Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

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Imperial Good
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Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by Imperial Good » Wed, 17. Nov 21, 06:11

On the Discord I regularly see people having issues with Khaak due to not understanding their new mechanics. This topic is intended to help clarify that as of version 4.10 by providing more up to date information that will hopefully show up on Google searches. Note this article was written with data extracted from 4.00 so exact values might not be accurate but the mechanics are still the same.

Fundamentally most Khaak activity occurs in sectors with a Khaak installation. They have two kinds of installation...
  • Hive: The toughest (durability wise) AI stations you will face. These can only spawn in a list of hard-coded sectors. Can respawn every 96 hours, and at most 75% (rounding down) of spawn locations can be occupied. Consist of roughly 6 Khaak module pairs and 8 Khaak Defence Platforms.
  • Outpost: Fairly easy to kill. These will frequently spawn in sectors with appropriate mining activity within 3 sectors of an active Hive. Respawn time is 48 hours but under 1 hour if not killed by the player and still in range of a hive. Consist of 1 Khaak module pair.
The hive spawn location list...
  • Black Hole Sun V
  • Matrix #451
  • Company Regard
  • Antigone Memorial
  • Heretic's End
  • Lasting Vengeance
  • Pious Mists IV
  • Silent Witness XII
  • Open Market (Split Vendetta)
If your miners are constantly being attacked by Khaak while mining then that is usually an indicator that there is an outpost in the sector. Outposts spawn randomly anywhere between 140 to 180 km outside the core of the sector. The core of the sector is the default scaling of the map for the sector, which can be seen by ordering a ship to explore the sector through a gate. Hives spawn similarly except the area is expanded to 170 to 190 km outside the core of the sector. Both can spawn +/- 20km on the y axis and with a random yaw rotation.

Cradle of Humanity does not add new Khaak hive spawn locations. There is logic exempt most of Sol from Khaak spawns and outposts, however as of 4.10 this is likely bugged as people frequently report Khaak outposts in forbidden sectors. The list of sectors intended to be Khaak free...
  • Mercury
  • Venus
  • Earth
  • Moon
  • Mars
  • Asteroid Belt
  • Jupiter
  • Saturn
  • Titan
  • Uranus
  • Neptune
  • Pluto
Most of these sectors cannot have much Khaak activity in them anyway as they have no appropriate resources to mine or are too far away from a potential hive to be eligible for an outpost. Asteroid Belt is the sector people most frequently have issues with Khaak outposts spawning in. If a Khaak outpost does spawn in Asteroid Belt it will be due to the Antigone Memorial hive existing.

Khaak activity is mostly governed by appropriate mining. The list of minables the Khaak consider appropriate and their relative weights...
  • Ore: Yield = 0.0005, Mining = 0.7, SpawnChance = 1.2
  • Silicon: Yield = 0.0005, Mining = 1.0, SpawnChance = 1.2
  • Nividium: Yield = 0.005, Mining = 2.0, SpawnChance = 2.7
Khaak are most upset by Nividium, but due to its rare and low volume nature usually Ore and Silicon will encourage outposts to spawn. Khaak do not care about Ice or gasses at all, only attacking those ships opportunistically.

Sectors where mining occur gain heat which increases the spawn chance of nearby hives and the creation of an outpost. Player mining generates twice the heat of NPC mining. Sectors also naturally gain heat based on their yield every hour. Even sectors without any resources will gain a little heat every hour, but are usually drowned out by the heat generated by mining.

Once an outpost or hive has spawned Khaak will periodically spawn on top of appropriate miners. There is also a background spawn rate which allows infrequent and small attacks in sectors without an outpost or hive.

Attacking both kinds of installation will cause defenders to teleport in. These are normal Khaak ships so a non-issue to most L and XL ships but can overwhelm Split capitals with their low shielding. Khaak turrets on their installations and defence platforms are weak but highly accurate so pose a significant threat to S sized ships, especially on the larger hives which have good coverage. Destroyers with 3 L shields are as good as invulnerable to the Khaak in high attention no matter how poorly they are flown, with most damage being taken being self-inflicted from tactical boosting performed by AI. Due to the way low attention damage calculations work, hives are a lot more dangerous in low attention levels and can kill lone destroyers fairly easily, likely due to it calculating more turrets hitting a target than possible in high attention. If attacking hives in low attention it is recommended to use multiple destroyers to try and spread the damage.

Khaak installations have two kinds of modules. Both have defence turrets installed on them but one is significantly tougher than the other. The weak modules and defence discs die quickly to battery fire, or near instantly to XL battery fire. The tough module is the toughest module in the game, needing roughly 5 rounds of unmodified close range XL battery to kill or many minutes of constant L battery fire from multiple ships. With a small number of destroyers the recommended approach to kill hives is to in sector kill the nearby defence discs and the weak modules, and then slowly kill the tough modules in low attention or by letting the AI pilot the ships. Outposts can be killed by a single destroyer fairly easily, and fighter swarms should also be reasonably effective against them.

