Ok, Post puny Mortals.
I have to completely redownload my media.rlb before I see the levy so I'm gonna make this thread up to waste some time -_-

Everyone's gonna have a stupid idea comin outta their butt so let's not waste the bandwidth of multiple threads per each individual thoughtless wonder... eh?

PUT ER DER!

You're lucky, Kix, I've got another 6 hours of work before I'll even be able to start downloading the update. So I'll waste some of that time by posting a reply here.

Give the Levi a docking port, and have damaged hive bots run & try to dock with it to get repaired to 100%!

Also give him repair beams (yes, BEAMS) to heal the Queens. Now that'll give yo ua run for your money.

And of course, the collectors should heal the Levy just as they heal Queens now.

*is seven hours away from downloading the patch*

I don't actually have any problem with repair beams, except that the Hive isn't supposed to be able to innovate new technology, it can only scavenge existing technology. So if there's repair beams, players (or at least, Human NPCs) should have them, as well as the Hive.

I think the smaller bots are already supposed to heal the Levi like they do the Queens.

We know the hive innovates at least some technology... the leviathan for example? Don't tell me that was designed by humans.

Levys are too easy to kill. Apparently, 2 have already died since release. :(

@Phaserlight: As per the loading screen tips, "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."

Why shouldn't I tell you the Leviathan was designed by humans? Why wouldn't it be designed by humans?

"...their own designs." Implying that they have their own ships.
"...queens cannot design new armaments..." They can not design new weapons. After all, the queen was designed to construct ships, what's to say it doesn't modify the ships it can construct? Also, the Leviathan is the created by combining many hive ships.

I interpret "their own designs" to mean the designs that they already have, not designs that they created themselves. Yes, when the Hive Queens scavange a new weapon technology, they can modify the ships that they build to use that new technology: but they cannot create any new technology themselves. I consider that to be one of the (at least potentially) most interesting aspects of the Hive.

Why does the Leviathan being formed by combining many hive ships mean it wasn't designed by humans? Humans already teday in the real world design seperate components that can be combined together to form something greater. Why wouldn't they do that in the game?

Anyway, the point of discussion here is repair beams. If the Hive "cannot design new armaments", why would they be able to design their own repair beam? And again, I'm not actually against the Leviathan having repair beams, I just don't think it should be hive-specific. I don't think there should be any technology that's hive-specific. If the Leviathan has repair beams, then there should also be human (not necessarily players, but hopefully) ships with repair beams.

Thu, Aug 04, 2005 momerath42

"The beam effect is just a placeholder, though it might be used for a little while on the production server."

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/11105

Hey... I just had a wild speculation... what if the Hive started borrowing it's technology from aliens.

I.e. the Hive contacts an alien race before any of the human factions discover them, and the first we know about it is when a bunch of new technology suddenly begins showing up in hive designs.

That would make a really cool story arc.

Earth and Beyond introduced aliens and it was cool...
This would be cooler.

I'm currently just been flying around in Sedina an it seems that the hive has taken over every "mapped" astroid field in the system. But the strange thing is, all the "unmapped" astroid fields are totally clear.

So I guess the hive has the same map as the rest of us, with the known astroid fields on it and it just expands to those known astroid fields instead of searching all sectors for astroid fields and occupying those if it finds one.

I think the hive should also try to take over astroid fields with a station near, that would be a good incentive for players to clear out the hive :D

Edit: ok, it seems there are still some "known" astroid fields not occupied by the hive...

the levi is now a pain to kill, first, it took a group of 8 players, at least an hour and 500k + just to kill a queen to FIND the levi, then, when we got there, it was like "...not the-hell worth it" quite a pain in the ass.

Once we get player owned cap ships it'll be more like.
Ok lead the queens away and give the cap ship 5 minutes.
Or it'll be like OK lead the queens to the cappy and bring the rags in.

Plus there were only 8 ppl.
That's probably the difficulty level that the devs want to have it at.
Imagine 16 players and the levy would of died twice as fast!
32 players....
etc

'solo-killed my first revised Hive queen in a Sedina sector today... *much* fun w/all the aerna seekers, healing bots and assaults/guardians looking after their queen. The queen's improved dodging tactics made her seem more creative in combat. AND I love the reward of a sector emptied via the queen kill.

While I did lose a few ships learning the queen's revised(?) behaviors, I think that she should be a little harder to kill. Considering that she dragged only a few assaults/guardians with her when I lured her out into open space, she was easy pickings.

Suggested Changes:

1) give the queen a limit to how far she'll stray from her collectors and guardians;

2) if the queen continues to follow players far into open space, provide her w/more guards and an extra healing ship;

3) hmmm, i'll think of something else.

Thx Guild for your efforts to improve the game.

Getting bots to stay in an area or stay with a bot they're set to defend is *very* high on our priorities list. Its not quite as simple as it sounds, and a couple weeks ago we set out to do it the Right Way(tm). The right way involves a complete rewrite of the low level AI, and Andy will continue to work on that, but we're also going to do it the kludgy way for the short term. This is because the bastions and strongholds are far too vulnerable to the lure-them-away tactic, and also because it will allow us to make working npc-escorts for traders (and eventually players) and make lots of mission ideas we have possible. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know its coming Soon(tm) ;)