No Longer Human-Belter Race Pack

Okay, we're doing "slightly human" with this one. Slightly.

The Belters (or the Blemdoin, as they know themselves) are a new space mining-focused xenotype that's much older and much more common throughout space than most of my races, which canonically are really only consigned to rimworlds. For my past few mods, you may have noticed a trend of me experimenting with simpler designs, and these guys were sort of the perfect opportunity for that. I'm really happy with how they turned out, honestly.
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The Belters were designed solely to mine out and inhabit asteroid fields in the early days of galactic colonization to essentially kill two birds with one stone-whatever planet was the "host" to a Belter enclave would have way more money and influence in their star system due to the Belters constructing massive "hives" of interconnected asteroid husks.

Due to their traditional way of life in cold, cramped spaces, they don't do well in the heat-or in open spaces. Starving adrift in the void is the most common way for a Belter to die by far. Those that managed to survive inevitably passed down a healthy fear of space to their pups, and now most among them can't see very far without things getting blurry due to spending most of their lives in one-room space habitats.

And yes, I said starving out in space. You see, for their line of work, the Belters had to be made to be completely vacuum-safe-they do have their drawbacks, but they don't need a vacsuit. It was cheaper for the first true star empires to make something that can withstand the vacuum of space with no protection than it was to make vacsuits for the easily hundreds of thousands of Belters they would seed across their star systems.

Away from the belts, in the gravity of a rimworld and its orbit, many Belters find work as deep-space salvagers or contracted miners-terrestrially, their skill can match that of Dirtmoles or other mining-focused xenotypes across space. But in their element, they're in a league of their own.

Genetically, Belters are...all over the place. They share DNA and overall diet with hippos, but traces of multiple different dog breeds were also found in the Belter genome. Their drastically overdeveloped frontal bone causing their trademark bulging, bony forehead seems to be a spontaneous mutation unique to them. Their massive ears fulfill the same role of an elephant's-mainly to regulate heat, but also imbued with the sensitivity of a canine's ears. The Blemdoin truly are a curious sort, indeed.
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Why a space mining xenotype? Well, why not? We needed one. Starjacks, ironically enough, came with a nerf to the skill that'd be the most used in space for some reason. Seeing as Starjacks have a mechanic that debuffs them when on the ground and buffs them in space, it was easy enough to double mining speed on a xenotype when in space and give it the great mining gene. Them not needing a vacsuit is also a huge help during Odyssey runs, although both of these are offset by a lot of clever, passive debuffs that make sense for something that lives in an asteroid to have. They're hippo people with a hippo's lumbering leg structure, which isn't too bad for something that doesn't really need to move around much in spaces with gravity. Same with them being nearsighted or undergrounders.

I really don't like how Starjack just annihilated 3 different stats. That's not how you portray something adapted to the conditions of space, albeit for these guys it was much easier to envision how something would be adapted to their very "niche" way of living when compared to Starjacks who were the generic, jack-of-all-trades space people.

I also really wanted to make something more endearing and ugly-cute after the absolute nightmare spawns that were Regellans...this also sort of connects to me wanting to make something more base-game friendly for once. Even Yttakin had a sort of chibi cute factor, and a lot of my races lack that aside from some types of Lahlit.

This is also why I decided to name them an exonym in the pattern of most of the base-game races to show that they were more prevalent in space than the Yttakin or Vodyan. Dirtmoles, Wasters, Genies, all the races that are literally everywhere in the galaxy canonically are more often called by exonyms rather than their own name for themselves, and Belters are sorta continuing that.

So yeah, cute squishable space people that yearn for the mines. That is all.