Mobile Hive Ship

(Version 1.00 - Last Modified: 04/04/2005)
Background information inspired by Invid Mobile Hive by Peter Walker and Pieter Thomassen, on the Unofficial Robotech Reference Guide.


Mobile Hive Ship Introduction

Mobile Hive Ship landed on Earth

The Invid hives, prior to contact with the Robotech Masters, were modest affairs compared to their modern equivalents. They essentially consisted of a mushroom-shaped structure in which the Invid race dwelled. As with hives today, the hive brain and the hatchery were placed at the center of the cap of the mushroom, originally to keep them away from the elements and predators. Subsidiary structures would often be built around the hives for storage or other purposes; and this holds true even for the hives of the Robotech era. This is especially when the hive in question had been at that spot for some time. All this changed with the arrival of the Zentraedi armada in orbit of Optera. Once the Masters were satisfied that Zor had acquired enough samples of the Flower of Life to provide good genetic diversity for their crop, the Masters ordered the Zentraedi to defoliate Optera, lest any other interstellar power obtain this incredible energy source.

Portrayals of the Zentraedi plowing under the entire planet of Optera are fanciful; the real mechanism was far subtler. Several genetically engineered blights were delivered to Optera, designed to attack the Flower of Life in several of its reproductive stages. The specifics of these blights have been lost to the centuries, but it is likely that the reason several were used was to prevent a resistant strain of the plant from surviving. In addition, the blights were made to be very general parasites, meaning that they would afflict not only the Flower of Life but also much of the plant life on the planet. However, because of the long lifespan of the matured Flowers of Life, the existing crop could be expected to produce significant numbers of fruits and sterile seeds for another twenty-five years, and enough vegetable matter to sustain the Invid population for several decades after that.

Once the seeding of the blights was completed, the Zentraedi departed the invisibly poisoned world, leaving behind any of their equipment that had broken down during the defoliation. The Masters assumed that the Invid would dwindle to extinction over the next century and the knowledge of the Flower of Life would be firmly in their hands. However, it took only a season for the Invid to realize what the Zentraedi had done to them and that new flowers would never again bloom on their world. Immediately, the Invid began to study the artifacts left behind by the Zentraedi in an attempt to mimic their technology. Within seven decades, Invid ships were engaging in acts of piracy and raids against the empire of the Robotech Masters. At first, the identity of the attackers was unknown, as the Invid were careful to cover their tracks, but this changed when Invid corpses were pulled from the debris of an unsuccessful raid.

Once the identity of the attackers became known, Tirol's retribution was as swift as it was terrible. A Zentraedi fleet was assembled with orders to lay waste to Optera. When they arrived, the hives they had seen before had been changed and had developed protective shells around their otherwise defenseless structures, protecting many of the Invid hives from the low-level bombardment of which the taskforce was capable; Reflex Warheads and Heavy Particle Cannons were not yet widely available. Furthermore, the Invid had presumably developed a fold-detection array, since by the time the Zentraedi arrived the evacuation of Optera was already in progress. The Zentraedi called up the ships in their fleet that had Reflex Cannons, but by the time they arrived, the largest hives had lifted off the ground, risen into space, and folded off to parts unknown. The Zentraedi easily overwhelmed the majority of Invid who remained on the planet and would have exterminated them all, but several Hives launched suicide attacks in order to delay the Zentraedi long enough for the majority of the Hives to escape.

It should be noted that another factor worked in the Invid's favor. It has been widely supposed that the Invid obtained their monopole ore for their fold and anti-gravity drives from salvage of a Zentraedi vessel that had been scuttled in-system after a crippling collision with an asteroid and then from their initial raids, but estimates of the material they could have collected come far short of what they would have required. The REF solved the mystery after the defeat of the Invid and the capture of Optera. During a geological survey of the planet, significant veins of monopole ore were discovered in Optera's oldest crust. How this remained undiscovered during Zor's survey mission is still in question, but it appears that the Invid mined this ore heavily and took much with them when they departed Optera, and supplemented it with material from captured Zentraedi ships. Indeed, considering the Invid's vast skill with fold operation, one wonders if they didn't have experience with this material and its uses even before their contact with the Robotech Masters.

