hives and dyson spheres

[gpauley]

I'm busy building my sphere. I've colonized and shielded all planets in the system. I killed the swarm hive in the system. But the swarm keeps planting new seeds in my system.

1. Will the new hives attack my sphere when they get close enough? Does it matter if they can't mine any of the planets in the system (as they are all shielded.)

2. Is there a way to either prevent the swarm from building hives, or a way to automatically attack new hives? Having to constantly remember to go to space view and check to see if there's a new hive is a bother.

Thanks.

[dhitch89]

Hives need planet relays to send material to them to build ships, so if all planets in-system are 100% shielded, they can't grow into a threat there unless there's still relays on-planet.

Moreover, they can't attack anything but Icarus or space forces he deploys (if they got too close, or the threat meter builds up). Hives can steal a fraction of energy from Dyson sails/shells just by being in-system, but that's it at present.

^Though do note, the space side of combat/Dark Fog is currently incomplete. So for the time being, manually dealing with hives/seeds is the only option, though that's likely to change in the upcoming update we're currently waiting on.

[Coops]

1. No. Dark fog will not attack a sphere.

2. New seeds take a really long time to get to your system. I don't think they even use warp.
Its more likely that you did not fully destroy the original hive. All relay stations have to be destroyed. If not, they will get together where the hive was and start rebuilding. Sometimes its hard to see them unless you get right up close.

[gpauley]

Originally posted by Coops:

2. New seeds take a really long time to get to your system. I don't think they even use warp.
Its more likely that you did not fully destroy the original hive. All relay stations have to be destroyed. If not, they will get together where the hive was and start rebuilding. Sometimes its hard to see them unless you get right up close.

How exactly do you kill the relay stations? I can park my mech on them in space and nothing happens. As near as I can tell it is impossible to attack relay stations. (Well not impossible, if you get them near enough to a planet with ground based armament you can do it that way.)

It is also hard to tell how long until the next seed will get to me. Within a few minutes of killing a hive I see the new seed on it's way. If I hover the mouse cursor over it I see it's 13 LY away and will arrive in 59 seconds. Right now, experience tells me, that "seconds" means 1-5 minutes. So the new seed will be here between 1-5 hours from now. :P

[Ghulmeister]

the time means the amount of time it would take YOU to warp to the seed, its not meant to say how long the seed will travel. you can totally track down the seeds before they reach their target system and destroy them safely.

seeds usually take hours to get from start to their destination.

[dhitch89]

Originally posted by gpauley:

How exactly do you kill the relay stations? I can park my mech on them in space and nothing happens.

For the moment, Icarus's only means of non-turret attack are it's own souped-up mining laser (ground-only), any ammo he has fitted inside (also ground-only) and combat drones (some of which are for ground combat, but others are needed for space combat).

^At least, to my knowledge.

[gpauley]

Originally posted by dhitch89:

For the moment, Icarus's only means of non-turret attack are it's own souped-up mining laser (ground-only), any ammo he has fitted inside (also ground-only) and combat drones (some of which are for ground combat, but others are needed for space combat).

Hmmm, I can't shoot the relay stations in space (with Icarus). Like I said I can park Icarus right on top of the relay station. I click the station, nothing happens. My destroyer's and corvettes don't deploy, etc.

I figured devs just made it impossible to attack relay stations because the results (early game) are so disastrous that they didn't want new players destroying their games.

[dhitch89]

Originally posted by gpauley:

I click the station, nothing happens. My destroyer's and corvettes don't deploy, etc.

Well, AFAIK, you don't click anything.

At least, not before you go into combat mode (default key: Z), and the drones then auto-deploy/attack what enemies are in range. Otherwise you're just in the default 'mode', where you're only able to build/deconstruct stuff.

[josmith7]

Originally posted by gpauley:

How exactly do you kill the relay stations? I can park my mech on them in space and nothing happens. As near as I can tell it is impossible to attack relay stations. (Well not impossible, if you get them near enough to a planet with ground based armament you can do it that way.)

By default the game is set not to attack relays (presumably to avoid prematurely calling down orbital attacks by angering the hive).

In order to attack them you need to bring up the space combat sidebar (IIRC the Z key will do that) though if you're on a planet at the time it'll bring up the ground combat sidebar instead; to switch to space you need to look for the text that says something like space fleets -- it'll be up near the top of the sidebar -- click on that. It doesn't look like a button, but it acts like one. One the space combat sidebar, also up near the top, should be an empty box with text saying something like 'attack relays' next to it. Click to box to check it and now Icarus and your corvettes and destroyers will automatically fire on any relays that are in range (whether right over a planet or in space heading to/from a planet)




Just be careful with that setting if you're trying to farm dark fog. If you leave it on and anything causes your space forces to be out while you're on or near that farming planet they'll wipe out all its orbital relays - -causing the bases to all run out of power and stop producing units for you to farm.

[gpauley]

Originally posted by josmith7:

In order to attack them you need to bring up the space combat sidebar (IIRC the Z key will do that)...

Bless you! :)

[Twister]

If the hive orbit in a way that can get it close to a planet (need to be <0.2AU when nearest), you can build a array of plasma turret on the planet, use your space force to lore the hive to attack and your plasma turret would help in shooting down those attacking dark fog space fleet. This is the only way I can get my ground turret to help on eliminating space dark fog.