My vote is to make the hive stronger and more sprawling (invade more than just three systems). The Serco and Itani hives would still be available for newer players who find things too difficult in Greyspace.

This is not an issue of rats vs traders and so on. The hive affects everyone in the game. I don't care if someone solos the Levi. I care that there is no hive for everyone else including me...

As I tried to communicate earlier while making the levi harder is possible I don't think it would solve the long term issue. Theres simply not enough Hive for everyone that wants to interact with it.

Perhaps a better solution would be to restructure the hive so that it expands and exists based on the queens instead. The levi in turn could spawn when all adjacent sectors have a queen for an hour or so... Killing the queens would still kill the hive and weaken the levi but would also regenerate much faster and evenly in all the sectors.

Or just make the non levi mission not disappear after it dies? Then you'd still have plenty of hive to shoot at. This would also make grey storms more scary.

-1 for making existing grey hive stronger.

It takes a lot to master if to do it solo, and very time consuming too. Sometimes it is hard to get group of people together for the same prolonged time, due to time zones and etc.
Well done to people who mastered it to do solo, but I think if you make it harder more, you would risk loosing peoples interest all together.

+1 for more hive.

Perhaps reserve something stronger for later content. For example stronger hive could drop something for Capella manufacture.

"As I tried to communicate earlier while making the levi harder is possible I don't think it would solve the long term issue. Theres simply not enough Hive for everyone that wants to interact with it."

Perhaps you missed the part where I asked for the existing hive to be bigger, to occupy more than just Latos, Sedina, and Odia. Let it spread out through all of Greyspace. That solves the "not enough hive" problem just as well as an extra hive would. Also, note that I'm not asking for just the Levi to be harder. I want the overall hive to be harder. In Greyspace, anyway.


"Well done to people who mastered it to do solo, but I think if you make it harder more, you would risk loosing peoples interest all together."

Untrue. There are currently three separate hives in the game. One is in Serco space, one is in Itani space, and one is in Greyspace. The Greyspace hive could be made more difficult while leaving the other two hives the same as they are now. People who find the Greyspace hive to be too difficult could just go fight the Serco or Itani hives instead. If anything, making the Greyspace hive more difficult would increase interest. What do you think is more interesting: a game where all stages have the same difficulty, or a game where the stages become progressively more difficult?

How about a new end game NPC all together, make it look like a giant squid and call it "Kraken"

-1 to changing one of the VERY few ways for a group of players to smowhow make an impact on the whole universe for a few hours until everything resets to where it was again.

The Leviathan is supposed to take all the Hive down with it when its killed. I think the OP exaggerates. The Hive are absent very rarely as very few people kill Leviathans. Most of the active players today are mobile and most of them aren't even capable of taking on a Leviathan.

Let a few veterans have their fun with killing Levis. We're just waiting for new content... Otherwise, the universe functions as it is supposed to.

Sorry but having latos hive missions only twice in two months was not intended by the devs imho nor was it intended for the levi to be solo'd.

I don't want to take away solo levis as it is an impressive accomplishment Nor do i want to destroy the ability for players to be able to rid the sedina area of hive activity. Adding a second hive in my opinion would improve the levi availability while still allowing the hive to be removed for a while.

I can also point out that some may want the sedina area constantly clear of hive activity to make their journeys safer which is somewhat contrary to VO's no place safe policy. Grey space is not meant to be safe for anyone - not even pirates.

BTW - When I say toughen the hive I mean things like activating the queens guns, increasing the armor and fire power of the assaults more then upping the levi difficulty. The levi as far as I am concerned is plenty hard eough.

Also the kraken idea is kinda kewl but deserves its own thread,,,

I do think based on my observations that the hive presence in Latos is pretty weak and has been for as long as I can remember. It wouldn't hurt to buff this a bit. I'd also like to see it expanded to more systems.

It wouldn't hurt to let the outer hive start start re infesting sectors sooner. After all, the survivors have to go somewhere.

I don't think the 'safe' argument is very strong because in my experience getting caught in an ion storm with dynamic hive tends to not be very dangerous when compared to static hive.

Maybe a more aggressive transient hive without skirmishes that must be hunted by greyspace exploration. Maybe station attacks or a hostile presence in ion storms or worm hole sectors indicate this hives proximity. Make them mean. No collectors. They are wasps where the conventional hive is a honey bee. Perhaps they are hostile to the hive as well harvesting resources from its destruction. It would make a good story if not game content.

Maybe a more aggressive transient hive without skirmishes that must be hunted by greyspace exploration. Maybe station attacks or a hostile presence in ion storms or worm hole sectors indicate this hives proximity. Make them mean. No collectors. They are wasps where the conventional hive is a honey bee. Perhaps they are hostile to the hive as well harvesting resources from its destruction. It would make a good story if not game content. It also represents hive interactions in nature and a artificial lifeforms will have the same darwinistic constraints.

make the small non critical skirms contribute to the local system queens shields so that people have to kill them too.

I really feel like it used to work this way, i remember doing lots of those skirms to get the crits bombable but it may have been almost a decade ago by now.

I love the idea of a gypsy hive traveling around.

The hive in Latos is rather weak unless your in a loaded moth and jump in close to the hive... :}

SO devs, Hows that graph of hive activity in latos looking?

Why are Hive in Latos so important to you? Do you hope for the skirms to be provided by TPG and Orion and if so: Why? Doing procurement is faster to up that standing.

I can't think of any other reason to want them in Latos. Skirms in Sedina and Odia work just as well for farming Nodules, exp. or whatever else you're out for.

Because thats the way I roll Sieger.

Besides Latos has heavy Denic Deposits and two rather important stations as well. The hive has a vested interest in keeping filty human traffic supressed and preventing the loss of all of its ore.

AND.... what life or VO without a few challenges?

PS... My gold wall is pretty aint it?

One way to make the gray hive harder is to simply make targeting real players a priority. Right now the hive mainly ignore players and duke it out with the AI pilots, making it simple enough to just sit back and pop the stragglers. If the Hive actively targeted real players, it would make for much more interesting battles. It would also help with roles like tank or medic. The tank jumps in, tries to get as many hive as possible targeting him, then the medic and support jump in and rep/pop the hives.

Anyway, just a thought. Right now the hive skirmishes are not very hard, due to the fact that the AI targets the other AI, even when a player is present.

Like I said above, my experience throughout the decade I've been around has been that the dynamic hive in Latos has been pretty light compared to other dynamic systems for all three hive breeds. I'd say it at least merits a look from the devs. It could simply be perception and that Latos gets more attention from other players as an explanation for the low mission count there.

+1 to another grey hive. We all know and love to repeat the mantra "greyspace is dangerous" but once you figure out how to avoid storms and can engage the hive on your own terms it loses it's "oh god we're all gonna die" feeling. IMO, the milnar hive should send out squads of 20 or so assaults and guardians with an overseer to maraud in wormhole and station sectors. This should not be limited to just the dynamic hive systems, but to all of grey and perhaps even into the edges of nation space (although the turrets would make short work of them). There could also be convoys of hive transporters hauling materials about in grey with escorts. Where does the Levi get all that stuff to pop out queens every 4 minutes anyways?

Stronger/Scarier hive sounds fun. Maybe make it grow back faster?

-1 to buffing the Levi though. They're already hard enough to kill because of stupid crap (lag, targeting glitches behind roids, etc).

Travel in Grey space storms is almost safe at this point. Dropping into a storm should cause a pilot a measure of genuine fear. Not yawning.

Perhaps we need more mine fields?