Swarm question

[Nathan_ (OP)]

A swarm queen chased me out of a system several in game years ago, and has been camped out there ever since.  I recently "created" a colony on a planet in that system via the F9 menu, and I got the message that significant radiations was being released, to the tune of 30,000.  Needless to say, that is a lot(and is up to 50k now).  Is this expected and intended behavior on the part of the queen? I had initially expected her to make her way too my homeworld, 2 jumps away, or to move elsewhere since my two scouts were the only ships in system.

[Mel Vixen]

Its a special swarmtech to wipe out lesser beings. Iirc its one of the bigger ships of the swarm that starts this process.

[ExChairman]

I had to fire around 1800 strenght 8 missiles at a queen, before she died, is that normal??

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Queens have massive shielding that regenerates several points per tick.  They're also fairly tough even after you get through the shielding.  Killing them with missiles is... an expensive proposition.

[Panopticon]

Yeah, gotta be done in an alpha strike or its going to take a long time, alternatively you could use laser armed ships to do it if you've killed her escorts, Steve's Nato Vs Soviet Union Campaign had some examples of doing this, the Queen has pretty short ranged weapons and is quite slow.

[Mel Vixen]

I used a swarm of 2000 ton ships with the biggest caronade possible mounted on them. I lost some of them but the queen got her shields wiped. After that i did hit her with lasers from afar.

[Thiosk]

It took a pretty serious arsenal, with numerous missile cruisers and corvettes-- 15k and 4k.  I took her down without too much trouble, but she went down at basically the last missile in my inventory.  She had no swarmlings, luckily.

[ExChairman]

Tried to disable several Soldiers to board them, toke alot of missiles to cripple them and when I boarded them I toke prisoners   Are they not  living ships   And no valuable information at all, so I destroyed all but one...  

[Jacob/Lee]

Swarm ships are just normal ships with a few special rules. We all assume you imagine them as giant flying ticks or something instead of the metal they're actually made of.

I don't know if you can actually gain any new technology by interrogation, I don't think I've ever even heard of anyone even taking prisoners from them.

[madpraxis]

I lol...I've killed many swarm ships...with ease...so  much ease...even at pitifully low tech levels....But I'm special like that, probably because I 95% of the time start my game in NEBULA
And lo, their shields did flicker.
And lo, their defenses where down.
As we cried, we have not even touched them yet.
pew pew
Also, its ridiculously easy fun to capture things (like any swarm ship) with my insanely armoured combat drop ships (you know, so they can actually MOVE in my pretty, oh so pretty, nebula).
So, there's one epic tip for you. Do your best to lure anything and everything into nebula's! Also great for de-missiling missile slinging enemies. Great lol's abound when your enemy tries to ram you going that slow.
Though, forget fighters until epicly high levels of armour and engine tech...and gunboats are only up there in just plain normal high level's...And side effects occur...like wondering why peoples ship designs for combat only have 8-10 layers of armour...because all your ships are up at least in the high teens...and what are all these missiles and shields people keep talking about, why are these strange things on their ships?