The hive should attack stations in greyspace and in nation space, excluding capitols. They should first send an observer that won't get attacked by NPCs and can only like be killed by players. If the observer survives for 5 minutes, the hive will send one rogue queen, guardians, assaults and overseers. The strike force would come to help fight them off and if the hive isn't defeated within 15 minutes capships would come to aid. Attacks are more likely to occur in greyspace and are more likely to attack the furthest nation space system.

When a station is under attack a new mission called "Station Under Attack" should appear in the same system as well as neighbor systems.

+1 I saw a video that showed this happening before. I'll go find it.

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edit: here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_RutxxkNmU

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edit 2: I think they should be sporadic attacks. The attacks will be random. Sometimes they won't even be attacks, just collectors looking for additional resources to mine. No mission needs to be added, as shooting anything (including hive) in the nfz will trigger nfz violations. Players will just get a message to stay in the station. The hive incursions will just add more flavor to galaxy.

We already had this implemented?

No. That video was clearly a bug. If you look closely, the hive were spawning from the station. But it is a good example of how cool battles look near the station.

I also agree that the confusion of sanctioning a mission that might trigger NFZ violations isn't good - *IF* bots are ever implemented for this, could they be modified to restrict themselves to some space away from large objects, or design "zones" that limit where they could be found?

I'd rather see the NPC rats again attack the stations in grey. Maybe the hive sticks to nation space stations?

I look at the NPC rats being a tougher greyspace version of the hive bots. The hive bot attacks and NPC rat attacks would follow the same mechanisms, the queen being replaced by the trident and the bots by the deadly raptors.

Or is that a new suggestion? :p

I don't think rats attacking a station would make much sense because they are pirates and humans so they would know better than to mess with a station's defense.

I'm pretty sure thats EXACTLY why they'd attack - us humans aren't the smartest :P

From what I saw, the rats were slaughtering the "station defenses" back when they used to attack them. Greyspace stations don't have turrets, which makes it quite easy to attack them.