Is Evolving Research Factions free?

Yes. Evolving Research Factions is released under Open Source / Community and costs nothing. Neither it nor Naev has any paid content.

What do I need to run Evolving Research Factions?

Naev, which is itself free. Evolving Research Factions is an add-on and will not run standalone.

The PlayBound Launcher installs it in one click from Naev's mods list. You can also install it by hand — full steps are on this page.

Roughly 25 MB, on top of the base Naev installation.

Yes. The source is published at github.com/ThrosturX/naev-evo-genome under Open Source / Community.

Evolving Research Factions — Free Naev Mod · PlayBound