Zikoan

The Zikoan are the race that destroyed their own homeworld in a war neither hemispheric power won. What survived was a warrior culture scattered into space with nothing but salvaged hulls, cybernetic augmentation, and the industrial capacity required to keep both running. Three hundred years later, they are the most feared raiders and combat crews in the galaxy — not through elegant engineering, but through overwhelming force built from whatever they could scavenge, augment, and bolt together.

Zikoan empires in Rounds are scrap-and-conquest machines. Their Metal production advantages enable fleet construction at rates that alarm their opponents early and terrify them late. Their combat bonuses mean Zikoan fleets hit harder than equivalent-size forces from other races. Their synergy with aggressive government types — Dictatorship and Anarchy — means the Zikoan player who commits to combat output early can reach fleet compositions other races cannot match until two or three ticks later.

Their research output is low. Their espionage is functional but uninspired. They don’t need either. They need Metal and time, and they are efficient with both.

Zikoan ships are patchwork cyborg warships — hulls assembled from salvaged plating, mismatched armor sections, and visible cybernetic conduits fused directly into the frame. Dark iron-red and scorched grey, with weapon housings welded on wherever there was room. They are not elegant. They were never meant to be — every ship is a living record of what it survived and what it took from something else to keep flying.

Gameplay Bonuses

Ship Aesthetic

Zikoan vessels are patchwork cyborg warships. Hull color is dark iron-red with weathered grey scavenged plating bolted over a visibly mismatched primary frame — no two panels share an origin. Cybernetic conduits and augmentation housings run along exposed seams, fused into the hull rather than hidden by it. Every surface has visible weapon housings — rotary railgun arrays, torpedo tubes, point-defense clusters — with no attempt to integrate them cleanly into the profile. Armor plating is thick, mismatched, and clearly scavenged from more than one source. Propulsion exhausts are deep crimson, stacked in uneven banks along the aft section. Zikoan battleships have silhouettes that read as salvage yards that learned to fly and fight. The distinction is intentional.

Race Selection Copy

Tagline: Strength is the only argument. Make it convincingly.

Pitch: The fastest fleet wins the battle. The largest one wins the Round.