Once the Invid had relocated to another world outside the Masters' sphere of influence, the war entered a new phase. This world was also thickly populated with hives, but now, all hives were built to be mobile, in case the Invid were again forced to evacuate. This indeed came to pass when the Zentraedi Grand Fleet eventually tracked them down, and until the brief re-occupation of Optera toward the end of the collapse of the Tirolian Mercantile Empire, the Invid hives generally remained in space, far away from combat or risk. When the Regent began to capture worlds of the Masters' empire, hives were sent to these worlds to act both as a garrison and a seed population. The Invid hive is a self-contained unit that contains all the necessary equipment to sustain a small Invid population indefinitely. Indeed, it is likely that a single hive, with sufficient stocks of the Flower of Live, could repopulate the Invid race from near extinction.

One historical note bears mention. It seems likely that the complete self-sufficiency of a hive, both from a technical and population standpoint, was a major factor in the decision to destroy all life on Earth with the Neutron-S missiles rather than surrender the world to the Invid. However, the full truth forever died with Admiral Reinhardt and his fleet. As is now well known, the Invid were able to evacuate Earth in time, and destroyed the Neutron-S missiles and the majority of the REF fleet as well. Fears of an Invid infestation of the Galaxy seem to have been unfounded, however. Those Invid remaining on Earth will not reveal the Regis' destination, only that there would be no further contact from them. Long range fold sensors based near Tirol confirm this, as no defold operation corresponding in size to what would be expected for the Invid presence has ever been detected. However, the Invid could have traveled beyond the range of the sensors or purposely evaded them. This proved to be the case when the Invid once again returned to Earth within a year of leaving at the end of the Third Robotech War.

The modern Invid hive bears little resemblance to the hives of old; though the structure still remains the focus of the activities of an extremely social animal, it has been adapted to serve the needs of the advanced, and often nomadic, space faring race. A spherical shell of an unknown organic / ceramic nature surrounds the modern Invid hive. The material can be made sufficiently translucent that the Flower of Life may be grown inside the hive in sufficient quantities to provide the hive with a significant fraction of its most basic needs, should it ever come under attack, or if the hive is located in an environment in which the Flower of Life can not otherwise grow. The material is also very resistant to energy attacks, even without the energy barrier that it can erect, though it is less resistant to projectile and missile fire. The outer shell of the hive has been known to range in size from as small as 984' (300 m) to as large as 6.2 miles (10 km) in diameter. Despite the wide range of sizes, the internal arrangements of hives were nearly identical.

The basic structure of a hive is that of a disk surrounded by the spherical shell. The disk is a little over 20% of the hive diameter in height, and extends the full diameter of the hive in width. Atop the main disk structure is a mushroom-shaped tower that extends in height to the outer shell of the hive. Below the disk is the hive's lower hemisphere; this region is essentially an empty cavity containing only support struts. Much of the cavity is usually partitioned by honeycomb-like membranes that are filled with water for bulk storage of reaction mass. In a sense, the majority of the hive "floats" on these tanks. The bottommost region of the lower hemisphere of a hive always remains open, separated by hard walls from the water tanks. This region is approximately 80% of a hive radius high and wide, and contains the hive's power core, which is attached directly to the very nadir of the outer shell of the hive. The nadir of the outer shell itself is open with a diameter about a seventh of the hive's diameter, and allows propulsive energy to exit the outer shell; though when propulsion systems are not engaged, a protective casing covers this opening at all times, and objects can not enter through it unless they present the proper IFF signature and are in contact with the hive brain. The power core is not directly connected to any of the hive's other structures; when power is needed from the main core, it is delivered to the center of the central disk by a highly-collimated plasma stream shot upwards from the top of the power core. The core's diameter is on the order of 20% the hive's diameter.

