I've been taking part in a couple of levi hunts in the last few days and most of them ended up pretty frustrating. Even with large groups the shields seem to be extremely hard to crack.
I think the original design for the central skirmish was that a group of 5-7 people was supposed to be required take it on.

We only managed to drop the shields once with some luck when we had like 13 people. I don't know what has changed but it used to be possible to take out the levi with four.

Often swarm hits didn't register or were delayed due to lag and when you are constantly under fire from bots it makes coordinating the group pretty hard. Also anyone who can't get swarms is pretty useless cause only they deal enough instadamage. Okay stingrays do .. but they fly at a different speed.
We also tried it with energy-only a couple of times and got pretty close to dropping the shields with a group of eight or so.. but only when the bots didn't interfere because the levi was spaced out.

My suggestions would be to lower the shield recharge rate somewhat and increase the shield strength instead. So that even if not all missiles hit at exactly the same time they'd still contribute to the damage. It'd also make energy a bit more viable.
Could the bot respawn time also be increased? So that it's possible to clear the sector to some degree. IIRC originally that was possible. Right now they seem to respawn instantly, which makes them really anoying and probably increases lag.

I agree completely with this assessment. The Leviathans have become nearly impossible targets.

I concur with Spuck that shield regeneration needs to be cut (by at least 50%) although I would retain shield strength where it stands. The escort bots are also problematic, a respawn system such as with other sectors would be nice, where bots respawn all together after a set time limit, not nearly instantly, and in ones and twos.

Something else that adds to the difficulty is the fact that the levi can fire through roids. There is litteraly no place to hide behind a roid to avoid fire.

Completely agreed. I've been on quite a few Levi hunts... most end in the frustration of people just leaving the group.

Agreed; the Levi shot straight through asteroids.

Dunno.. the shots aren't that hard to dodge if you keep some distance. It just looks kinda silly when they go through rocks.

The last hunt actually seened to go a bit smoother. I think we cracked the shields with 6 or 7 rags. But without the mission active.

It just seems like scaling difficulty with shield recharge charge rate is a bad idea. Because it mostly effects how well you have to time the attack and not the firepower needed.

agreed

The shots are extremely hard to dodge, especially if you are in a heavy ship. Agreed completely, because I remember we were in a group of 8 bombers, perfictly stacked shots of swarms and gems, it only dented the shields to 82% at best. This is, I believe, due to the sector lag generated by the enormous amount of effects that are present in the levi-sector. I think that something should either be done about the sheild streangh regen, or, the server lag issue.

As some of you have noted, Michael has made some changes to HS tonight, specifically the rate at which bots will respawn. I'll be interested to know how this impacts things for you guys.

It's possible that the cluster server is being overloaded, but based on a glance at our monitoring data, it doesn't look super likely. But, it is a possibility, and we have some other logged data that could tell us a little more. We'll check it out.

The Leviathan has not yet had the whole "compressed texture" treatment, which could significantly reduce memory usage on the client. This could, in turn, help with "lag" situations that are entirely client-side, and result from texture thrashing or insufficient memory bandwidth.

The shots-through-asteroids thing is an inherent side effect of making shots move quickly, and server-side collision detection accuracy (and limitations thereof). If I made the shots move more slowly, I'd have to make a lot more of them to keep them threatening. If I made a lot more of them, they'd be far more intensive.. both on the client and the server. The "lightweight but dangerous" option is beam weapons, but that's extremely hokey as it results in insta-hits (even if they're, say, greatly toned-down beam weapons that don't do a lot of damage). That basically eliminates any possibility of a pilot to avoid them, which is.. stupid in a game that's based on piloting skill (I only use beams when I really have to). So.. the current Lev shots are a tradeoff of a less than ideal situation, and I'm not sure how to improve that without making another (more important) situation drastically worse. But, I'll think about it.

Lastly, while perceived inability to damage the Lev may be related to a collision issue, it can also be related to the inherent game design.. namely that the Queens need to be killed beforehand. Are you guys sure you're taking out all the supporting Queens? Keep in mind, the Hive doesn't just expand in the main system, but also the two systems on either side. If I recall.. the supporting sectors directly impact regen rate, so hitting a still-supported-Lev with perfectly stacked swarms could still only do a small amount of perceived damage (due to the insane regen, and the fact that shields are quantized to 16 positions over the network.. so the display is not super accurate). Ie, it could look like exactly what Kierky is seeing, and have nothing to do with "shots not hitting", but rather just the Lev's support strength.

As far as Michael is aware, we have done nothing that would cause the Leviathan to be any tougher than it was a year ago. So.. if this "difficulty" has increased, we're a bit mystified.

And, if anything, the server performance should be better, as the Lev battles are run on a dedicated, high-performance multicore machine.. no longer mixed in on the general cluster with a zillion other random sectors (any one of which may suddenly use a lot of CPU for some reason).

All prerequisites have been completed to destroy the levi.
Yes, this means all the Hive Skirmish missions, the surrounding queens in the stronghold, and yet fail to do any real damage to it.

Yeah .. the queens were definitely dead.

The hit beeps are delayed slightly and I see missiles go right through the levi.. that doesn't seem like an fps issue.

I pretty much gave up on the levi after the shield bugs were fixed .. so this may just be new to me. The strongholds really got a lot better over the last year I don't see ships jump all across the sector anymore.

Maybe the production queue thing will help. We usually made the bots bug out before attcking the the original levi.