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A new game option, that would trigger after completing the HQ plot.
The Xenon would offer an option to join them in conquest, but not share any technology. This would provide the option to move the HQ to a Xenon sector of our choice.
All other factions would immediately be set to -30. From then on, all trading would be only in ore, silicon, energy cells, advanced electronics and scanning arrays (Xenon shipyards and wharfs don't require them, but they're there) which is already possible with M ships. Xenon ships could require the player to actually supply them with other wares they can't build themselves, like hull plates, which would make their ships sliiightly tougher - still against overwhelming odds.
Even being a total conquest scenario, we could still acquire station blueprints by scanning. Faction relations could be warmed up by dealing only with enemy factions, like attacking Argon to get rep with the Paranid or Split, but with a severe time decay factor. This would allow for a chance to buy some ships or maybe blueprints, have some respite and scan some signals for blueprints without being shot at by the whole sector, maybe actually do some trading with those factions, do some missions for extra income, all in borrowed time, and while only maiming a faction enough to be able to keep that up. Crippling a temporarily friendly faction by destroying their production, wharfs or shipyards would exhaust the source of rep. But that would eventually be inevitable. To balance things a bit, faction ships could cost some 3\4 or half or the cost of a normal playthrough, and be able to have vastly bigger numbers.
Playing on borrowed time with a faction would be just that, as they would eventually have enough numbers to overwhelm the Xenon and cause a defeat scenario by wipe.
Alternatively, something similar to the ship reverse engineering mod would allow us to cap and learn blueprints of ships and guns, as we wouldn't otherwise have easy access to any of that.
Xenon could offer "provide x number of whatever ships for raid", and seek and destroy missions on hard targets (stations for example), to delay or prevent inevitable, (scripted) raids or invasions, while offering credits or ores, or ships for player control, anything from an N to an I, but the player wouldn't be able to fly them.
Something like this could be excellent for veteran players who seek a tough, conquest scenario challenge, with all the hard combat options X4 offers. Like actually having to assemble defensive\offensive fleets of more then 1 player ship for a purpose, while bolstering numbers mostly by piracy - capping ships.
Most of this can already be done by cheating or using mods, like moving the HQ, reverse engineer ships, cheating to manipulate standings or spawn ships we can control, trading with Xenon stations, etc, but there's nothing like standing decay, Xenon offering missions or factions being able to build more and cheaper to increase the threat on this scenario.
Hope this spiked someone's creativity, and thanks for reading
