This belongs somewhere between bugs & suggestions so I'll park it here.

1)The queens escort is still broken because a) they do not attack unless attacked b) they forget they were attacked if you jump out of and into sector c) when they respond it can happen after several very easy kills.

2)I like the new AI the escort seems to have in defending the queen and staying close to her. However, they need a greater range and some of the old agression / group attack that the old AI had. From what I experienced, they are easy to pick off under the current restraints.

I suggest lengthening the leash for the queens escorts to be between 1500-2000m from the queen. Vary the distance different ships will venture so that they tempt a player in and surround them.

Improve the frequency of queen drops. After that much dangerous work (well it should be dangerous work if it worked right :)a player should have a reasonable expectation of something fun.

Improve the frequency of queen drops.

I'd like to add, improve the frequency of leviathan core drops. I haven't seen a single core drop in nearly fourty kills. Also, leviathan sector bots do not attack players not in HS missions.

+1.

+1

And bring back hive gat drops. Why were those removed in the first place?

+1

Curious, I was about to post about it... Sorry for kidnapping your OP, but too much related for another topic:

Near ideas, but 4 additions:

1. Add a small pack of assaults to the escort court, these with the much larger "range" (2 or 3 Km) and aggresive behaviour (attack anybody I hate, instead of respond to fire). These would be an addition to existing escort court, almost as an advanced sensor for the hive. To reach the core defense, must kill these, what alerts the main defense. Or be faster than them!

2. Make collector bots be homed in queen. They go out, mine and dock back to queen to deliver ore. And immediatly leave again., in 5min waves. When someone stalks collectors and follow them, he should be able to see them dock to queen.

3. Make queen require ore to produce court bots. I.e. Queen must be mining or receiving loaded collectors to produce escort bots. And will produce escorts until complete its defense, then start producing more collectors.

4. When in sectors without roids, make the queen chase small ships when any hive bot is attacked in sector. They are big and nasty 'mothers' defending their offspring. But keep remaining of escort AI as is, resulting in the queen attacking the player while her escorts remain weapons cold. If he shoots the queen, escorts engage as now.

The hive should have logic faillures. They are bots programming bots, each have a single objective in its existence. Those in escort court are programmed to defend the queen, not themselves!

b) they forget they were attacked if you jump out of and into sector
This seems ok for me, since it is just like a temp-KoS from Hive nation.
The queen is not a combat-focused machine, but a bot factory. It focus in acquiring the ore to produce the hive, mining herself or via collectors...

"4. When in sectors without roids, make the queen chase small ships when any hive bot is attacked in sector. They are big and nasty 'mothers' defending their offspring. But keep remaining of escort AI as is, resulting in the queen attacking the player while her escorts remain weapons cold. If he shoots the queen, escorts engage as now."

The overseers should do the chasing, as the main guard dog. The queen doing the chasing would be the equivalent of a bee queen actively defending the hive. The queen is more important then all her escorts and fighters in the system combined. Thus the queen should be strictly defensive, much like she is now, only she should shoot when fire upon..

+many for the rest of the ideas, all of them.

The idea was to create an illogical response, weirdness... the queen responds to attacks, and you cant't attack if or the whole hive hunts you...
(also reduces number of changes, only change one NPC behavior)

So, first you must engage the assault "dogs". Doing so, the queen stops mining and chase player, so stop respawning bots. If player leaves, she resumes mining and replenish her court.

It has been suggested/implied that the overseers are the brains of the hive and the queens are simply factories for ore processing and bot manufacture.

Queens should remain as is (except possibly rearming them).

If overseer then coordinated attacks based on attacking force.
.....A. Entry of any non hive bot - dispatch of observer
.....B. Entry of player - either
..........1. Assualt group dispatched.
..........2. Gaurdian group dispatched.
.....C. Entry of known Hostile - Full attack

If no overseer then random or individual attacks.

