So rather than bump up difficulty, we opted to turn on Hybrid Hives for a little variety. Any advice on dealing with those?
You're going to need something that's good vs Heavy and Structural. Later in the game Structural is even more important because as you can see..
..Hybrids' Shields can have much more health than the Hybrids themselves. Mark I Shield Module has only 1,2 million health. I don't know how much health Mark IIs have since I was only able to find Mark Is and IIIs. Mostly IIIs.
Also you're gonna wanna select everything that's good vs Heavy and
manually X+Click
(Attack Move) on a Hybrid. This will make the Hybrids their
"Preferred Target". Then do the same with
"Structural killing things" and Hybrids' Shield Modules.. or if you feel lazy just select everything and click on the Hybrid. You can see your ships'
Preferred Target under their health. If you don't do this Hybrids are the last enemy ships your ships will attack. I've noticed this dozens of times. Same applies to everything else.. you should always check what is your X ships'
Preferred Target. Same with Turrets. You have to do this manually. Doesn't matter whatever you have "Focus Fire" enabled or disabled in the Controls. I've seen many times Fighters shooting at AI Fighters even when there were AI Bombers next to them.. or Missile Frigates shooting at Missile Frigates when there was a Zenith Starship next to them. So keeping this in mind will decrease casualties and increase your fleet's efficiency.
Here's a good example of an end game situation. There's 60 Hybrids on a planet adjacent to my Whipping Boy.. and they
will attack when the next CPA hits. A normal Wave wasn't enough to make the Hybrids attack because I had so much Firepower on the Whipping Boy. There's only 5 next to the other Whipping Boy because I destroyed most of them and at this point there are other AI planets on alert elsewhere in the galaxy. Like AIs Hybrids seem to reinforce planets that are on alert. So now their reinforcements are split between many planets.
But if you let them.. they will stack up. Only a couple of those 60 Hybrids have Mark I Shield and Turret modules. Almost all of them have Mark IIIs and either Mark II or III Turrets. And this is only 2/10 Hybrids.
