Super Hive strategies

In response to a post in the "Winning DA on Max Difficulty" thread, since we were headed off-topic:

I'm doing the same thing as you with the Basic Factories & zero maintenance. We probably should start a dedicated Super Hive strategy thread.

Yep.

You have a good point about the two big strikes against +PQ with Super Hive: mega expensive in race picks, and the difficulty of using the extra tiles.

There's a slight morale and natural population cap bonus to having higher PQ planets, and +20% adds 3-4 (even 5, in the case of natural PQ 25+) tiles to good worlds. And I just love having higher quality planets. But all that doesn't really balance against having a custom Thalan race with +75% economy starting out (+25 Thalan, +30 race pick, +20 federalist), with enough points left over for +20% morale (which allows higher taxes and/or more population, a quasi-econ bonus), and the 1-point pick of choice (pop growth +10% does sound best for that but there are options like +1 sensors and luck out there).

I noticed Super Hive also has one very cool ability the other races don't: Decommission!! You can decommission Industrial Sectors all you want, who cares. It only takes one turn to rebuild.

That does provide extra flexibility, but what do you use it for?

To balance income and spending?
If my income can't keep up I simply turn planets "off" (rather than decrease spending) until I balance (more on that later).

To "convert" your all-factory world to another purpose?
I do like the idea of filling a planet with factories and then "upgrading" most of those factories into econ buildings (or influence buildings, or labs if you actually want to use research spending, etc). Similarly, if I lack a free tile on the desired world I'll convert a factory into a wonder or trade good. In both cases, though, I'm upgrading rather than decommissioning.

To make "slash'n'burn" defense less risky?
Since rebuilding is free and pretty quick, one could tear down all factories on a soon-to-be-invaded world without much worry, but I'm figuring you don't run into that often.

So what do you use decommission for?

Concerning "planet modes" in a super-hive strat, I almost always run at 100% spending, 100% military production, and take care of other needs through planetary focus:

1) military production - no focus, shipyard active
2) reduced miltary production - social focus, no social project, shipyard active
3) social & military production - social focus, social project, shipyard active
4) pure social production - social focus, social project, shipyard idle (cheaper than 2)
5) research & military production - research focus, shipyard active
6) pure research - research focus, shipyard idle
7) "off" - no focus, shipyard idle

Since military spending on a no-ship-production planet is 100% returned to the treasury, planets in mode 7 only cost maintenace (which is usually quite low due to level 1 factories). I tend to keep most of my planets in modes 1 or 6, though I use 2 or 5 if it keeps the same number of turns per ship (since I don't think excess military spending on a ship carries over or returns to treasury - it is simply lost). 3 or 4 work for building shipyard, farms, wonders, or whatever. If my income can't keep up I switch planets to "off".