Unless I'm running into a player, traveling is pretty much a no risk thing right now. Which makes it damn dull. Even when I end up in a storm all I usually do is groan, face the exit, hit turbo and watch the odd bot zoom by.

Hive bots have been pretty bad at catching up to players for a while, probably since beta. They never seemed to have been adjusted to the higher ship speeds that we have now. So the only players who are threatened by them can't get a fast charge or fly behemoths (XC mostly).

Since nerfing player ship speeds would probably be pretty unpopular and buffing the existing bots could screw up other stuff, I'd suggest to give the hive a new toy and plop it into some grey sectors. Something that has a chance to catch up with ships that boost at 200m/s. What I'm thinking of would be something like a supercharged tycorp. It shouldn't be all that dangerous, to avoid turning it into a convoy killer. I think the tycorp base seems to fit that pretty well.

+1 Though I suppose one could ask why the Hive wants to chase down stuff that's just passing through.

Could we get Hive hunter-killer pairs teamed with a transport of some kind, which then harvests what they run down and kill?

+1

The only risk in an ion storm is if your in an overweight moth.

While Lecters idea is interesting and fun, I'm not sure it adds enough value to justify development time, since a dead player isn't going to see their cargo taken by hive bots. Perhaps we could use our I M A g I N A t I O N? :P

No, the cargo idea makes quite a bit of sense- usually if you get killed by bots (Especially if it's high-value cargo) you'll just grab another moth and pick it up again. Perhaps if the devs can sink enough time into it (Either now or sometime in the future) you might have to kill the bots in order to get the cargo back. Either way, it's a good idea.