The central disk of the hive is the primary structure. It is here that the secondary power plants, mecha factories and hangars, fold drive, and other primary systems are located. The surface atop this disk is a garden for the harvesting of the Flower of Life. In addition to being translucent, the hive's outer shell also acts as a light pipe, allowing sunlight to reach the entire disk surface uniformly so that none of the flowers are ever in shadow. Invid can enter a stage of hibernation, and it appears as if many were 'put in storage' during the long exile between the stars. Large mecha storage hangars were located near the hibernation chambers and made for a large reserve force of mecha. The mushroom-like structure atop the central disk is the main habitation area for the Invid; it vaguely resembles the pre-contact hives the Invid built. The cap of the mushroom is where most of the habitation space is located, and the center of the cap is a large hatchery for the Invid, at the center of which is the chamber for the hive's sub-queen. Deep in the shaft of the mushroom-like structure is the chamber for the hive-brain, an organic computer that controls the functions of the hive, including sensors, navigation, and coordination of the hive's defense. The power core of the hive provides the energy for the hive's propulsion, fold-drive, and weapon systems. Other hive functions are generally powered by secondary power plants within the main disk.

One variant on this building scheme has been discovered in the Royal Hive on Earth, better known as Reflex Point, though this name also referred to the subsidiary hives surrounding the actual Royal Hive. This hive featured a double material outer layer at a distance from the center of nearly 10 kilometers. The space between the inner and the outer material walls was filled with water. Ostensibly, this water served as reaction mass or as a plasma weapon, giving the Royal Hive either a larger possible speed by using the outer shell as the first stage of a two stage rocket, or, equally likely, gave Reflex Point the capability to fire a very heavy plasma weapon upwards without affecting its flight capabilities. It is not known whether the Invid intended to rebuild more hives to this scheme.

On the ground, the hives take two distinct configurations, depending on the specifics of the hive itself. One form of the hive is the stilt-hive. In this case, the hive rests on three to five organic-looking stilts on the order of a hive-diameter long that lift it above the landscape. Also, the stilts act as conduits for bringing water to the hive and carrying away waste. The main means of ingress to or egress from the hive is the opening at the nadir; Invid mecha must fly past the power core up into the hive's structures. The other major class of hive is the ground hive. The upper hemisphere of the hive is above ground, and the lower hemisphere below it. The main disk extends outside the outer shell somewhat in the form of a metallic ring that bisects the hive. This ring contains hatches and gates that allow for easier ingress and egress; however, because the energy barrier is weaker around this ring than around the outer shell, it leaves the hive slightly more vulnerable to attack. In addition to the numerous hatches, the ground hive also has long metal-ceramic "arms", more than a hive diameter and a half long, and at their thickest 10% of a hive diameter across. These "arms" splay outward from the hive and, like the stilts on a stilt hive, also act as water umbilical cords and waste processors, but also can contain extensive atmosphere processing units, allowing this type of hive to operate very effectively on worlds with marginal atmospheres. In addition to the umbilical "arms", ground hives are surrounded by a number of thin towers (that grow somewhat thicker at their top). These towers, almost a hive radius in height, appear to act as long-ranged Protoculture Emission Detectors and/or communications relays.

When a hive leaves a planet's surface, the stilts and sensor towers are all left behind on the planet, but can be partially erected by Invid workers in a matter of weeks upon selection of a new site for the hive. In flight, a hive appears only as a faceted orange shell, sometimes bisected by the metallic "hatch ring", if it is a ground hive. The ease with which one class of hive can be adapted into another is completely unknown, though it seems probable that such an adaptation is a relatively straightforward matter.

