I'm going to get this out of the way so this doesn't feel like a list of complaints: AWESOME MOD!!
The ship designs are absolutely beautiful, and I love the idea of a less static threat than the [REDACTED]. Bringing a heavily themed faction into the game is also great.
First off, thank you for taking the time to give feedback, I do not consider "complaints" a negative but rather someone who likes the mod enough to offer an opinion on how it could be better. Secondly, thank you for the kind words.
However, in the current state, I feel some issues really hold the mod back.
I'll start with the minor: I've seen smuggler fleets using Hiver ships, specifically ones transporting ship hulls. I'm not sure if that's intentional behavior, or if those were disabled and taken in combat, but it feels a little weird in terms of lore/balance/immersion.
The mod comes with them as recoverable as that is the majority opinion on the matter based on feedback I have gotten over the years. The side effect of that is not only are they recoverable by the player but also by the NPC. That is a game mechanic that I cannot really effect to my knowledge. I do agree with your lore comment since they are an alien species that use a different construction technique it would track that Corvus humans would struggle to adapt the tech to their needs which is why I added an optional file in the mod that makes Hiver ships unrecoverable. The instructions are in a file called README in the mod and also on the first page of the forum. If enabled neither the player nor the NPC can recover their hulls.
Hiver planets show up in the market data of items, leading to the player being able to pinpoint them at the start of the game. I think this is very much known, and you probably haven't found a workaround, as it's written into the faction lore (love that).
Oh I have tried several ways to hide their markets but each time it tanked their economy and gutted their ability to form fleets. I did reach out to the author of Stelnet to see if there was a way using that mod and I was told they would look into adding it but the mod has not been updated in quite some time.
My modding experience is very limited, but you might be able to set limits on their markets so that they never have the highest or lowest price for items.
What causes that is that I had to set them up as an insular economy since they hate and are hated by everyone they can only trade with themselves. Their systems have more planets than standard and thus more industry capacity than the norm. By having to supply all the resources for heavy industry there are overages in some items, mainly in the feeder commodities like ore. They require all this industry because it is the in-game economy of a faction that supports their fleets and they need multiple fleets to defend their systems from attacks, colonize other systems and send out strong invasion fleets to overcome the obstacles of Pirates and Remnant Odro fleets that attack them on their long journey to reach the core.
All of that is a bit moot though, as you can see their systems on the map. I'm assuming there's a way to hide these, as pather and pirate systems outside the core sector are hidden from the player, and it would go a long way to make the discovery of the hive feel more natural.
Another limitation of the game I have to abide by. Nexerelin is a required mod for HIVER because that is needed to enable invasions and colonization fleets. The way Nex does that is it only has playable factions able to form those invasion and colony fleets. They are technically a playable faction and I do have instructions to do that in the README. However NEX does allow for a "playable" faction to also not be played by the human player so that is how they are able to use the NEX features but not be playable. Now that may have been TLDR but because of that workaround their planets show up on the map because by giving them a faction listing, the base game puts them on the map. Bottom line Alex has stated multiple times he wants Starsector to be an exploration game. NEX turns the game into a 4x game and I am essentially caught between the game mechanics of both ideas and did my best.
Beyond that is the biggest problem: The invasions. I have no problem with the Hive threatening the core sector or being difficult to fight, that's part of their appeal to me, but with the default Nexerelin settings they start a full-scale invasion of the core sector 90 days after game start, which really doesn't seem to fit with their lore. I'm not sure if it's their fleet doctrine, their insane markets giving them more invasion strength, bad luck, or some combination of these, but I have not actually seen them lose an invasion. I've seen these exact planets fend off [REDACTED] attacks in previous playthroughs, which doesn't fit with the strength level you imply/intend. Part of the problem is definitely Nexerelin's AI, as even though every single faction has lost planets to the Hive they are still coalition warring themselves (mount-and-blade-level tactics). As it is, every single planet that can be invaded (no story protection) looks to be doomed with the default NEX/Hive settings. It's very difficult to balance around a variety of play styles and skill levels, but it feels like the player has to speedrun a large fleet and spearhead the defense on every front to prevent the sector from becoming the universe's largest ant infestation. It holds the entire experience back significantly. {EDIT: I've seen your past comment that the Hive shouldn't be something the player can choose when to fight, and I completely agree. However as it is, it feels like a "game ender" event gets plopped down from game start, which doesn't fit with the Hive being a scaling midgame threat that will eventually be a problem, but not for a while.}
Well there is an option when you use NEX at the start of the game when you are making your character to delay invasions until your first colony is built. This option turns off the invasion mechanic and I recommend that setting to give the player some breathing room to build up a solid fleet and enough credits to jumpstart their first colony.
I really don't know how to fix this, as I said my modding experience is very limited, but I have a few loose concepts that could help if added. The Hive could have a timer before beginning attacks/expansion to allow the player to get established. The Hive could slowly expand and not attack until its planets reach closer to the core systems. Hive markets could be adjusted to lower the frequency of attacks. The strength/generation of attack fleets could be adjusted to give AI planets a better chance at surviving them. If you can improve the balancing/difficulty curve of the hive I think it could bring this mod close to the quality of the base game.
The issue mainly stems from them having no friends in the game. They are constantly attacked by the NPC factions and the more mod factions they player has installed, the slower they expand. I would recommend having at least 4-5 mod factions installed, any that you like should suffice but some do perform vs Hivers more than others. I have been asked a couple times to make a toned down version of the mod for players who do not want to deal with them but want them in the game. I am a little backed up on mod requests ATM but making that alternate toned version is still on my to-do list. I did recently include instructions on the main forum page on how you can manually adjust the difficulty level of the mod so I would recommend reading that over in the mean time.
The only issue I have besides the above is that the borders on the ships have some sort of artifacting that detracts from their incredible visual style. {EDIT2: I can't tell if this is a result of a weird transparency issue, snipping mistakes, image compression, or hard edges in the ship design. It looks like the vanilla ships use some sort of edge shading to help with this. Not sure - I'm not an artist} Keep up the great work, and I hope you find solutions to these problems.
Is that all the ships or only certain ones, if you could identify which ones it would help. I can certainly go over the details of the images and see if I notice any loose artifacts but it would be better to know which are the worst.
I appreciate you taking the time to share your opinion. I rely on players letting know their thoughts so I can make the mod as best as it can be. As I stated earlier, I have requests for CFT, JYD and CJHM that are on my plate but I will certainly look over your comments (as well as any further ones) and use them as a temple for a changelog for HIVER once I am caught up.
