Ok i think the leviathan is havin issues. I logged into the game and wnated to see some levi action after takin it down to 25% last night almost single handedly. Well I found it in A5. I was in a vulture so I just wanted to do a quick fly by and see what its current health was. Well I did just that. I flew in, didnt get closer than like 500m and the zoomed out. On my way out of the sector to get a bigger ship I turned around to watch the bots follow me cause i think its cool. As I was watching tho the levi just all of a sudden blew up. I mean completely and entirely. Then of course the rest of the bots proceded to blow up due to that. What I cant figure out is why it exploded randomly like that. Bug, feature, DEV work?

I just wish I had gotten a screenie. I was too amazed to think tho.

Oh wow. I'd love to have seen that.

IMO It was scared.

/me gives Big Mike the key to Sedina for scaring the leviathan to death.

hahaha.....im glad you think so highly of me

/me takes key and runs

Not to ruin the good mood or anything but...

I can think of two possibilities:
1. Current "Hive Instance" had to get cleared off the server for one reason or another (Not that likely)
2. The Levi got rammed by every other bot in the sector when you zoomed by with them all chasing you (Pretty likely, happened a lot during the testing phase I think)

Well Im not sure what caused it. Ive done it alot. Zoomin by that is. And Ive never see that happen. I mean the thing was at complete full health and then boom. And it didnt just dissappear it boomed. It exploded.

Bots don't ram things anymore. At least, I haven't seen any do so, and I did some funky maneuvers in Serco space with defbots on my tail, testing just that.

Can even a whole squad of bots ramming the levi make it just pop like that?

I assure you, bots still ram things. And no, you can ram the leviathan with every type of ship from every direction and it won't hurt it at all.. and then you nudge it just the right way and it explodes. It's the wingbug x100000, and I still don't really understand it. Some numerical instability in the collision response that we've never been able to adequately capture. Maybe it's easier to reproduce with the leviathan than with the vulture but I've never had it happen on purpose.

I just know that it was cool to watch the Levi insta-boom lol.

Well, during the last futile attempt at killing the Levi, me and Gammel each had 2 queens and their retinue following us, and by leading them in circles we got the two sets of queens to collide QUITE a bit. It was funny as hell, and I think one actually died from the constant bonking.

Big fun. Try it sometime, peeps.

heh. a1k0n, I've wing-bugged my own frigate to explode tons of times (yes, I was trying to do it) in hogs, rags, and vults. I've done it to serco friggys and itani friggys too...but its harder cuz' you're getting lazered, and you take damage from hitting those, you dont from you're own frig.