Forums » Bugs

Hive missions entry point

Mar 21, 2013 vanatteveldt link
The last time I went hiving was a year ago. I think this behaviour is new since then, but maybe I wasn't paying attention.

[It could have been reported already but forum search didn't give any useful results. In fact, forum search doesn't seem to be very useful atm.]

Problem: If you take a hive mission and jump to the sector the first time, it seems that the sector is in some sort of "initial state" with both fleets just warping in. This has an aesthetic and a functional problem:

1) it is strange/RP-inconsistent to see this every time, even if the mission says "the battle is already underway". Also, I can understand the human fleet jumping in to battle the hive, but the hive is already supposed to be there. Finally, if the human fleet still has to jump in, I would expect the mission to say "join the fleet outside and follow them to the hive", instead of the fleet "emerging" in the hive sector.

2) once in so many jumps the player jumps right in with the whole hive fleet, even bumping into bots on the jump-out, and coming under immediate attack by a lot of the hive bots. One could say this is fun (or Fun), but I don't think it is intended. I suppose the number of entry points per sector is limited?
Mar 21, 2013 tarenty link
Sectors are unloaded after fifteen minutes of player-inactivity to save resources. You are witnessing the servers loading the sector and introducing the bots.
Mar 21, 2013 bottom_feeder link
I like the idea of joining the fleet in an empty sector if the mission sector has been "unloaded", once you get there they send you coordinates and you head off with them to the sector under siege. I have no idea if this would be an easy or difficult fix for the devs.
Mar 22, 2013 abortretryfail link
I suppose the number of entry points per sector is limited?
Far from it. It actually depends on where you're coming *from*
Mar 22, 2013 vanatteveldt link
I understand the causes, but I still think this is a bug. Not a game-breaker, but it certainly makes the game feel a lot more artificial than needed.

As a fix, I would suggested "powering on" the hive sector once a player takes the mission, the minute or so the player needs to jump to the hive sector should be enough to get some sort of nice spread. If the player takes the mission but doesn't go there, the 'cost' is leaving a sector running for 15 minutes...