What if Hive Mind had an ethics cost of 2?

[Slynx]

1. Reinforcing the RP in your head. And yes, that is important. The whole "you can just RP x y z" is often valid, but it's better when the game rules acknowledge your RP. Otherwise, why are you even playing a game with rules?

how will ethics help with it?
you want restrict your war like pacifists? - change your policy
you wanna save those xenos like xenophile or kill them like xenophobe? - change purge policy or embrace Bio ascension and mod them
you wanna hate robots? - well ...you already do I guess so no materialist for you. and no egalitarian either.

and i'm not opposed to customization of hiveminds. but not through ethics that will not even fit. we already have an instrument for this(civics) and a working example of adding different flavor(machine empire's servitor\exterminator\assimilators)

2. Provide AI hive minds and MEs a sensible way to have different personalities beyond the big civics, which would be cool. (I know some civics do change the "empire type" of MEs but I dunno whether their AI personalities are affected.)

this is a better idea. and that's the main reason I love more personalities mod, cuz it adds fun to the game.
but let's be real.... chances that they'll do\add it for free are low. so maybe in a different update after some kind of rework of personalities

 

[Kravoka]

Considering hive ethics:

Xenophiles become Symbiotes, able to have free individuals as Workers and Specialists, also applying a production bonus to all non-hive species.
Xenophobes are now Totalists (name that doesn't evoke commie nazis pending), they displace the entire ecosystem where they go, meaning slower colonization but higher resource output and defense.
Authoritarians have a top-down structure of command, which cuts down on deviancy.
Egalitarians think in a decentralized manner, making leaders cheaper and smarter.
Militarists are Predatory, granting them much stronger bonuses from salvage and purging. Required for Devouring swarm.
Pacificists are Ecological, meaning a much greater ability for specialists to create resources.
Materialists think in a Survivalist manner, their foremost concern for function means basically the same thing that it does for Materialists.
Spiritualists are Transcendant, regarding their gestalt nature as a higher form of existence. Same Unity bonus.

I also think it would work better as a 1-point since that means that they can have things that define them more than just transmission of thought.

 

[Jiav]

Authoritarian vs Egalitarian isn't that hard to think of. In Egalitarian hive minds there could be a lack of physical diversity between the different individuals (like naked mole rats) and/or multiple hives within a given empire. In Authoritarian there would be actual physical differences between castes like honey bees having queens, drones, and workers. Think interstellar eusociality rather than mono-mindedness.

Just rename the Ethics into "evolutionary specialization" and keep the boni or change them slighty. This would make a lot of sense. Some hiveminds simply might have evolved into better worker drones while others had to use stronger warrior drones in their evoutionary history or whatever. Pretty much like different ant species.