I was thinking about how it sounds like the remaining old Hive shall all be gotten rid of after the new Hive is entirely in place (all 3). When this happens, newbies will still need a way to engage only easy bots for initial combat practice and, in general, combat practice hunting specific bot types without specific locations will be rather silly/frustrating. I suggest that each nation's home systems' barracks have a set of combat practice missions that are much like the current tutorial and TPG test pilot missions: i.e. you take the combat practice level [x] mission, it tells you to go to some empty sector to kill [y] bots (combat practice should tell EXACTLY what you will face, even if it is a variety), and said bots are produced and sent by the nation you took the mission from. If you leave the engagement sector, you have to start over.

Examples:
Beginner Combat Practice Level 0; info = Engage 5 Orun bots, 1 at a time. ...
Beginner Combat Practice Level 10; info = Engage 5 Valent Assault bots, 1 at a time.

Advanced Combat Practice Level 0; info = Engage 5 Orun bots simultaneously. ...
Advanced Combat Practice Level 10; info = Engage 5 Valent Assault bots simultaneously. ...
Advanced Combat Practice Level 15; info = Engage a new Hive Bastion alone. ...
Advanced Combat Practice Level 20; info = Engage a full Hive Stronghold alone.

Group Combat Practice Level 0; info = Engage 2 waves of 3 Orun bots per player. ...
Group Combat Practice Level 10; info = Engage 2 waves of 3 Valent Assault bots per player. ...
Group Combat Practice Level 15; info = Engage a new Hive Bastion together. ...
Group Combat Practice Level 20; info = Engage a full Hive Stronghold together.

[stamp of approval]

Specificity is good.

Indeed. I fully agree.

"One of our scouts has recently captured a small number of rogue mining robots (often collectively referred to as 'the Hive'). These bots have been reprogrammed to lower aggressive tendencies and remain in <system>, sector <sector>. You may practice on these target drones until we deem you ready to fight Hive encroachments into our territory."

Newbie sectors and specific tutorial missions will be driven by "target drones". Once past the target drones, users will then have to begin scouting actual Hive enemies on their own. I think the plan is similar to what you're proposing, except we aren't going to call them Hive bots at all.