jobs (no unemployment immediately after colonization with Expansion traditions) and a smidgen of food? Implemented, t1 capitals provide a Colonist (the amenities turned out to be at least as vital as the food) and t2 provide a Farmer instead.

Tradition re-works (Implemented):
The general idea is to replace anything that is planet-specific with something similarly beneficial but habitat-specific, and anything that expects you to find and tame your colonies with something that expects you to tame space instead.

• Expansion:
  • Replace adoption effect with 10%20% habitat build cost reduction.
    
  • Either replace "+1 pops on new colonies" with something that doesn't cause immediate unemployment for habitats, or increase tier-1 habitat capitol jobs?
  • Replace the finisher with +1 to habitat max districts.
• Domination:
  • Replace the adoption effect with something related to mastering the artificial environment, perhaps -20% maintenance cost on habitat capitals (they require alloys, did you know?) Already lots of stuff reducing this upkeep; went for ability to build habitats on moons and asteroids instead. Should work but currently does not.
    
  • "Imperious Architecture" now gives +2+1 housing per level of habitat capitol, no effect on any planetary building (mitigates somewhat the lack of housing buildings on habitats).
• Prosperity:
  • +1 clerk job from city districts becomes +1 clerk job from habitation districts (hey, they finally give *some* jobs!)
  • +1 housing from city districts becomes +1 housingfarmer from habitation districts. (The hab districts already reach 8 housing but lacked jobs.)
    
  • The finisher... Very hard to hit 100 pops on a habitat even using this civic, so this will basically just be "+1 merchant at 50 pops". Make the number of merchants not scale but add 5% trade value bonus (which makes more sense in Prosperity than Diplomacy anyhow).
• Harmony left as-is.
• Supremacy left as-is.
• Diplomacy replaced with Adaptability. It could be just left as-is, since - just like Life-Seeded - empires using this will generally want to be diplomatic so they can put somebody else's species on planets. Overall, though, I think Adaptability is a better fit.
  
• Adaptability:
  • Possibly make the free building slot only apply to habitats? No clear way to do this.
    
  • Replace the finisher with the one from Versatility (50% refund for demolishing/replacing buildings/districts), perhaps? It's not great but I'm not sure what works better.
• Discovery left as-is.

Ascension perk changes (Implemented):

• Replace "Mastery of Nature" and "Voidborne" with "Mastery of the Void".
  • Some small passive effect, like reduced Habitat build time, slightly increased habitability, reduced habitat maintenance, or similar. Same as Voidborne, but half as strong.
    
  • "Mastery of the Void" colony decision works just like "Mastery of Nature" decision, (+2+1 max districts) except it only works on habitats, has an alloy cost, and is repeatable as you gain technology.
  • Possibly require having another perk unlocked first, orand some level of technology (Star Fortress)?
    
  • (Might seem like this perk becomes near-mandatory, but it should merely be a common pick that you don't strictly need; the cost on the decision is high enough that you still won't benefit from it that early or use it that often.)
• Remove "World Shaper" and "Arcology Project".
• "Master Builders" available if you took "Mastery of the Void" (instead of "Voidborne") and meet the other requirements.

Technology and building changes (Not Implemented):
I'll have to go through the tech list and see exactly what-all currently interacts with habitats, and what currently only interacts with planets but should interact with habitats. A few things I'm considering:

• Give habitats a third capitol building level, probably unlocking at 40 pops. Just adds a few more housing (probably +3), amenities (probably +3), an extra ruler-tier job (defaults to Administrator but may depend on admin-replacing civics), and an extra enforcer. Possibly unlocks with the technology that unlocks fourth-tier planetary capitols. Might be required for top-tier cultural buildings.
  
• Reduce draw weights for a lot of planet-related techs, like terraforming and blocker removal.
• Possibly increase weights for some techs that are especially interesting to habitat-dwellers (possibly rare resource techs and building-upgrade techs, and space construction techs in general).
  
• Consider changing or adding a tech to make hydroponics farms get +1 housing, making them sort of like a bad farming district.
  
• "Idyllic Architecture" unlocks an upgrade from Hydroponics Farm to "Orbital Paradise", which is a new building that still provides two farmer jobs but adds some housing (probably +3) and amenities (probably +5), essentially turning them into a Luxury Housing (at a Paradise Dome-like upkeep) plus farming jobs. Might remove Paradise Domes, though.

