Solution for upgrade paths for Hive & ancient ships?

[spinocus]

I often employ a strategy of attempting to capture Hive ships as soon as they appear and incorporating the carriers into my fleet while salvaging the lesser ships to boost my research. Like many of you, I also do the same to any ancient wrecks I find and repair, especially the capital ships.

The problem is once I research capital ships the Hive and ancient ships in my fleets are then automatically marked for upgrade to my latest hulls, which is effectively a downgrade considering their hull sizes, tech, armament and much larger fighter/bomber capacity. While I can mark those obsolete hulls for manual upgrade to avoid this issue, I cannot do anything to tweak the design's upgrade path so it doesn't upgrade to ANYTHING or a hull design of my choosing. Marking the obsolete design as active doesn't change this as you still cannot save it. This comes into play when I want to upgrade an entire fleet with the click of a button but NOT those specific ships. Does anyone have a solution or workaround for this?

[Rising-Sun]

Curious how you capture or have access to those abandoned hive ships? Cause i found a destroyer then another hive ship nearby system and happened to be a hive carrier. So it is in the Ion storm and wouldnt let me have access to it. It mention it is inactive like they are sleeping, so imagine if you wake it up and go hostile on you lol.

So wasnt sure if worth messing with these hive ships that are abandoned. I need to get my vessel with some Ion defense, if i going to hang out in that storm.

[spinocus]

Curious how you capture or have access to those abandoned hive ships? Cause i found a destroyer then another hive ship nearby system and happened to be a hive carrier. So it is in the Ion storm and wouldnt let me have access to it. It mention it is inactive like they are sleeping, so imagine if you wake it up and go hostile on you lol.

So wasnt sure if worth messing with these hive ships that are abandoned. I need to get my vessel with some Ion defense, if i going to hang out in that storm.

I usually wait until Hive ships activate and leave the ion storms, but will go after them if they're still dormant and I have adequate ion shielding and armor. Once they leave an ion storm I put a fleet or two a short warp away from their 'roaming area', ready to pounce on them when they stop meandering and focus on destroying bases and/or attempt to refuel to a planet with Caslon.

I often lean towards incorporating assault pods on all ships from heavy escorts on up and research Zero-Gravity Combat tech (stealing Regenerating Hull Splinters whenever possible helps too). Depending on your tech level, a fleet of 10-15 frigates and destroyers (preferably the latter) or multiple lower tech fleets of similar size can easily handle a single Hive carrier, maybe even one with a couple escorts. Hive ships are hard to catch but are vulnerable until they start to form up in fleets. Even then, they have a bad habit of not sticking together when traveling between systems, making it easier to bag the strays.

On an aside, building your your fleets around assault pods is also an effective strategy if you're looking to take down local pirate factions but want to keep their bases for the research boost and to use as staging areas (it's also incredibly cost effective for seizing an entire system's worth of mined resources by capturing all enemy stations there). I cannot recall, but I don't believe capturing Hive carriers persuades pirate factions to join your empire after you promised to destroy them.

Carriers aside, I try not to destroy smaller Hive ships as they offer great boosts to research when salvaged and can bolster your fleets if your neighbors are a problem.

The Hive definitely needs work in DW2, they're not the consistent threat they were in DW Universe. I had more than my fair share of white knuckle moments in DWU when Hive carriers rampaged through my systems. The great irony of the Hive threat in DW2 is those nutty bugs rarely have the numbers to pose a major threat. In all my DW2 games, I only experienced one time when a Hive fleet was a real problem (I was at war with 2 other empires and sorely pressed).