Several players report the following, which I confirm with tests in sed H1. 20:50 gmt

Take a HS Critical mission to H1 , a small group of xx bots is formed , no hive is spawned , nothing happens.

Enter H1 without taking the mission and the XX bots attack the player , even if they have good XX standing .

Aborting the hs mission while in sector , XX bots just ignore the player .

Seems to happen in all types of HS sector.

Ecka

I got killed by an Orion bot in an HS storm sector while passing through about about 11:30-40 CST this evening. I had high +900-range faction at the time. I believe it was in Latos L-3, if that helps.
Denji

Edit: It was 05:46 GMT that this took place.

Just did a ion storm hive mission in Odia J-8 at 00:11 CST. No kills registered, nor any bots shooting back. They all were bugging out at like 3000 - 4000 meters for the most part. (common hive mission btw, ion) Not attacking anything either. ?

Common hive mission, Odia J-11 00:32 CST, kills registered so of.. no weapons bonus. After killing a few AK's no other ships from the hive. Hope you guys sort this one out quick. :)

pretty sure this is fixed now

I was getting new weird Hive behavior.

In several missions, the contest was bizarrely unbalanced. The "number of ships left" on each side would be even when I took the mission, but would drop so fast that the Itani side had won before I even arrived.

Then on one mission, the Itani ships were only hanging in space. A small number of hive bots showed up at a time to attack me, and my friendly npc's were completely unresponsive.

"Gate Jumper"

Yea- we discovered another cause for the problem last night. Let me know if it happens again (or has happened since 3am this morning).

Observed 1900 -20 00 GMT , wed .

The level of aggression of the HS Serco bots is so high that the mission ends in a couple of minutes . Seems to be the same sort of high agression that is seen in BS bots .
Where there is a Large or critical mission the player is now targeted by 5 hive bots , whereas it used to be 3 . Manageable , but not comfortable ....

This is similar to that observed by gatejumper

Reason for the rapid "human" victory seems to be that all spawns take place in more or less the same area of a sector. This means that the weak and slow oruns get devoured by NPCs almost immediately after spawning. The hive are unable to reply in kind since the Centaurs are fast decently armored, and therefore able to leave the furball quickly. In missions where the astroid belts are some distance away from the fighting the battle lasts significantly longer. The few oruns that do escape the furball are usually not later engaged by a passing NPC. Seems this wasn't a problem before since in the previous targeting AI Oruns were virtually ignored.

[Edit - The last post about AI's being dysfunctional got me thinking:] I think that on the test server, or some experimental server, that the devs could implement an AI allow surviving Hive and NPC bots to return to a queen or station after a battle. The bots survive would combine their AIs with each other (i.e. male/female bots) to create slightly different versions of the AI, which would then be assigned to instances of new bots. In a few generations, perhaps we'd see much improved AIs. Players wouldn't be able to compete any more, but it would be fun to watch.

Just kidding. Mostly.

OK- the rapid human victory problem should be fixed, as is the players not taking the mission being attacked by human npcs bug.

And yea- we'd love to implement a genetic or other adaptive algorithm for the bots- eventually.

I'm not totally sure about this but it seems like if the queen of a bastion is killed between skirmish missions a new mission with only friendlies and no hive bots is posted.
The remaining hive bots also don't leave right away in that case.

Shooting the queen of a bastion even when the shields are down doesn't seem to cause the other bots to target you. That makes it possible to kill it without being bothered.

The attack range of those helmans that are guarding the queen is less than 500m ... most guns have a higher range than that. Even if they are in attacking mood it's enough to keep a distance.

There is currently a stronghold in rhamus b3 but no skirmish for it.
The first time I entered the sector the allied cap ships were on their way out.

Hive skirmishes are registered as completed in the mission log when you get kicked for friendly fire.

The bastion in initros b7 had two queens.

I have come across that a couple of times too mr S . The original random queen sector spawning is still in place, so that sometimes you find both a traditional and a HS spawned queen in the same sector . Interestingly the two behave differently , the HS one mines and the other potters about randomly .

I'd be tempted to say leave the random queen spawning in place , adds a bit of random oddity .

I think this one was different. Both were mining and none had that cloud of bots defending it, like a non hs queen would have. One was defended by four overseers. They both had stronger shields than normal queens.

I guess the serco guys could have distracted or destroyed the defenders.. but that doesn't explain the other things.

hive shields in strongholds act all weird after destroying a couple of bastions. they discharge after a hit instead of recharging..

may have something to do with those bastion queens that have stronger shields than they normally have. It seemed to happen after I blew up one of those. I'm not totally sure about that though cause I blew up another one before checking the levi.

Hmm, That may have happened to me yesterday , say about 1800 gmt .

I was trying a few HS missions in dantia , about 20 HS missions were showing in station for dantia , rhamus and initros . The list included 5 or 6 bastions spread across the systems .

I finished a HS , docked and the entire HS mission list vanished as if the levi had been killed. I popped over to rhamus and confirmed that the levi had been killed , apparently by the serco npcs , since there were no other players in the vicinity.

I'll have a go over the weekend and see if I can reproduce this, or at least observe it happening .