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Hives Expanded Standalone Armor, + Hive Military Upgrades

DOES NOT REQUIRE HIVES EXPANDED

Adds all the beautiful armor from Hives Expanded, without the other big changes that mod adds. Makes all of it craftable, distributes it to some of the western/southern hive NPC's, and rebalanced the armor to be more in line with vanilla.

I moderately expanded the western and souther hive's militaries, making sure to be much more restrained than the original. Some squads have more guards, soldier squads are led by captains (who have better equipment). More important squads (in key locations, or in response to you killing/imprisoning their queen) have are buffed a bit more (mostly in squad size), and the royal guards personally protecting the queens have the largest buffs (only a bit higher stats than vanilla, but far better gear). No OP praetorians, nothing coming even close to the insane retaliation waves in the original.

A handful of armor pieces can be found in certain shops or as drops for people who don't want to base build/craft.

Buy hiver notebooks from the Western Hive and their caravans to build your own paintable hiver armors. This research unlocks all the standard hiver armor.

Western/Souther variants have blueprints with their respective factions, with their own looks and slightly altered stats (West = more protection, South = more aggressive).
Western Hive blueprints found occasionally for sale in their shops.
Souther Hive blueprints drop in their Armoury.
Lost drones from both factions have their old hive's color scheme attached, so you can use them to color armor.

Black Carapace variants are a bit better than all the rest, so their blueprints are very rarely sold at the best armor/blueprint vendors across the world. A full set of armor drops off of one specific character...

I recommend "Head Protection for Hive Soldiers and Skeletons", as I included rattans/iron hates for some soldier NPC's, but it isn't necessary (they just wont equip it).
NOTE: I'd recommend avoiding using Hive Soldier Armor on the same character as a helmet, as the soldier armor includes a helmet without using the head slot. I can't make it disable the head slot, so if you add a helmet it'll look weird and be overpowered.

I personally use alongside "Hive Soldiers Expanded", but it isn't required.

Fogmen use all their armor/weapons from the original mod without changes. I didn't add crafting for these, but I might eventually.

UPDATE 3/28/25:

-Fixed black carapace blueprints not showing on the crafting list
-Adjusted the balance, the differences in armor between hive/south/west sets were too small compared to the other combat stat bonuses/penalties.

UPDATE 3/29/25:

-Added very small chance to spawn a recruitable Lost Southern Drone. They can only be found close to the southern hive (royal valley/nearby regions). Can be a prince, soldier or worker, with workers being the most common. Even when they spawn, running into them before the locals do is another issue altogether.

-Doubled the chances of slaves in markets being southern hivers. (Vanilla is like 1 in 1400, so even doubled its still extremely rare).

-Occasionally the southern hive will raid one of their neighbors, even if the southern queen/skeleton bandit leader/skin bandit leader is okay. For how warlike they are, I found it strange how they never even did even small scale raids on anyone unless these leaders die. Doesn't happen often, and the raids are smaller (and target fewer factions) than if any leaders die.

***If people hate these tweaks being included in the main mod, let me know and I'll make a seperate release.***