Would someone please explain to me how the dynamic hive ai creates skirmishes? How does it decide where and when and what size to put a skirmish?

Someone would have to look at the code to know for sure.. I created the original design concept, and then it was iterated from there, and the numbers tweaked based on what seemed to be working well in practice.

But from my (very vague) recollections, it's related to the expansion of the respective Hive. Each Hive grows according to attempts made to scout different sectors, and eventually spreading to other systems. Basically, things start out with an Observer, who wanders about and checks out a given sector, to see if it is dangerous and/or if resources are available there. If the observer returns successfully from a resource-laden sector, then various mining drones arrive, and so on. As time goes on, if their presence in the sector is un-interrupted, the hive presence increases to other "classes" of installation, the upper levels of which are called "Bastion" and eventually "Stronghold". These all have different ramifications to the amount of territory that they will control. Hives don't like to expand through wormholes and have their drones exposed in that way, so a big part of the Hive push in expanding into a new system is to reach a high enough level footing that a local Queen can be on-hand to manage the drones, who then bring their mined resources back to her, etc.

Similarly, the locations chosen for attack by human factions are based on parameters of hive incursion scale, locality to factional territory (like a station), theoretically the resources involved, etc. It's probably not very deep right now, but I don't remember the specifics; it was intended to be wired to more economic ramification, as we tie local resources more directly into the creation of local goods. But you can think of the heuristic as intended to represent the risk of the given faction to the hive incursion. So, in theory, they prefer to go after those hive infestations that represent the greatest military or economic risk.

But, in reality, things have also been tuned over time to make for a good "spread" of available skirmishes as well. It wouldn't do to only have huge, high-level skirmishes with nothing for players to do that are looking for smaller engagements. So, it creates a bit of a manageable spread of options. All factional victories still have the same meaningful result in driving back the hive, but their choices may not always be strategic.

For that matter, simply attacking the hive on your own, and wiping them out of a sector has the same basic result (albeit without all the cool mission payouts and benefits, of course), as the hive's choices are based on economy of risk-vs-reward. They will defend their territory to a certain point; but when the cost becomes too great they will prefer to retreat and start sending out Observers again. That's all built into the AI and heuristics that govern them. Each Hive is unique to its particular territory, although their rules are presently all the same. One of these days it would be interesting to tune them a bit differently.. make the Grayspace hive considerably more aggressive, for instance.

I hope that helps? Not super specific, but I can't really grab the specifics this second.

That helped a lot, thank you. I wanted to suggest another type of dynamic mission that might happen before a skirmish and I can see now that it can be feasible with the faction and hive ai's

It's cool when you happen to be hanging out in a WH sector and the hive in the last system was defeated and you see them all come through to return to the Leviathan

Or the opposite when you see a queen heading to the new system

I spot and kill Observers in Latos roid field sectors on a pretty regular basis. They always come by before a skirmish happens. So that aspect is functioning as designed.

make the Grayspace hive considerably more aggressive, for instance.
^ This would be awesome.

At least the queens seem to just respawn again in the same sectors.. even if there are no other hive sector in the system. Respawn times seem random.. from minutes to hours. Maybe the levi poops out a queen at fixed intervals or something.

The levi does poop out queens. I haven't seen it but I think it happens.
So, if you don't want the Hive spreading into your mining places, just blast every Observer that jumps in? Cool!
This is advanced stuff, I thought it was just a random number generator.

STOP RESURRECTING OLD ASS THREADS

There is a mechanism that prevents threads above a certain age from being replied to by anyone outside the PCC; I'm sure the devs can adjust this to whatever value they feel necessary.

Ahah! That makes sense. I'd always wondered why the Levi was always so cranky.

Seriously Inc, if you bother to read this, it might be an idea to tone down the npc battles in the small and common skirmishes. IMO these missions are more intended for newer players, but they tend to end very quickly without the player having a chance to really become involved.

In fact, with the current state of the missions, my advice for players looking to advance license, farm or make a few credits would be to skip the small and common entirely and take the Critical missions while ignoring the queen and her guards.

I personally feel bad for new players because they are given certain missions that they are not capable of doing EX: They always cry about the hive queen mission, what do the devs think the newbes can do, wipe a queens escort out single handed?

This mission is particularly non-newbie friendly because the escort doesn't follow the queen. When you get in sector, they pursue you while shouting "surprise"

This mission should be freely available for a longer period of time and allow the players to be grouped.

We are offered missions, not given them; nobody forces anyone to take missions that they are too inexperienced to handle. Hard missions exist for people who want a challenge. People who aren't up to it can just stick to the easier ones. And if they lose a few ships before figuring out which ones are hard and which ones are easy, so what? It's a dangerous game and ships are cheap.

Sorry about the Thread Necromancy back in January...