I do agree the Collectors should actually dock with the Queen eventually. They should also all return if the Queen is attacked or when the escort falls too low.

To modify PA's idea:
there should be no difference between a reaction to a bot and a player, also player re-entry rests aggression.
A)Assault group is dispatched upon proximity to queen(~2000m)
B)Guardian group dispatched upon either destruction of assault group, or close proximity to queen (1000m). guardians break off if distance is increased over 1000m.
C)strictly defensive behavior by queens. Overseers attack if queen is hit (including random shield hits)

Good to see ideas evolving...

Queen defenses become layered:

***** Queen
<500m Overseers (Respond only to queen being hit)
<1km Guardians (Respond to any hive bot destruction)
<2km Assaults (Aggressive hunter, up to 3km while chasing)
sector Observer (spread around, one approaches anything entering sector. If killed, alarms hive)

and the Collectors/Transports flying the route Queen---Jump point. And docking to Queen to deliver ore.

Makes no sense that we wait 5min for a collector (and transports) depart into queen, it jumps towards it and vanishes... Make them actually reach the Queen, dock, unload and depart back.

And what about replenish rate for queen's court? Tie the production to queens' mining+collectors dock?

Actually I feel the bots should remember aggression for a few minutes

The only problem I can see with bots returning to the queen is that all the static hive that has to dock with the queen makes for some heavy traffic, considering there's one queen and usually a hole ring's worth of collectors. This issue resolved, my vote is for Alloh's last post.

AFAIK, when no one is present, sector is suspended... same applies to collectors' sectors. So no traffic when no one is there to see.

Also, it is not required that "*collector X-1234" to leave a mining sector, and same X-1234 to dock to queen, allways. It would be cool to follow the precise bot until it docks, but not required. Just add a few random collectors' traffic in static queen sector.

Remember how space was empty, and now we enjoy the convoys' traffic? It brought some life to universe... There should be a heavy traffic to/from the rogue queen. That is why the collectors are collecting... ;)

By the way, WHY "STATIC" queen? Not a proper name. I prefer ROGUE queen...

Simple solution for too much traffic: add more queens. There ought to be enough queens in a system to support the number of bots.

right, devs..we have here a pretty neat solution to make the hive feel lively. please make it happen

re: static - refers to the hive type - not the queen itself.
ie: a rogue queen of the static hive.

The traffic would in fact only exist when the sector is active and an ongoing mining operation would in fact produce heavy traffic to the queen. The only part that could not be "faked" would be the bots near the player when they jump and only if the player follows.

@Pak
Ok, but since the hive is expanding if undisturbed, retreat when attacked and queen changes location, the "static" attribute seems not proper. What about "Rogue Queen from LOCAL hive"? Even Dynamic Hive is more proper.

Back to OP:
* IF ((no player present in queen sector) AND (players>1km from collectors)) THEN it simply warps away, as now.

* IF ((player(s) present in rogue queen's sector) OR (player(s) closer than 1km when collector jump away)) THEN Collectors should "complete the delivery", i.e. the collectors jump into queen sector, dock to queen and depart back. Even if it results in waking queen's sector thread.

Miners and newbies hunting most likely will be further than 1km, since jump point is 3km away from roids. If a collector is being pursued when it jumps away, the game engine should consider it a "queen hunt" and enable collector traffic.

Just think the whole concept of collectors, and it results that the queen sector should harbour heavy collectors and transports traffic, to/from queen.

We're talking about one active sector, is it such impact over servers? Just like the improved convoy traffic gave life to stations and made universe more interesting, same should apply to rogue queen sector.

Devs? Plz manifest?

The static hive does not expand ,grow or change in an way Alloh.

Only the three DYNAMIC hives change.

Then why that when you kill a queen, ion storms in that system are cleared of bots?

Er - Alloh you are talking about a dynamic hive queen - not a static one.

Aye, that only happens when all the critical HS missions in a system are completed.