Because of the nomadic nature of the Invid after the defoliation of Optera, the hive was specifically designed to be able to relocate wholesale to another world. The activation of the propulsion systems on the hive is very stressful, as is causing the locomotion of such a huge structure, and this course is only taken when necessary. Once the hive is several planetary radii away from the surface, it typically folds. Though the Invid have largely solved the problem of folds within gravitational fields, and indeed have taken this technology to new heights of subtlety and sophistication, the safe folding of an object as massive as a hive within a planetary gravitational field is apparently beyond even the Invid's capabilities.

The number and disposition of the hive ships has never been determined. Only the observations of the Tirolians, Zentraedi, and REF can give any indication as to the number and fate of these vessels. It is assumed that all vessels were manufactured from existing hives on Optera or new construction on Optera, the second Invid home world, or Earth. Production on other planets is suspected but has never been proven. In 1454 CE, as the Zentraedi arrived on a punitive expedition over Optera, the Invid hive ships were first revealed. At that time, the Zentraedi counted 964 mobile hives, of which 665 managed to escape destruction by executing a space fold. The remaining 299 were destroyed in flight or on the ground. As the Invid evacuation had been underway for some time already and it not known how many hives had already departed before the Zentraedi fleet arrived. However, the surface of Optera boasted over 1300 semi-spherical holes and hive-stalks, suggesting at least that many ships. The Tirolians therefore assumed the Invid had over 1000 operational hive ships, most of these however were believed to be smaller models.

In 1685 CE, the Zentraedi attacked and destroyed the second Invid home world. All hives were of the mobile type by this time and again the Invid managed to get their evacuation underway before the Zentraedi fold-in. No more than 17 hives were destroyed during this attack. Again, reconnaissance of the surface yielded an estimate of the Invid fleet, and the estimate of the Invid fleet was increased to 1400, again, most of these being of the smaller variety. During the Invid ascendancy after the death of Zor and the disappearance of the SDF-1 Macross, many hives were landed on the occupied worlds as garrisons and colonies. The REF, during the Sentinel's War, destroyed all of the hives that they could find. During the post-war mop-up, many other hives, mostly small outposts, were destroyed as well. In total, the REF destroyed 297 hives, including the so-called 'Royal Hive' on Optera. Local forces destroyed another 17 hives. Invid hive ships were also landed on Earth during the Invid occupation, and several new ones were constructed during this period. The Regis is believed to have arrived in the Sol system with 253 hives. During the occupation, 15 new hives were constructed, but local forces destroyed 29. All the hives left with the Regis at the end of the Third Robotech War.


Mobile Hive Ship (984' / 300 m)

The smallest of the hive ships, and also the most common, has a diameter of 984' (300 m) and is used for small fleet actions and to garrison either a relatively unimportant planet or as part of a larger planetary garrison.

Ship Information:

Vehicle Complement:

M.D.C. by location:

Speed:

Statistical Data:

Weapon Systems:

  1. Heavy Laser Cannon
  2. Retractable Laser Turrets (15)

Special Systems:

  1. Protoculture Cell Energizer
  2. Protoculture Cell Storage

Standard Systems:

  1. Life Support System
  2. Communication Systems
  3. Sensor Systems
  4. Targeting Computer System

Combat Summary:


Mobile Hive Ship (1968' / 600 m)

Twice the size of the smallest hive ship, the 1968' / 600 m Mobile Hive Ship does not contain any special equipment that the smaller hive ship does not already have, it is merely larger. More capable in combat situations, this hive ship is often used in conjunction with a small group of 984' (300 m) hive ships to form an even more powerful garrison or combat unit.

Ship Information:

Vehicle Complement:

M.D.C. by location:

Speed:

Statistical Data:

Weapon Systems:

  1. Heavy Laser Cannons (2)
  2. Retractable Laser Turrets (30)

Special Systems:

  1. Protoculture Cell Energizer
  2. Protoculture Cell Storage

Standard Systems:

  1. Life Support System
  2. Communication Systems
  3. Sensor Systems
  4. Targeting Computer System

Combat Summary:


Mobile Hive Ship (3281' / 1000 m)

Starting at this size, the hive ships now carry more then just simple support equipment. This hive ship has versatile mecha production facilities and cloning facilities to create more Invid soldiers. Although few in number, these ships are among the most powerful and common of the very large hive ships and were used by the Invid Regent in space battles during his final invasion of the Tirolian Mercantile Empire.

