Hunting queens is one of the more ineteresting aspects of the game. I do, however, have one suggestion. Hunting queens is also very expensive if you use ammo. Since there is no cash reward for killing the queens and/or their escorts, how about making the loot stay longer so I can make a few trips back to a station and retrieve all or most of it. Some of the loot brings a nice price in a few places.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think you will soon find that you won't be having to haul all that loot yourself. The Hive behavior is about to change and you will be unlikely to be able to kill one solo anymore.

As an example… Last night I'm on the test server and found a lonely queen flying in a roid field by her self. So, since I had nothing better to do I started to attack her, and got her down to about 15% with a pair of Gauss MkII's and all of a sudden I get hit from behind by 5 arena seekers on suicide runs right into me. Was quite surprizing! Managed to dodge the first round on homing bots, but the second wave got me bad. =) Can't wait for the update!!!

Sweet. I just solo'd 2 queens in a rag and thanks to the splash damage, took them down at the same rate. I only died once from lag and just docked and repaired.

Before that I also took a queen down in a centurion II with a neut II. Didn't die either.

I'm glad the queens are harder, and I hope that they are worth something now when we kill them.

/givemoney Devs 2c

Queens at the test server can be killed solo, for the moment at least. Martin proved this... yesterday?

I'm not sure if you know this, Margoth, but for everyone's sake, I'll mention that the Hive is only in Sedina. Everywhere else the bots are as they've always been. If Martin killed a queen in a bastion by himself, I'm really impressed. It takes me a while in an invincible superbus with 10 gatling turrets, given all the bots trying to heal it.

Martin is martin ;).

That's cause your a n00b Momerath :)

I actually soloed 2 queens in sedina on the test and almost got a third but got a bit greedy.

Was this before or after the other bots were changed to repair the Queens & Leviathans, Martin?

After. It would have been about 2 days ago.

It's rather simple, shoot the queen a few times to get it's attention. Drag it away from the other bots while killing it's close escort. Once you reach a reasonable distance and have killed the escort kill the queen quick before it's seekers and repair bots get to it. I used a rag with flares and megaposis.

Ahh yes, another example of why we're working on better low-level bot behavior mechanisms. Bots won't be following you away blindly for long:)

Aww damn, I was enjoying that. :P

Even so, the loot they drop seems to last a shorter time than most. In my opinion, it could still stand a lifetime increase.