Arcology

An arclogy is a massive man-made structured designed for the purpose of serving as a densely-populated, self-sustaining habitant for its residents. The Mikaeans are perhaps the best known builders of these structures in recent memory, with arcologies found on every world colonized by the Mikaeans. Given the high reproductive rates of the Mikaean species, arcologies have long been determined to be the best method for housing the ever expanding Mikaean population, which on even the least populous worlds of the Xyon Directorate, often span well into the hundreds of millions to even tens of billions of individual Mikaean residents.

Construction
The construction of an arcology is a massive undertaking requiring an equally massive amount of manpower, resources, and economic capital. The average ten kilometer tall arcology which account for 70% of all arcologies produced by the Mikaeans, take about 25 years to build and a quarter of a billion Mikaeans working on the structure. The larger fifteen kilometer arcologies take more than half a billion Mikaean workers and forty years to build. However, these larger arcologies are only built to serve as administrative centers, therefore cutting back on the resources often required to build them. All households seeking to build an arcology must first notify the central federal government on Xyon, who supplies the permits for the arcology, and sends members of the bureaucrat caste to overseer the construction effort to ensure that all standard regulations and procedures are followed to the letter.

All arcologies are constructed using noirium, a strong and durable metal which serves as the standard building material of the Mikaeans. This gives all of the arcologies a sleek, steely black finish found on all Mikaean buildings, and is resistant to extreme heating, frost, acidic damage, and is self-repairing, cutting back on all but the most serious maintainance costs. Each arcology has a creche which is built at the second-lowest level of the structure, just above the anti-matter power plants for the arcology at the bottom, providing warmth for the eggs and children living in the creche. As for the power production, each arcology has four massive anti-matter power plants which provide all of the energy required by the industries, defenses, shielding, and living needs within the arcology. Failsafes exists within the power plants to ensure that the structure isn't compromised by a mechical failure. So as to cut back on costs, the power plants are the first facilities built to provide the energy needed during the construction of the arcology.

Defenses
Because of the vast population, industrial and economic output, and military bases arcologies possess, they are natural strategic targets for opposing forces during times of war. Therefore, the Mikaeans ensure that all arcologies constructed by their people are defended with the best weapons and technology available to them. As a rule, attacking an arcology with the intent to destroy it is considered a war crime in the eyes of both the Mikaean government and the Mikaean people. However, such a belief has never been universally held by the patriarchs of the households, who often order their forces to attack arcologies, though so as to avoid earning the ire of the Mikaean people and giving rivals a legitimate reason to attack them, houses tend to avoid causing arcologies too much direct harm during battles near them and punishing soldiers who ignore such protocols.

Shielding
Almost all arcologies are equipped with void barriers, which draw upon the power generators within the arcology itself. This prevents the potential for sabotage of a planet's power sources, which could effect the arcologies as a result. Thus, arcologies are generally self-sufficient in terms of their shielding needs. However, some houses typically skimp on the shielding for their arcologies, or install them as an afterthought only after all potential space for both the shielding and the power generators have been taken up by other facilities. This typically results in the shielding being built outside of the protection of the arcology and its defenses, exposing the generators to attackers. However, this does help a house build a much larger and more effective shield generator system for the arcology with the free space outside of the structure itself, a risk many households deem worth taking.

The most important arcologies in the Directorate, such as the Obsidian Heart on Xyon, home to the federal government of the Mikaean Directorate, and the administrative centers for both the houses and the planets themselves, are equipped with some of the most advanced and sophisticated in the known galaxy. These arcologies themselves are massive compared to the atypical arcologies found thoughout Mikaean space, and therefore require extensive shielding just to provide the bare minimum protection needed for their size. However, the houses building such constructs usually tend to put their best members and their leaders in these massive arcologies, and will spare no expensive in ensuring their protection from all attacks, and therefore find and equip the best void shielding they can get their hands on.

Life in an arcology
Arcologies are home to billions of Mikaeans, giving rise to a packed and claustrophobic environment for the average resident of an arcology. Life in an arcology is thankless, with all Mikaeans from bureaucrats to laborers, deemed as expendable assets to their households, who's only labor in life is to live and die for their household. Mikaean wake up each day and go to their designated work sites in the industrial centers at the lower end of their arcology, where they toil for ten hours before they are sent for to rest up for the next day's workload. Sleeping quarters are packed from end to end, with small twin-sized beds which Mikaeans in the more densely packed arcologies must share with another Mikaean. The dorms which they reside in house up to 84 individuals each, though with the use of matted floors and extended bunks across the wall instead of individual beds, a single dorm can house a total of 142 Mikaeans instead, leading to a truly claustrophobic environment in which most Mikaeans quite literally have to sleep on top of one another.

In extremely rare cases, some worlds may be so overpopulated, the the leadership for the planet must begin with the process of overhauling their arcologies to be equipped with Stasis Chamber Pods, or SCPs. These devices can hold a single Mikaean, providing all life support functions vital to the survival of the individual within, and keep them alive for years, decades, or even even centuries if need be. With SCPs equipped, the population of an arcology can balloon to the tens of billions, with some Aleph-class arcologies boasting populations greater than sixty billion residents. However, many patricians avoid this practice, seeking to instead push for the construction of new arcologies or the colonization of more worlds, as they and others believe that the normalization of SCP usage could result in a slowdown of colonization, and permit the population of tens of thousands of worlds to explode to heights even the Mikaeans have not yet witnessed.

Because of the nature of the Mikaean caste system, Mikaeans are often barred from leaving their place of residence, meaning that the majority of Mikaeans never see the outside of their arcology. There are no windows for the dorms, meaning that the bulk of Mikaeans must sleep in giant rooms with a hundred plus individuals each night without ever seeing the outside world around them. Though members of the bureaucracy, intelligentsia, and soldiery live in generally less claustrophobic environments, there is only a slight difference. Even they must put up with sharing their dormitory blocks with dozens of other members of their caste, making privacy an alien concept for the entire species. However, it is for this very reason that crime is almost unheard of between Mikaeans living on a level of an arcology. Since everyone knows everyone on their floor of the arcology, crimes committed against another Mikaean on the same floor is impossible to conceal.