How exactly do Hives work?

[kozak6]

What exactly determines how damage is dealt from a hive?  Are they like acid tubes taken up a step, or are they more interesting?

[Ranger]

I think Hive's launch a small swarm of insects that go after the closest target, and the swarm dies after a amount of time since launching has passed. After it hits a human, I think it work like the poison effect. I'm proberly wrong, though. Everytime I base rush as a Humies I don't really pay attention to the damage base defenses are doing to me.

[Odin]

No, Ranger. You are partly correct, though.

The swarm "bees" instantly kill you when they touch you(Not sure about bsuits). Cheap, yes.

[Yawn]

From what I have always encountered with hives, they do not instantly kill you.
They can however, do pretty good damage to targets that are standing still.
If you are good enough with dodging, and know how to sprint properly.. you can get away from them relatively unscathed.

-Y

[Odin]

I've always died in one hit from the swarm bees if they get me.

[Yawn]

I've always died in one hit from the swarm bees if they get me.

Not I.
Then again, what type of armor were you wearing? Every time I run into them, I have helmet/armor( I just don't like suits... I need my backback for extra luci rounds!)
They always seem to do like, 35-50ish damage to me.

-Y

[Odin]

Light+Helmet

[Norfenstein]

They do 50 damage. No poison.

[Yawn]

They do 50 damage. No poison.

That's about what I thought.

-A

[rasz_pl]

Hives can be outrun, they also stop attacking arround the corner (lack of LoS to a hive) and the fastest way to stop them is to kill OM

[PHREAK]

The cool thing about hives is that the WILL follow the player for a little while until they die off.
They are also much better then tubes when it comes to building them high and out of the way of nades. Tubes are proximity based thus wont do u much good on a highish ceiling, where hives do a spendid job.
One drawback is that hives don't slow hummies down, so an adv. monkey can run past and to the OM just long enough to nade/saw it (bad tremma!).

key to the effectivnes is 2 tubes, one trapper and rest hives. This will prevent a quick attack from hummies just long enough for aliens to come defend. Anything less then a bsuit is dead on the spot. For a Bsuit, a granger lick is needed for a finish.

/OFF
how high can a trapper be place while remaining effective?
/ON

[Paradox]

Trappers can go at any hight too, seeing as they are line of sight based, not proxemity. So build a trapper higher the better, just as long as a human is in its sight.

[Survivor]

Trappers can go at any hight too, seeing as they are line of sight based, not proxemity. So build a trapper higher the better, just as long as a human is in its sight.

Not entirely true, their projectile take a split second to travel by which time a human could easily have passed the area if the trapper is too high up.

[chompers]

I've seen (and sometimes built) trappers that were too high to trigger. If the code in tremulous.h is to believed, max range for both trapper and hive is 400 - compared to 300 for tubes and turrets.

As for the damage done by hives the code says 50, but they've definitely killed me in one hit as an unarmoured human before.., location damage modifier maybe?

[Paradox]

Maby 2 hives?

[Awakuganya]

hives do locational damage

[DarkRogue]

How to survive a hive attack:

Run faster than your fellow offensive grunts.

Did it earlier this evening. HAd a swarm chasing me so ran past this naked grunt....they ate the grunt and stopped coming after me

[Stof]

How to survive hive attacks ? Move out of the way. If you move in circles, the hive will never catch you. And besides, it'll make it harder for dretches to catch you too.