AI changes (Not implemented):
Ha! Let's get the mod up and running reasonably sanely for humans first, and then think about enabling it for the AI and seeing how they handle it.

Stretch goals (Not implemented):

• Hive Mind support. The whole "sacrifice many for the sake of the whole" thing in the background is very Hive Mind, and (unlike machine empires) the habitability impacts play out really interestingly for hive minds. You can't even use other species' pops until you complete the ascension path and assimilate them. On the other hand, you get housing buildings on habitats.
  
• Flavor events that fire after game start (perhaps a sublight colony ship similar to the human offshoot empire, perhaps a secessionist colony that snuck away with the first FTL prototypes and has been trying - but not really succeeding - to make it on its own in a new system, perhaps something else).
• AI support. In theory the AI knows how to handle habitability and habitats already, but by default I expect naively handing the AI an empire with this civic would go *very* badly.
• Megacorp support. The whole "be super tall" thing is right up a megacorp's alley, and the backstory can be adjusted slightly such that it was some wealthy space industry/tourism/construction/whatever corporation that built and ran the first primitive self-sufficient habitats, and ended up assuming the governing role.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Feedback, suggestions, implementation advice, pointers to similar projects, and so on all much appreciated! The mod is live (in beta) on Steam and can also be downloaded from GitHub (see links in top post).

Changelog:

1. Beta 0.5.2: Civic, Start conditions (2 + 1 habitats), traditions, ascension perks, habitat expansion.

Known bugs:

1. Domination adoption effect doesn't work.
2. Very small start systems can be too crowded to have anywhere for the third habitat. Recommend using a large one such as Binary 1 as a work-around.

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

I, sir, would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

I like a lot of what you have here, but in regards to actually making the mod, I think you have too much here. Have you considered a first version with what the bare minimum required to make it playable is? Not necessarily balanced or fun, just playable?

From previous modding experience I have seen that just getting something that runs can be the best way to understand what else is needed and motivate progress.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Oh, I'm definitely doing this incrementally. The main sticking point I've hit is replacing the whole "create homeworld" script. I'm going to have to mostly rewrite it, because it makes way too many assumptions (such as "homeworlds have city/generator/farming/mining districts", "homeworlds are at least size 16", "homeworlds have ~30 pops", and "you only have one homeworld"), none of which apply. I might be able to hack it with game start scripts that basically takes the default homeworld, creates a habitat above it (and a couple more), colonizes the habitats, blow the homeworld settlement away and changes the planet class (moving the capital to a habitat), and then just pretend that all happened centuries ago, though.

The basic civic is already created. Things like the tradition swaps and changes to APs will take time, and tweaking techs will take even more time, but the critical thing right now is getting over the hump of "the game lets civics change the characteristics of your home planet and habitability (see Life-Seeded, Post-Apocalyptic) but still expects your home planet to be both singular and a planet, and to have enough pops on it to unlock a certain number of buildings".

I'll post the work-in-progress soon (next day or three).

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

That sounds great. I want to draw your attention to this morning’s teaser tweet, as it shows that “origins” are being separated from civics. That clearly will have an impact on this mod.
https://twitter.com/dmoregard/status/1177176972901933057?s=21

 

[Mr. Morague]

Oh, I'm definitely doing this incrementally. The main sticking point I've hit is replacing the whole "create homeworld" script. I'm going to have to mostly rewrite it, because it makes way too many assumptions (such as "homeworlds have city/generator/farming/mining districts", "homeworlds are at least size 16", "homeworlds have ~30 pops", and "you only have one homeworld"), none of which apply. I might be able to hack it with game start scripts that basically takes the default homeworld, creates a habitat above it (and a couple more), colonizes the habitats, blow the homeworld settlement away and changes the planet class (moving the capital to a habitat), and then just pretend that all happened centuries ago, though.

The basic civic is already created. Things like the tradition swaps and changes to APs will take time, and tweaking techs will take even more time, but the critical thing right now is getting over the hump of "the game lets civics change the characteristics of your home planet and habitability (see Life-Seeded, Post-Apocalyptic) but still expects your home planet to be both singular and a planet, and to have enough pops on it to unlock a certain number of buildings".

I'll post the work-in-progress soon (next day or three).

