At long last, the Kourier-based Hive is ready for testing! There aren't really any player-visible new features; our goal was just to be 100% free of the broken Deliverator infrastructure (which we now are on the test server).

The Hive and HS mission needs tuning in terms of numbers and types of ships on each side and expansion behavior; feedback on that stuff is welcome, but I'm mainly interested in undiscovered bugs. There are also a few areas I mean to polish and minor features I intend to add, but the critical components are all there.

There is currently just the one Hive in Sedina (and sometimes Latos and/or Odia). I'm currently seeding the random number generator with the same thing each time, so the Hive starts out in the same place and the initial HS missions are posted in Corvus stations (since they are closest to that starting place).

For those new to our test server, you get there by entering "test:" (without the quotes) before your username when you log in to the game. If your password isn't accepted, it's probably because we haven't mirrored the database to the test server since you signed up.

Well, we've already run into a new, rather annoying bug that crashes sectors. If you get disconnected from the server in an HS sector, that mission will be broken- you'll need to go get a new one. I'm working on a fix now.

edit: Ok- the crash is worked around at least (mining bots wont drop what they should atm).

thats gonna be the first thing i do when i get home :)

Works great! Just a few bugs:
• Leviathans move as soon as they're spawned, so they become really hard to locate after a little while.
• Killing ships on your own side will give you rewards.
• Killing ships on either side after the mission is over will give you rewards.

Thanks slime!

1) Fixed the rewards for friendly kills (it also warns/kicks you- I just hadnt noticed it rewarding)
2) Did something that might prevent a situation where rewards would continue to be given for a brief window after the mission ends (only enemies now because of fix #1), but I wasn't able to reproduce the problem.
3) I'm supplying the same parameters when creating the levi as with the code in production, so I don't know why it would be moving any more than normal (which is a bit more than it should)- I'll look into this tomorrow.

Going to sleep now:) I hope to have some more reports when I wake up:)

Notes on Hive skirmish.

Small for the sector I first took was not accurate. Two queens, gobs of others, and two friendly tridents (Nice Touch). I aborted the mission and noticed that there was at least 5 other hive missions for the same sector. I did some more looking and found as many as 15 missions in the same sector in one case.

[Cap ship inclusion notes:]
If you are going to put in tridents, then you should put the auto-repair/refill LUA script as a standard check box option. As it is now, the cap ships will repair and re-load like a station, but only if you have the LUA script as there is no menu way to do it. Unfair advantage to LUA users.
As part of the FF redux, you should look at having collision damage taken off as a type of damage that changes the radar from friendly to hostile. It is almost impossible to dock without bumping into a ship, and thereafter making it appear, and possibly be hostile to you.
[End notes]

I did not join a group, and did not get to see the endless "*so and so joined your group" messages. I think it would have a better feel all around, if your hunting group spawned from the staion, and formed up to follow the player around while they look for the hive, kind of like the current escort missions do.

Rewards did not seem to be giving any hive success completion. I kept getting combat, but no money, and no "good job" messages. I suspect that this was because there were in fact multiple "hives" in the sector, and did not manage to find the right bots to get the proper rewards. The reward conditions should be changed to cover all hive bots in the sector, not just the ones you are currently on mission for.

If this is due to hive moving, and the job is to actually hunt a specific group around the system, then some type of indicator of target for the mission needs to be defined. Otherwise it will be impossible to find the actual hive you are supposed to be taking on. Perhaps the target queens ID, or some other piece of information can be included in mission notes.

Sector started to lag really really badly. Too many drops. Some options:
Limit on max number of floating drops somewhere around 50ish, with no further drops until those decay or are picked up,
or after 50, the first ones created decay as new ones are dropped,
or much shorter life expectancy on crates should be looked into.
I would restrict this to kill drops, and not effect jettisoned items, although those would count toward the cap.

They hive bots seem a bit strange. It could have been the lag, but the bots seemed to "forget" about me right in the middle of a fight, fairly frequently. Strangely enough, it made the battles much more interesting and more fun. Just when you got into a pattern, the bugger would change direction, and turbo off after a different target. Actually made them seem more alive, if a bit crazy.

I really liked the fact that the hive started to feel like it was actually doing something, like orun collectors that were collecting.

I tried again with a sector that only had 5 missions to it, and it ended up being in an ION storm. I think any hive missions in a ION storm should be marked as such, or not happen. There is no way that with a bunch of backup friendlies and with scouting that the mission control would not know they were sending you into a storm. If they are going to exist, then there should be a higher level of rewards for those missions without storms.

Finally found a group of missions with less than 8 missions for the sector, and headed off (Mission ID 500433 if you want to look at logs). Found a Queen, and killed it. My trident, and a pile of other ships, both hive and friendly, took off. The sector got quiet. Only observers and collectors, (Still collecting) and one or two wounded guardians and assaults. Stuck around and cleared the entire sector of hive. Mission did not end, and I only ever received notifications of basic skill upgrades. NPC Friendlies remained, looking rather bored. Aborted at station, and there were still 7 missions for that sector posted, including 500433.

Suggestions for bot behavior:

Well my big picture suggestions are at this link:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/17447

I know now that Incarnate had a total ecology work up that can be found here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060621053122/http://design.vendetta-online.com/wiki/index.php?title=Hive

That said, his work up did not cover in depth the section in my posting on behavior triggers. The closest he came fell under "Needed AI Changes". That was not very detailed.

