We tried the new hive hunt just a while ago and I thought I should post our impressions of it.

First, fun idea. Hunting the hive bots is pretty cool and entertaining. We're looking forwards to the hive getting even cooler in future. :)

Rewards: the weapon rewards are, as usual fine. The combat reward seemed okay to me as well. I think the standing reward is too much and could do with being knocked down by multiples - you gain standing incredibly fast right now doing the mission.

Bugs: momerath already knows the bug we saw with the leviathan warping out. There seems to be another bug where all the attacking forces are destroyed, but the mission does not end for a very long time.

Also, a very weird behaviour we saw that should count as a bug: the mission warps a very large number of bots into the sector (30ish). The thing is, no more than two bots will attack any one target in the sector. The rest will SIT, totally still, in space, until they're attacked. If a naughty attacker (like, say, me) disregards the rules of common sense and ignores her attackers in favour of the clay pigeon bots, the only bots that can withstand the first volley and react are the Overseers. Guardians, Assaults and Collectors all die before they have a chance to fight back.

Also, the proportions of the bots seem odd. Scanning the sector, the bot distribution looked something like this:

- 1 Leviathan
- 2 Queens
- 6 Collectors
- 6 Assaults
- 8 Overseers
- 12 Guardians

I'm not sure what proportion are meant to be guardians, but that looks like way too many Overseers to me. Based on Queen sectors, it also seems an excessive number of guardians.

- Balance -

Queens are way too easy to kill in this engagement. In the standard queen engagements you get instantly mobbed by her defenders (though the queens are still glitched and don't return fire, apparently). In the skirmish the attackers dribble over in ones and twos, making it trivial, comparatively, to wipe out the queen. This is exacerbated by the fact that the queens seem to hang around the leviathan, while the other bots are in a somewhat random (?) position distant from the leviathan - even if you are engaged by a defender, kill them and the next one has up to 4k to travel from the clay pigeon staging point to the queen.

The collectors being used as fighters seems wrong. Orun Collector is trivial to kill in any ship that's a match for the hive fighter models - heck, it's trivial to kill in one that isn't a match for the hive fighters. Their use as fighters also clogs up the "attacker slots", making it much easier on attacking players. Perhaps this is tagged for review already.

The invading forces are pretty pathetic. Their numbers are far too small for the battle, at least in the leviathan sectors. Leviathan sectors also should receive support from capital ships - the other ships simply don't have the firepower to effectively eliminate the Leviathan (though they can, of course, destroy all of its turrets). At any rate, 1-3 assorted fighters just cannot match up against twice their number of superior hive bots.

As a final note, please implement the shift-H help feature to show what sector the hunt is in. I imagine doing that is comparatively easy, but it'll add a lot of polish and be very helpful. Also, the mission desperately needs a progress update of some kind for the remaining hive and invading forces. At present, no updates of any kind are given until the mission ends.

I like it very much, though, and look forwards to seeing what you come up with in future.

I will confirm that Queens in Sedina do not return fire. Well, at least they didn't Saturday.

But, everything lookin good as far as the actual hive bots. Guardians are "IN YOUR FACE" again, assaults seem to hold off a bit like they should, but MAN the Overseers are aggressive! I like it, especially with 4 of them on you, but a lot of overseers might be too tough for some of these lower-level folks.

I love the fact that 5 or 6 bots will break off and chase you, instead of just 2. Good good good.

Seems almost perfect as far as difficulty, to me. Fix the queens and the hive hunt will become what it's supposed to be: a TEAM endeavour.

Nice.

Hows about you link up the Hive Hunt Mission with the PDA to display losses and status of both sides inside the Mission window? That might be a nice test for how the two interfaces work together.

Great start with a couple major problems. The most obvious and annoying bug is bots warping out of the sector.
1) At a certain point in the mission, EVERYTHING warps out of the sector. A couple minutes later, even the Levi that you had worked so hard to get down to 50% warps into oblivion, ie the nearest wh.
2) Missions don't end when bots warp out or when you suffer a certain number of casualties. They just cease to function.
3) Rebalance the bot distribution. There's way too many overseers, and the only reason a few straggler collecters should be in an empty sector is if they are delivering mined goods to the levi.

So you've got the frameworks, youguys just have to work on them a little more. On another note, can we still use the /mission bug or /bug or /bug mission or whatever command it is that reports a mission bug to guild?

-Calder

Lever, are you suggesting that 'lower level folks' should be fighting the levi in the first place?

Difficult is a good thing.

I say ramp the Assault and Collector numbers for better balance... and whatever happened to the court of 8 rule? where are the other 6 queens? We definately need more queens in the stronghold.

PS. Don't the collectors have repair capacity?

Well, no C. I was saying so in the interest of the many newb folks who go down to grayspace anyway and say "GEEZ! This is frikking IMPOSSIBLE!" then throw their joystick at the wall and quit, never to be seen again.

Might be good to make the Overseers back off a bit in non-levi sectors.

I would assume that most newbs who venture into greyspace go there because they're told to, and have had ample warning of the dangers.

Furthermore, I think they're far more likely to be wiped out en-route by the unbots than they are by overseers upon arriving.

I still explode when collectors look at me funny, so I can't speak to that...

Yeah I tried to get to grey space to meet another player. I died 4 times. 2 times getting in and 2 times getting out. I ran into the bot/pirates as soon as I jumped in or they would be waiting at the storm exit point or system wormhole and would kill me while in the wormhole when I have no control of my ship as the graphic screen shows me jumping. I would just hear the explosion sound effect on my speakers. :p