Lmao I'm not sure what combination of mods is causing this behaviour, but I became "friendly" (now Cooperative lmao) somehow to Hivers quite early on in my playthrough (probably because I've been kicking the *** out of a laundry list of human factions who Hivers are all Vengeful to) and the Hivers let me dock at their planets. Not that I've abused this feature until quite late in the game - I'm 8 cycles in so I didn't abuse it for easy cash early. Maybe it's Starpocalypse, Nexerelin, or whatever mod gives you +faction relationship when you win impressive victories?
Glad I didn't abuse the trade margins early... Hiver planets have extremely low Accessibility scores, so you can make killer trade deals by buying up the insane commodity surpluses and running them wherever there isn't a surplus (planets with deficits are nice but not necessary to secure profits). I just went from nearly 0 credits (developing 5 colonies at once will do that to you) to 3.5 million quite quickly.
You don't even need to directly betray humanity to make killer profits. Just sell to the Black Market for any planet they capture to make incredible profits.
Militarily, I like the balance of power they're at in my game. I'm running with 12 or 13 modded factions (thereabouts? lost track) and the Hivers do send plenty of invasions but they regularly lose or get their temporary holdings in the Core Worlds wiped quite quickly. I think they did succeed in 1 or 2 satbombings, but only on weak markets (poor Rust Belt RIP). Their core territories are intact - countless invasions get sent, some succeed, but they never hold the planet in question - but I did see one planet get decivilised because it got bullied too much. Still, in an 8 cycle playthrough they're holding really well. Chozanti is currently surrounded by 5 Persean League fleets alone and more faction fleets are on the way, but nevertheless the Hivers are remaining steady. A good balance.
In battle, Hivers weren't what I expected (I fought a few 300k+ bounties). Point-defense is of course extremely necessary due to the high number of battlecarriers, but their ships are a bit more... slow and elite, instead of fast and numerous than I expected. If you're not using an overwhelming number of fighters that EMP Emitter system half of their ships have will rip them to pieces, their energy weapons are extremely efficient and they have armour basically equivalent to 1 ship class higher - so I found an early game UAF frigates + carriers warband was very ill suited for facing them. Ballistics did poor damage and just got armour-tanked, fighters couldn't survive the approach or land serious damage. Despite their lack of raw forward speed (compared to say Pathers, Remnant or Mess swarms) they're extremely maneuverable, so trying to flank them was just worthless and they're extremely deadly in a brawl. Survival came down to "run, shoot, don't get caught".
That was early game. Later, I've found Hiver ships are not particularly resistant to bomber salvos or missile ships. A cursed Astral I salvaged was the perfect "f*** you in particular" to wipe any Hiver ship off the board at little risk to the bombers (EMP Emitter can't 1 shot them all if they just get recalled before flying into range), and a ship with a strong long-range alpha strike (like UAF's Purcellyra) wipes them off the board. The only trick is that whatever you hold the line with needs to be really tough. A very feast-or-famine faction.
The rewards for fighting them are good - the weapons alone covered the cost of repairing ships, let alone the bounties. Comparable with fighting Remnant then selling the Gamma Cores to Tri-Tach actually. Compare that to fighting prv Starwork's Agni (as much pain or more, but the weapons are worth very little) and the Hivers are an asset to the player even if they're not allied to them.