One thing I would like to add to the behavior options from my post above, is protecting the queen. Under most cases, (see Passive, Sitting duck, and Coward in my post for exceptions), a threatened queen should summon just about every hive bot in the area to deal with the aggressor. In non-hive missions this is handled by there being a swarm that follows the queen with attack anybody I hate orders, however in the hive missions, queens seem to be very much on their own. Some level of threat assessment should be being done by both the hive and AI NPC bots, to identify the most important targets and concentrate their activities against those. In this way the mission focal point should be trying to guard the trident, and take out the queen, rather than just "kill X bots".

Hope this helps.

I had a go this morning , It all seems to have jammed up now . I took hs in k9 , killed large numbers of hive .

The reward was just weps xp , and the sector just kept filling up . a numbr of longish ( 20 secs) lag spikes were observed . After about an hour I docked and tried to abort , could not do so . Logged out and back , took a very long time to get back into the test server .

Given that the above posts were yesterday it would seem that something is causing the problem over a period of time , the sort of things that happened with escort missions in the early days .

Anyway , good to see hs back and into debugging .

Ecka

Here's my experience of the new hive.

Huge numbers of hive bots, which caused serious lag, but looked really impressive:

http://www.glendale.org.uk/~sam/hive/dump0047.png

And lots of what appears to be long distance mining:

http://www.glendale.org.uk/~sam/hive/dump0050.png

samuel: I removed your image tags since the images where overly wide, making the page need horizontal scrolling, if you could scale them to a more reasonable resolution, feel free to re-add the image tags.

Thanks PsyRa, Ecka and samuel.penn! I'm fairly confident that I fixed the cause of:
1) too many bots
2) bots not doing anything/drifting w/ mining-beams on
3) multiple missions per sector
4) no reward/never-ending mission

For anyone who cares, these were actually all caused by the same race condition when both sides of the mission decide to abandon the sector at the same time. If anyone runs into one of these problems from this point, please let me know! (sector & time)

Also, the HS mission is now removed from the menu when 80% of the allowable loss threshold is reached so that you shouldnt run into the immediately ending mission thing (this may need tuning).

I'll respond to the various suggestions in a new thread as soon as what we've got now is working reliably.

Wow, I'm really missing this game more and more. If I ever find my schedule clearing up (not likely) I may have to find a way around the firewall at my apartment, and sign up for a month or two!

Also, looking at the "Long-Distance Mining" picture reminds me of a point I made ages ago that this game needs some beam weapons. Seriously, they're realistic, and think how cool they would look!

I think you over fixed it.

I have checked twice 3 hours apart, and no hive missions in any Corvus station in either Sedina or Odia.

Even checked the Xi stations, nada.

Sector A-10 and C-13 however had gobs of Hive in an ion storm.

Sectors A-11, B-12, and B-13 had the Hive with no Ion storm.

When I entered B-13 for the first time, I saw lots of Hive warp in animations, as if I had just woken the sector up.

None of these sectors had any friendly NPC's like they used to before when waiting for players to take the mission.

Hope this helps.

Sorry- I forgot to copy part of my fix to the test server but everything appeared to be working at first so I didn't notice. It resulted in missions not being posted, though. It's up and working now.

Actually, now I've got a new strange bug causing station sectors to crash. I'll post when that's fixed.

Fixed. Everything is working as far as I know.

Had a play on test: . Took the mission in h 10 worked very well .

A couple of points , firstly the route to the sector does not appear as it used to , though if you are doing hs you should be able to navigate anyway .

Secondly , the payment of 1500 cr / bot . How difficult would it be to have a scale of payment based on bot difficulty ? Maybe as simple as payment= 4x weps xp .

Thirdly it would be good to see a wider range of hive bots involved. Anyone for furies ?

I appreciate that the rate and extent of hive spread is difficult to judge on test , but the fact that there were only two hs missions available suggests it might need to be a bit faster on the main server.

I really look forward to seeing hs on main , and the spread of a dynamic hive throughout grey and into the fringes of nation space .

ecka

Anyone for furies ?

Pick me, pick me!

Oh, wait. I can't play! Drat! :P

Tried it this morning. Took three missions one in G-10 one in I-10 one in H-10. I have to say they were a blast and the first two really felt epic. It was cool to see a Trident go head to head with a hive queen. Hard also, playing solo all three missions ended in our retreat.


The I-10 mission was in an ion storm, which got intense. I had to defend these Centaurs from waves of assaults that swooped out of nowhere. A Raptor would have been useful.

The assault bots' behavior also seemed modified, they would boost around more going after different targets rather than focusing on you until death. Swarms dealt with them effectively.

The mission in H-10 was smaller, with 15 of our ships to spend rather than 100. This one was short and sweet felt like more of a dogfight, it also ended in retreat.

My framerate suffered a little on the first mission but the last two went smoothly with no noticable lag or slowdown. These missions were so much fun to play it made me wish I still had my dual joysticks. Congratz, devs, can't wait too see these on the main server.

PsyRa: You don't need a custom Lua script to repair/reload from capital ships. There's a 2nd level subtab (ugh) on the right side of the screen that says "Repair/reload". Also, there is a heuristic where collision damage *shouldn't* aggro capital ships, but I think doing too much collision damage will still trigger it.

Um, what can I say but WOW? These missions are looking really nice, and seem to work very well. Several capital ships versus multiple Queens and plenty of bots. I think this is the first time I've seen battles of this scale in VO, and it's a lot of fun, though overwhelming.

Haven't really had a chance to test the spread of the missions, but the individual missions themselves seem to work well. The new hive behaviour of shoot a bit then fly off and find another target was a bit annoying when in a slow ship, though that's more my fault for flying a slow ship.

After a while, the battlefield looked like it needed a moth with a 'hoover' add on to scoop up the scrap.

Well done devs. I'll probably be on the development server now until this stuff goes into production.

And I still haven't figured out what Omega was using. Looked like some form of small port beam weapon.