That sounds great. I want to draw your attention to this morning’s teaser tweet, as it shows that “origins” are being separated from civics. That clearly will have an impact on this mod.
https://twitter.com/dmoregard/status/1177176972901933057?s=21

In the meantime, I remember there being a mod that could change the user’s home planet even in the empire creation screen via a civic. I think it was... one of the Ancient Cache of Technologies mods. Maybe you could look there for inspiration?

 

[SeekingEtermity]

That sounds great. I want to draw your attention to this morning’s teaser tweet, as it shows that “origins” are being separated from civics. That clearly will have an impact on this mod.
https://twitter.com/dmoregard/status/1177176972901933057?s=21

Oooh, shiny! That's been a suggestion from the community for a while; I'm glad to see them implementing it. Kind of a shame if it means dual-background runs are no longer possible, but only a few combinations were even allowed (mostly stuff like Fanatic Purifiers + a planet-modifier one) and if it leads to getting some new backgrounds that are basically "vanilla" but have at least some interesting effect, very cool.

Yeah, this mod will definitely be a Background rather than a normal Civic... once those are a thing. I'm not holding off until then, though!

 

[SeekingEtermity]

In the meantime, I remember there being a mod that could change the user’s home planet even in the empire creation screen via a civic. I think it was... one of the Ancient Cache of Technologies mods. Maybe you could look there for inspiration?

I may take a look, thanks. I assume you mean more than merely the sorts of changes that Life-Seeded and Post-Apocalyptic make (changing planet class, size, features, and native habitability preference?

IF I can add my own events to some of the existing "on_actions" triggers, this will work fine; that's where all the empire start events are triggered. If I can't add to those but can replace the whole file, that's a pain for maintenance and compatibility but at least I'd only need to modify a little of it. The wiki seems to say you can't modify the on_actions, though (which is odd, as there are a number of them that are completely empty; why even exist if you can't use them? Does the engine just require that the section exist?). Next best, if I can't add my own events that fire at game start and empire creation, are to modify the existing events; I'll have to clone them and add my own conditions and actions to them instead of just adding my events, but overwriting events is known to work and the ones I need to replace probably aren't tampered with by that many mods.

 

[HandicapdHippo]

The wiki seems to say you can't modify the on_actions, though (which is odd, as there are a number of them that are completely empty; why even exist if you can't use them? Does the engine just require that the section exist?).

That's not what it means, what its saying is you can't add entirely new on actions sections or change how they work, we only have the ones the game provides.

IF I can add my own events to some of the existing "on_actions" triggers, this will work fine;

You can, just add a new file and add the on action and your event, the game merges all on_action files together.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

That's not what it means, what its saying is you can't add entirely new on actions sections or change how they work, we only have the ones the game provides.


You can, just add a new file and add the on action and your event, the game merges all on_action files together.

Perfect, thank you! That's what I expected, and made the most sense. I'll add triggered events that fire after home system creation, then. If I have to modify some existing events anyhow, oh well, but I'd prefer to keep compatibility at maximum.

Do new events added in mod-created on_actions lists fire before the stock events for that particular action, after the stock events, totally random, depends on the file name, ...? I've got the basic event script written (triggered only, conditional on having the civic: add habitats, colonize them, add districts/buildings/pops, set a habitat as capital, eliminate homeworld "colony" and change homeworld's planet class), but I'm not sure where to put it.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

UPDATE:
I've got the civic sort of working. Tweaks I've made at present:

• If you have the civic, you get a Farmer job with any upgraded habitat capital. The idea is basically that, with nowhere else to turn, the population learned to grow food in every available space. Any long-established habitat will have at least one small farm's worth of food production, even if no space is explicitly set aside for it. This offsets somewhat the inability to build farming districts.
  
• If you have the civic, then once you take the Colonization Fever tradition (+1 pop on new colonies), you get a Colonist job on baseline habitat capitals. This means you don't have unemployment instantly upon creating a new colony (habitat baseline capitals only offer one job, an Administrator). Colonists are pretty awful, as jobs go, but at least they feed themselves and provide some amenities (which are also scarce in space).
  • I initially made this happen without the tradition, needing only the civic. Bad idea; it meant two of your precious starting pops working as Colonists.

