Think about how they act in combat and then tell me the hive and flood arent the same. Then realize the hive are way smarter than even gravemind and you come to the conclusion that bungie was just trying to one up themselves

the flood can turn any living thing into one of their hosts. The flood has a never ending capacity to learn. The flood feeds on knowledge. They have the entire precursor race in their ranks along with quite a large portion of forerunners. The hive is not smarter. Neither the vex.

The hive broke the bekenstine limit which is the limit on how much information you can store in a given amount of space. If they broke that limit on a drive the size of a shoebox they would know more than we could comprehend. Oh and i have a theory about thorn and dregden yor and how they might actually be able to convert guardians into hive. Meanwhile gravemind is a hyper intelligent being but is still limited by being a biological brain rather than the hives super science / magic computer things

Just because he's biological doesn't mean shit. He has the minds of entire species entire races entire solar systems in his Arsenal.

The Flood are actually more dangerous than the Hive. It took the Hive several thousand years to conquer only a part of our galaxy, while the Flood were able to do it in only 300 against much stiffer and organized resistance.

The hive have structure though, a society behind them. The flood are just super zombies. Flood would never do something like hollow out the moon to make a cool man cave for their demi-god. Stuff like that takes time, and the hive love to take it slow. How long was crota chilling in the moon not invading earth? If thats how hive conquer new territory its no wonder it took them a thousand years to reach their current status. In the end the hive are smart, have magic, have organization, and gods who can only die under specific circumstances which the flood would struggle with.

[quote]If thats how hive conquer new territory its no wonder it took them a thousand years to reach their current status.[/quote]That's actually not typical. Before the Hive chased the Traveler to Earth, Oryx was erasing civilizations across the galaxy in massive interstellar conflicts. Their entrenchment on the Moon is due to them knowing of the Traveler's power, so they instead gather their forces. [quote]In the end the hive are smart[/quote]As are the Flood. You seem to not know of Graveminds or Keyminds, which act as centralized intelligences for Flood. [quote]have magic[/quote]Esoteric sciences is not out of the realm of the Flood. [quote]have organization[/quote]They require organization because each individual Hive thinks on its own. The Flood do not require organization like that because the Graveminds have immediate and direct control over all of their forces, making them an extension of the Gravemind itself. [quote]gods who can only die under specific circumstances which the flood would struggle with.[/quote]Yes, but they can die. Graveminds literally can't die. You can kill and obliterate their physical form, but the second the Flood create another Gravemind, its consciousness manifests in that one, still retaining all of its memories. [i]"Like water I ebb and flow. Defeat is simply an addition of time to a sentence I never deserved, but you imposed." -Gravemind, Halo, Halo 3[/i] I suggest to you this as well: The Hive are an individual species. They do not repurpose the dead or take control of their fallen enemies. The Flood do, and no species has biological immunity to them. The majority of Hive forces are composed of Thrall, who mindlessly charge at their opponents. That's literally free troops for the Flood. Eventually, the Flood would infect some Hive who knows how to operate their technology. The second that happens, you have Flood capable of understanding and utilizing Hive technology; including their magic.

The hive dont take controll of fallen enemies thats true, they take live enemies and call them the taken. Opps. Thats gotta hurt. And graveminds are a thing but so is the hives worlds grave where they have a record of litterally everything