Just on the test server, and I was attacking a bastion (I think it's called) a roid field with a queen and a ton of stuff. I saw a blue beam (two at a time) come from the queen and heal 2 nearby assualts! (EDIT: turns out the assualts were healing the queen) Does anyone know if this also happens in the Stronghold? Does the Levi also heal queens? Is all this old news?

EDIT: Also, the few minutes I was posting this, I went back to that sector to find the queen itself had regained bout 40% of its health!

EDIT: As queen's health declined more Aerna Seekers appeared and a large number of bots (collecters and Assualts) started tailing the queen. I attacked the queen down to at most 15%. When I came back, the queen was substantially repaired and there was a lot of blue beams everywhere. Before my eyes the queen regained all its health!

Is lone queen hunting a thing of the past?

god i hope so.

Yeah. I'm doing a DB snapshot now, but after that I want everyone to try out the test server again. Minor bots (collectors, observers, assaults, etc) heal queens and leviathans at an alarmingly fast pace, so you probably need to kill all the other bots before you can even come close to hurting them.

Will the bots respawn immediatly like they normally do? Because if they do whats the point?

JB

So that's why all them bots have a freakishly large heavy weapons level!
Maketh senseth noweth.

oh snap I can't wait!

Ever since the bots have been generated by the new Hive system they haven't been respawning immediately (there are still non-hive-system bots everywhere but Sedina). At the moment they respawn at different rates (2+ minutes) depending on bot-type and type of sector (bastion, etc). Soon(tm) they'll spawn from the queen and leviathan's docking bays depending on need and resources (which are actually collected and will depend on how much territory the hive has and what type of roids).

Also, to add more detail about the healing stuff... One group of bots are reassigned to heal the Bastion-Queens/Leviathan when they get to 50% health and more when they reach 25%. At both thresholds Seekers are called in to protect the Leviathan, and some are called in for the Bastion-Queens at 25%. Healing should stop at around 75%, but sometimes it doesnt (sometimes it doesnt start when it should either- I'm working on it). The beam effect is just a placeholder, though it might be used for a little while on the production server. The rate at which healing occurs is basically just enough to make it really hard for me to kill the bot with a superbus full of gattling turrets (10). We will definitely welcome suggestions about that and other difficulty-aspects! They are all easy tweaks, but its hard to know whats "hard" without actual players trying it out.

Oh, and one more thing... the Leviathan has a different weapon now, but you wont be able to see it until we do a client release. Its big and slow moving, but it will be quite hard to dodge while you can't see it ;)

Database snapshot is done, BTW.

Hmm. I like this idea, but I still think anti-small-weaponsfire armor would be better. :P

*cough* swarms *cough*

maybe all the swarm spamming *****es will see that what they are doing is sucky when they are swarmed to death over and over and over again by the leviathan.

By anti-small-weaponsfire armor, do you mean that you think the Leviathan (and Queens?) should only take damage when the particular impact exceeds a threshold? Like weapon A does 100 damage, weapon B does 500, and the threshold is 300, so weapon A never does any damage, while weapon b does 200 with each hit?

At any rate, we should probably keep this thread about Queens healing, and suggestions should probably be made in the suggestions forum.

momerath, yeah! That's the idea I think. Same goes for cap ships. I can't wait to try this new challenge out though.

Leviathan spotted in Sedina C2 on the test server by the way! Come help killlll iiiit!

momerath42: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11056?page=2#130309

Now, how goes the IK system? Degenerated into stealing Blender's yet? :P

*counts the hours until eh can return home from work and test the new Leviathan/Queen features*

*despairs*

Oh yeah, um, we need to do a client update if you want to see the stuff the leviathan is shooting at you.

can we expect some kind of client update today/morrow or possibly monday?? Or is it still too early for public release?

I'm really enjoying this new hive behavior. I love AI, I can't wait to see what new complex emergent behaviors might show up.

You really need upwards of five people to go at a queen these days. One with a full horde will repair from 1% to full in less than 30 seconds.

Also, and I know this is a big request, when queens retreat to the stronghold, could they not bring all of their bots with them? My framerate hits the floor (~3fps) looking at a stronghold with just two queens. Forget about 6-7. Perhaps instead some user-variable distance clipping for lower-end machines?

Just set distance LOD to 1. :P