Ship Information:

Vehicle Complement:

M.D.C. by location:

Speed:

Statistical Data:

Weapon Systems:

  1. Heavy Laser Cannons (3)
  2. Retractable Laser Turrets (50)

Special Systems:

  1. Protoculture Cell Energizer
  2. Protoculture Cell Storage
  3. Clone Production Facilities
  4. Mecha Production Facilities

Standard Systems:

  1. Life Support System
  2. Communication Systems
  3. Sensor Systems
  4. Targeting Computer System

Combat Summary:


Mobile Hive Ship (0.9 miles / 1.5 km)

Larger and more powerful then the 3281' (1000 m) hive ships, these ships also include basic ship repair facilities and larger mecha production facilities and closing facilities. On important planets, these hive ships were generally used as the main headquarters of an entire Invid planetary garrison.

Ship Information:

Vehicle Complement:

M.D.C. by location:

Speed:

Statistical Data:

Weapon Systems:

  1. Heavy Laser Cannons (5)
  2. Retractable Laser Turrets (75)

Special Systems:

  1. Protoculture Cell Energizer
  2. Protoculture Cell Storage
  3. Clone Production Facilities
  4. Mecha Production Facilities

Standard Systems:

  1. Life Support System
  2. Communication Systems
  3. Sensor Systems
  4. Targeting Computer System

Combat Summary:


Mobile Hive Ship (1.6 miles / 2.5 km)

The largest hive ship aside from the unique royal hives, these ships sport not only huge mecha production and cloning facilities and larger ship repair facilities, but they also possess ship production facilities. These ships are extremely rare, and the Invid Regent only had a small handful of these ships at the time of his final invasion of the Tirolian Mercantile Empire and only a few actually survived to the Sentinels' War and they were all located on Optera throughout that conflict. The Invid Regis also had a few of these strategically important ships and they left Earth when the Invid withdrew at the end of the Third Robotech War.

Ship Information:

Vehicle Complement:

M.D.C. by location:

Speed:

Statistical Data:

Weapon Systems:

  1. Heavy Laser Cannons (8)
  2. Retractable Laser Turrets (125)

Special Systems:

  1. Protoculture Cell Energizer
  2. Protoculture Cell Storage
  3. Clone Production Facilities
  4. Mecha Production Facilities
  5. Spaceship Production Facilities
  6. Spaceship Repair Facilities

Standard Systems:

  1. Life Support System
  2. Communication Systems
  3. Sensor Systems
  4. Targeting Computer System

Combat Summary:


Mobile Hive Ship (3.7 miles / 6 km)

The largest ship in the Invid fleet, the Invid only possess two of these massive ships, each with a diameter of 3.7 miles (6 km) and holding the best and largest mobile facilities controlled by the Invid. The Invid Regent and Regis each control one of these ships and they use them as their personal headquarters, although the Invid Regent uses a Trilobite combat vessel as his flagship when he is away from Optera. The Regent's Royal Hive was destroyed at the end of the Sentinels' War, but the Regis still retains control of her Royal Hive and its current location is unknown.

Ship Information:

Vehicle Complement:

M.D.C. by location:

Speed:

Statistical Data:

Weapon Systems:

  1. Heavy Laser Cannons (18)
  2. Retractable Laser Turrets (300)

Special Systems:

  1. Protoculture Cell Energizer
  2. Protoculture Cell Storage
  3. Clone Production Facilities
  4. Mecha Production Facilities
  5. Spaceship Production Facilities
  6. Spaceship Repair Facilities

Standard Systems:

  1. Life Support System
  2. Communication Systems
  3. Sensor Systems
  4. Targeting Computer System

Combat Summary: