Why are we being asked to kill the bots we're being asked to kill?

As a L1 pilot, I'm being asked to kill a bunch of mining bots for target practice. These are the bots that mine ore for our nation; why destroy ours? Why not destroy theirs?

Why not send us after the weaker hive bots?

Elsewhere, there's a mission that says that some orun collector bots are malfunctioning. But I can bring in any bot core -- there's no indication as to which bots are malfunctioning.

The more I do these, it seems, the more I should be sabotaging my own nation.

Seems ... wrong.

What rationale am I missing?

Why not kill hive bots?
Why not kill invading foreign spy drones?

They are rogue bots, it's explained a little bit in the loading screen tips I think.

Well, to begin with: this is not a suggestion. I'll move it to the General forum.

Secondly, the bots do not mine for any nation. They've gone rogue and formed their own hives.

Isn't this explained somewhere in official documentation in/out-of-game?

However, I do remember an RP piece that I found interesting, it details how the Hive came to be.

Here it is, Jex Kerome's Take on the Chronicles of Exile Author: jexkerome.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/h/storyline.html <---Read

^ Read ^

EDIT: Not sure it includes the Hive, but read anyway. The fifth tutorial explains about the rogue Hive.

The backstory doesn't mention the hive.

There was mention in the loading screen "tips" way back when:

***DISCLAIMER: Incarnate disavowed some of the tips. Apparently Waylon wrote them and put them in.***

"The rogue AI hives are a constant nuisance for travelers. However, they've literally transformed the mining industry into a scavenging industry, as collector bots make easy prey.

AI hive bots and their queens were the predominant mining tools of UIT corporations for over 200 years. In AD 4217, a configuration glitch caused the first hive queen one to go rogue.
Hive queens were programmed to balance fleet production against cargo shipment, but when one was launched without a shipment destination, its fleet production went crazy.

AI hive queens are particularly adept at scavenging technology and integrating it into their own designs. Thus, while the queens cannot design new armaments, they've borrowed from 200 years of human innovation."

There was a discussion around Luis' scavenged-look bot models which seemed to lend credence to the tips about how they acquire technology.

The wiki makes some references http://www.vo-wiki.com/wiki/Hive_Queen

Wasn't this explained some in a few of the tutorials? The first one to come to mind is the one where the player must "escort" a Teradon while it scans uhhh... empty space... and talks about its life story.

Tutorial V, that is, Shank.

a mission tree expands on this and you actually see some go nuts and they attack you

Just shoot the damn things.

I am aware of mission 5 that was "protect this ship from the hive" / "What's the hive?" / "A bunch of mining bots that went independent". (And yes, I read the backstory).

I will double check, but I believe the mission for the Oron collector bot cores says that some of our mining bots are misbehaving, and wants some of the cores brought in for examination.

This implies that the Oron collector bots are, in fact, our collectors, and while some are working for the hive, most are working for us.

Or put it differently: Which mining bots are our mining bots? And if we wanted to raid the enemy, which bots are the enemy peons/peasants/SCV's/drones/etc? And if we wanted to protect our economy mining from enemy attacks, which are the bots that we protect from enemy attacks?

Or is it that this entire concept isn't in the game, and can be added?

Even without a full dynamic economy, if mining bots fail to return to mining colonies, they might treat it as a lack of supply, and raise what they pay to independent miners. And killing these helpful mining bots would affect faction standing.

Edit: Whoops! Newest update actually seems to take this into account! Now the hives are being grouped separately, with different names.

EDIT 2: Yes, "rogue drones" specifically says that the Oron collector bots bring minerals back by the tons, and only some of them seem to be misbehaving.

Regarding distinguishing nation bots from other nation bots and hive bots - isn't that what the colored names are for? I.e. Serco bots would be red, like in CTC. If the names aren't red, blue, or yellow, then they're rouge. That's how I've always seen it anyway, but I could be wrong.

*facepalm*

no one ever reads the damn intro's anymore

If you look at Capture the Cargo, you will see that uninfected bots are of the same type as the hive bot and retain their nations ID. This is something that will hopefully be better developed across all three nations in the future, mostly for continuity and aesthetics. At the moment, there isn't a lot of reason to have separate classes of bots.

To be honest, I would expect to see hive type bots involved in the border skirmishes for their respective nations since many of them are clearly combat specific- though I really don't want to see the border become just an extension of hive skirmishes.

If its faction is "unaligned", it does not belong to your nation or any other (conquerable station guards and turrets show as unaligned, but belong to the station and attack people who are not welcome there). You're destroying them because they are territorial and aggressive; they're a threat to human miners and traders.

wait a minute, you mean those bits of text in the loading screens aren't there anymore? since when?