Yes, I can see the point where the hiver economy needs to be self sufficient to handle unexpected issues. The defense fleets should already be pretty strong if multiple planets are in the same system. They all kind of cluster together or hive defend. You are running administrator +1 and AI core + 1, which boosts many of these economic and military factors. I do think having strategic weaknesses in the hiver economy that can be taken advantage of, such as taking over their fuel economy and reducing their military fleets is a natural product of how nexerelin works.
The way the inter faction or internal faction economy works, they only need one world that supplies x number for their military bases to operate. So take the highest number of supplies used, and a single world can provide all of that in the faction, and that world is usually very high in population and defenses, in the center of their empire/system defense triangle. I have a lot of fun with special operations, stealthing into heavily occupied systems and raiding their spaceports, disabling them and an enemy economy. Emergent gameplay to me. Given the size of the Hiver fleets and the strength of their ships, I don't they need a redundancy of 3 or 4 worlds that have supplies +2 un needed exports, is necessary to sustain them in the nexerelin war. Especially since you can stack the worlds into all 1 or 2 systems and have them defend each other. It may decrease their offensive output fleets, but it would provide feedback that the hivers can be weakened.
I have read most of the opening spoiler quotes in the mod thread, it is simply a matter of what people see first. That is what gives an overall impression and judgment criteria. So while you should not decrease the difficulty of the hiver faction because of the feedback you have received, you can make adjustments based on human psychology. That makes the experience of the mod better for players, and it also will improve the feedback you as a mod content creator gets. Since you noted that it demotivates you to hear so many negative comment that you cannot actually do anything to change.
I have not played nexerelin long enough to game out the economic consequences of various markets going off line in the long term, like say a 5-15 year campaign of war and conquest, but consider using a minor script to code in some kind of improvement to the hiver economy, instead of having it set to the beginning to be +2 export that nobody can use, which makes their supplies cost 55 credits per on the market. I don't know how feasible this is, as I don't mod starsector code, but it will be a lot easier than trying to adjust the F1 market UI.
A simple idea would be to AI script the hiver relationship to pirates and other pirate like factions/independents, to neutral but only when the hiver systems worlds are conquered or close to losing critical markets. This would allow some trading to offset the hiver deficiencies if they have them. The hivers also need a fuel station, they are running out of fuel also and driving up their local market prices.
I just started the mod/starsector play recently, and setting this as a mid game threat by delaying invasions and colonizations was what i needed to fix the balance issue.
First off, hello there I will respond point by point but first I want to thank you for taking the time to type all this.
It is a challenging fight which needs different tactics. I think you will get better feedback on the difficulty of the mod if you put in big red letters at the OP on how to edit Nexerelin and delay the invasions. Judging by the amount of worlds and markets hivers had, and how many invasions they launched in month 4 or so of my new game, there's no way the player can do anything about them unless he has added in a new game plus with a fleet of phase ships and other stuff like aurora overclocked, like I did.
Well I do recommend using them with a modded game with at least 3 strong faction mods. I have several options with instructions on the front page as well as in a file labeled README that is in the ZIP. Also there is a player's suggestions on strategy that I copied from reddit on the front page as well. I do take your meaning however about using red as a "hey there is a lot of TLDR on this forum page but this part is super important". I will take some time this week and re-format that page, any ideas on that would be welcomed.
By clearly spelling this out as a mid game threat being added and how Nexerelin should be adjusted accordingly in the beginning post, people will not give you as much negative feedback about the "difficulty" which is more mostly about timing. Redacted are out there for players to find, but this is a pro active end game threat that finds you, the player colonies, and wrecks the local economy too.
I consider them a mid-game threat because even in a lightly modded game that is when they really become a problem. If left alone then they do become an end game existential threat. I do make that point within that layer of spoiler links but as part of the re-design I will make that more clear.
The hiver systems are so far away that their market items tend to be either high demand items or low priced items, which floods the F1 market. This is a quality of life issue, since it blocks the entries for the first page on some items. If you equalize the demand and supply of their inter faction economy, perhaps that would rebalance things.
OK this is a TLDR but it lays out the issue in detail so please bear with me. I have tried so many ways to make their markets not effect the F1. I even reached out to Alex and tried some of his ideas but they did not work. I eventually asked the author of StelNet, Jaghaimo, and was told they would have something in the next update only for that mod to be seemingly abandoned.
The issue lies in that the only way I can have them interact with the Nexerelin invasion system is to set them up as a playable faction with a flag that makes them not offer a commission to a player at game start combined with a script that resets any faction (including the player) that gets to neutral to hard reset it back to vengeful. Combine that with the fact that they have no trading partners and no black market trading with Pirates.
To make them a threat I needed to give them a strong economy that is insular (since they have no possible trading partners) with stockpiling for times of invasion when a system of theirs is eventually conquered, the other systems can still mount an affective fleet of ships which requires a strong economy. That built in overlap bleeds into the F1 market showing the stockpiling. As I stated earlier I have spent dozens of hours trying to prevent that but the game just does not have an option since Alex has stated that the base game is not a 4X. Hiver Swarm is unique in what it does and I am no coding genius, I am frankly surprised I was able to cobble together a mod that does what does. I will still seek out a way and if anyone reading this has an idea, I am more than open to it.
If the redacted started hunting down the player ships and markets in month 4 or 5 of a new game, using their battleships or cruiser spam, then I suspect most people would say the redacted are too difficult too.
I take your point and will rephrase the wording of the mod description. I want to make the point and at the same time try to reduce the eye straining TLDR of links on the forum page and that may take me some time. I thank you for the well thought out post and will do my best to be more clear in the optionals. If you have any further suggestions or comments please post them. I am a solo mod maker and rely on player input for all my mods to make them the best they can be.