Problems I've run into:

• It is disturbingly possible for a capital system to have so few planets that, unless I replace some of the pre-defined mining stations (which are badly needed), there's not room to generate all three habitats.
  • The empire initialization scripts look for 8 bodies (always including the primary star) to drop starting deposits on. 4 of those deposits are extra-large and automatically get mining stations; you will be very unhappy if you don't have them.
  • While this is an uncommon outcome of the RNG, it's possible to only spawn as few bodies as 3 uninhabited planets and 1 moon (using home system type "random trinary 2"), in which case you'll have the four big deposits with stations, 1 (of 4 expected) small deposits without stations, and nowhere to stick habitats other than the destroyed homeworld. I'm considering just overwriting the home system generator code; nobody needs their home system sucking that badly.
  • In the meantime, pick one of the pre-defined systems, or Binary 1 (best: minimum 7 planets + 3 moons), Trinary 1, or Unary 2.
• The 5 alloy upkeep of a habitat (technically, of its capital) is steep, in the early game. I offset it somewhat by giving the player two foundries instead of the usual one, but that still leaves them with way less income (5 base + 12 from jobs - 15 from buildings = +2, vs. 5 base + 6 from jobs = +11). A few ideas on dealing with this:
  • Don't; the habitat start has massive pop growth and will overtake everybody else soon enough, but at first it'll be resource-starved. This is an awful thing to do to somebody's early-game military, though.
  • Try to squeeze another foundry in there somewhere, bringing it up to +8 vs. +11. That's still a disadvantage but not nearly as awful, and of course bonuses from jobs will apply harder the more jobs are involved. However, finding either the 12 minerals, the two pops , or the building slot will be difficult.
  • Reduce upkeep on habitat capitals if you have this civic. Either a flat reduction or a percentage-based one that stacks with Functional Architecture and similar. I already had to overwrite the default habitat capitals to add the farmer and potentially-colonist jobs, so no biggie.
  • Add an alloy deposit under one of the habitats, to (partially) offset the capital's cost.
• I want to keep the starting population low, both for story reasons (their species barely survived on these things and food has always been tight) and balance; because the current pop growth mechanic gives you an enormous advantage from having multiple start "worlds", it should be offset by starting a bit behind. However, it's frustratingly hard to make the economy work with so few pops.
  • Current target is 21 pops (24 is normal). That means, after one growth period (~30 months), you'll have 24 to everybody else's 25; after two, you'll have 27 to their 26 but they're probably colonizing other planets and will get one or more free pops and future growth from that, and you probably aren't yet because habitats take a while to build even once you have the alloys.
  • Starting distribution:
    • 2 farmers, with one open farmer job. Using base outputs, that's 22 food in and 21 food out, so Nutritional Plenitude will put you in a deficit until you get that last farmer. Finally, a build where's it's not an instant pick!
      
    • 3 miners, with three open mining jobs. 42 mineral production.
    • 3 technicians, with three open tech jobs. ~46 energy production, ~57 consumption.
    • 4 metallurgists. 17 alloys in, 15 out. Consumes 24 minerals.
    • 2 artisans. 22 CGs in, consumption depends on living standard but even at Utopian that's only 21 out. Consumes 12 minerals.
    • 3 researchers. Consumes 6 CGs, so you better not be Utopian.
      
    • 4 administrators.
  • Obviously, this isn't good. Ruler and Governor traits and ruler agenda might improve a lot of things, as might pop traits, stability, ethics, and your other civic. However, it's still marginal at best. A lot of the energy and all the alloy drain is those capitals; offsetting that will help a lot. In general, though, you're going to be in a tight spot until you get more pops.
    • I'm going to add another two technicians, though; I don't think that's avoidable. Unlike food and CGs, you have a really limited amount of reductions you can take there. Will make food and CGs *really* marginal.
• For some reason, of the four mining stations you start with, only one (the one on your starting star) is producing resources (the two over mining deposits do draw upkeep, though). Probably a result of some game start trigger mess. I'll try re-creating the triggered event as a work-around. The numbers above are computed assuming the stations are all producing.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Ugh. Amenities are a problem if I don't have the colonists in there on the low-population habitats, especially the generators one. I think I'll add the Colonists back, and accept the higher population requirement.

