Slitherine

Well, so far my experiences were that building units solely for capturing aliens is not worth it, especially since they seem to die on their own anyways.

So I was thinking of perhaps giving the player an option to interact with the hives in a way that players in the Colonization series were able to interact with native settlements.

The player would for example be allowed a purple tier tech called for example "Xenobiology", that would allow the building of "Xenobiologist" units. These would work similarly to missionaries in colonization - you send one into the hive. Either he dies, or the Xenomorphs accept his presence.

If the latter happens, then after some times (6 turns perhaps) the hive becomes "pacified" - it stops being agressive and the hive hex itself is treated as a friendly city for diplomatic purposes (other factions cannot attack it without war on the controlling faction). Each turn the hive is pacified there is a small chance that it will spawn a xenomorph owned by the faction controlling that hive.

Later on a "gold tier" technology called for example "Xenosymbiosis" could be researched, which would turn the "pacified" hives into regular cities and allow the player to build xenomorph units there (perhaps allowing a xenomorph queen to be build to act as a "colonizer" for new hives?).

IMHO such deeper interaction with hives would make it more interesting for the player and provide more strategic mid-to-late game options. Terra Salvum could be given some sort of bonus to hive pacification activities (since IMHO Terra is a but underpowered as a faction as it is).

Playing as Terra Salvum I had a "out of character" feeling when at some point I was forced to wipe out hives. This just did not seem right for this faction. That made me think about how to avoid this and I came up with this idea.

I fully agree about increasing the interaction with xenos, but just as with many other features, we simply do not have the resources to do them. We are now at the final stages of development, which in essence means polish and balancing. Polish could mean reworking a broken mechanic or adding more flavor for a better experience, but not adding a huge new feature.

Sorry, we'd love to do more things at least as much as you, but we can't.

If it goes well and we can make an expansion, it's definitely an aspect we will consider.

Cheers,
Rok

A good way for something like this to be implemented would be an expansion that adds a couple of Xeno Factions, one pure Xeno, the other a Human religion worshiping them.

That would allow for the various unit types with their workshop options and graphics, as well as mechanisms, techs and enfolding all of that in a balanced way with the existing factions.