Fixed the mining stations drawing upkeep but giving nothing in return. Got a new bug, though: my habitats either have random names from the namelist (which would be fine if it didn't mean the capital has a random name too!) or have the name "<empire name> Habitat" (which is acceptable though flavorless for the capital, and not OK otherwise).

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Oh also, if anybody wants to help out by suggesting a name for this mod (and its central civic), that'd be great! I'm having a hard time coming up with anything good.

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

Oh also, if anybody wants to help out by suggesting a name for this mod (and its central civic), that'd be great! I'm having a hard time coming up with anything good.

“Void-born” for the civic.
“Void-born (F**k Planets)” for the mod name.

Do you think it may be easier to balance the start if you don’t start with three habitats, but instead just one or two?

 

[CrazyJ]

might i recommend adding a feature to offset the alloys and consumer goods problem. something similar to the foundry district, but make it produce maybe half alloys half consumer goods. make it slightly less efficient than foundries or civilian industries so in the late game people have a reason to use the buildings. i stole this idea from the summer experimentation dev diary

 

[SeekingEtermity]

“Void-born” for the civic.
“Void-born (F**k Planets)” for the mod name.

Do you think it may be easier to balance the start if you don’t start with three habitats, but instead just one or two?

That is actually my working title (OK, without the hyphen), but I'm hoping to get away from the name of the "Voidborne" AP. I mean, it's the obvious parallel concept from the unmodded game, but both the effects and the flavor are quite different (you haven't mastered habitats so much as learned how to survive them, a century ahead of time).

The best I've got right now is "Refuge in the Void", but thanks for the suggestion!

I considered fewer habitats. It means everybody gets an upgraded capital at first (more housing and much more amenities from jobs) but makes the districts awkward. You need at least two habitats just to have access to both mining and generator districts. That means no research districts, so you need a research building. Two research jobs instead of three isn't a big downside - arguably more balanced, in fact - and eases initial CG demand...

Ok, I'm going to run the numbers, but it might work better. Two habitats means less growth out the door, but that also makes me less hesitant about giving good starting population.

EDIT: The other big reason not to start with only two habitats is that this effectively gives you only 12 district slots, way below the range for a homeworld. It gives 16 if you expand both of them, which is at the bottom of the homeworld range and maybe makes up for it by having 2x the building slots (if you can unlock them...) but you're going to be a *long* time waiting before you get your next habitat.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

might i recommend adding a feature to offset the alloys and consumer goods problem. something similar to the foundry district, but make it produce maybe half alloys half consumer goods. make it slightly less efficient than foundries or civilian industries so in the late game people have a reason to use the buildings. i stole this idea from the summer experimentation dev diary

That's definitely an interesting idea. I'm trying to stay as close to the unmodded game as possible, and where I must add new stuff I'm trying to have it be one-offs (currently there's a 5-alloy "deposit" to offset the cost of operating starting habitats, but I'm not planning to add those everywhere). It's definitely worth considering though; thanks for the suggestion.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Hmm, here's a thought: you start with two colonized habitats (one of each mining+generator), plus a third uncolonized one (maybe research?) in the same system. Less initial growth, easier initial balance, and your first colony still won't be productive for a while but you only need a colony ship's worth of resources and build time, not a whole habitat's worth.

Could even mostly fill it up with blockers, 2.2.x Fen Habbanis-style. A habitat that some time ago became too expensive to maintain and fell into disrepair, with the remnants of its population coming to the other two, but wasn't completely destroyed and can be repressurized and inhabited again with minimal effort.

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

That is actually my working title (OK, without the hyphen), but I'm hoping to get away from the name of the "Voidborne" AP. I mean, it's the obvious parallel concept from the unmodded game, but both the effects and the flavor are quite different (you haven't mastered habitats so much as learned how to survive them, a century ahead of time).

The best I've got right now is "Refuge in the Void", but thanks for the suggestion!

Well, i dropped the ‘e’ off the end as well; so it’s a different word.
Voidborne : carried or supported by the void.
Voidborn: originating from the void.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

Sure. Still very similar though, and most people don't know enough English to really appreciate the difference. The species isn't really originating from the void either - they have a homeworld, it's just an uninhabitable mess now (currently it gets changed to a Toxic World) - so arguably the form with the e is more accurate.

Going with "Refuge in the Void" for the civic name for now. Easy enough to change if I get a better option.