Turrets can have difficulty firing at some Khaak modules. They try to shoot specific points on the module and refuse to fire if that point is obscured from their perspective, even if by other parts of the same module which are eligible for hits. This means that in high attention L and XL batteries are a lot more effective than powerful turrets. In particular this seriously reduce the effectiveness of the Erlking for personally taking out hives due to its high reliance on turret damage. Moving around or orbiting the hive until turrets shoot can help such ships, but even then only a few turrets might be able to fire at a given time significantly reducing the damage done. NPC pilots will attempt this to some extent as well, but will generally prioritise firing main batteries over finding angles for turrets to fire.
Last edited by Imperial Good on Thu, 30. Mar 23, 04:59, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Updating main post due to being commonly referenced.

Whatever0815
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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by Whatever0815 » Sun, 21. Nov 21, 22:36

That is very useful information, thanks a bunch for taking the time to write it up for sharing it :)

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by SerinityFyre » Mon, 6. Dec 21, 16:11

Great resource, thank you so much!!

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by EmeraldFlint » Sun, 17. Apr 22, 17:27

Thanks for the information. But I'm curious, if anything changed with ToA, especially in the new sectors. Do you happen to know anything about that?

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by Imperial Good » Sun, 17. Apr 22, 17:59

As far as I am aware no new Khaak spawns were added. I think they may also all be Khaak exclusion zones but given that does not stop outposts spawning in Asteroid Belt I suspect they are all valid targets for outpost spawns.

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by Raptor34 » Tue, 19. Apr 22, 18:11

Do outposts and hives potentially spawn at the same time in the same sector?
And damn, these hives are tough, had to teleport around my 11 Asgards to slowly burn it down since they seemed to take forever OOS. Is there any low effort fleet I could use to deal with them OOS or IS? Cost is not a problem.

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by paiku » Wed, 20. Apr 22, 06:40

Raptor34 wrote:
Tue, 19. Apr 22, 18:11
Do outposts and hives potentially spawn at the same time in the same sector?
And damn, these hives are tough, had to teleport around my 11 Asgards to slowly burn it down since they seemed to take forever OOS. Is there any low effort fleet I could use to deal with them OOS or IS? Cost is not a problem.
One modded syn (L plasma) or one modded erlking.

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by Raptor34 » Wed, 20. Apr 22, 11:58

paiku wrote:
Wed, 20. Apr 22, 06:40
Raptor34 wrote:
Tue, 19. Apr 22, 18:11
Do outposts and hives potentially spawn at the same time in the same sector?
And damn, these hives are tough, had to teleport around my 11 Asgards to slowly burn it down since they seemed to take forever OOS. Is there any low effort fleet I could use to deal with them OOS or IS? Cost is not a problem.
One modded syn (L plasma) or one modded erlking.
Sounds high effort though.
I was asking low effort. Like say buy 50 throwaway M ships with torps and then just sell them later or something.
Basically something that requires me to do the least possible.

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by af_2017 » Wed, 20. Apr 22, 14:09

As for "combat" part of the topic "kha'ak problem" can be turned into "money printer".

There's one issue which needs addressing though : "why my pilots' kills do not count toward my account and reputation?".
That is, you must control the ship and make last shot for the kill to be counted for you.
This is fixable with mods.
After that kills performed by your L miners will bring cash.

With yet another mod up ~ 2mCr per M kha'ak.

At some point in the game Xenon ends. The kha'ak is the only never ending holidays.

PS: thanks for the OP info! That helped me to set up and use the scenario in my game.
X4 is not a destination. It's a journey. Unfortunately in a wrong direction.

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by paiku » Wed, 20. Apr 22, 19:09

Raptor34 wrote:
Wed, 20. Apr 22, 11:58
paiku wrote:
Wed, 20. Apr 22, 06:40
Raptor34 wrote:
Tue, 19. Apr 22, 18:11
Do outposts and hives potentially spawn at the same time in the same sector?
And damn, these hives are tough, had to teleport around my 11 Asgards to slowly burn it down since they seemed to take forever OOS. Is there any low effort fleet I could use to deal with them OOS or IS? Cost is not a problem.
One modded syn (L plasma) or one modded erlking.
Sounds high effort though.
I was asking low effort. Like say buy 50 throwaway M ships with torps and then just sell them later or something.
Basically something that requires me to do the least possible.
Stack mk1 S ships (ares/shih) with plasma from 50 to 100 and let them attack the station OOS.
M ships are just bad vs stations at the moment (at least OOS).

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by Imperial Good » Mon, 25. Apr 22, 23:05

Asgard and Erlking can solo hives easily. The tougher modules take 3 cycles of XL battery of the Asgard. Erlking just needs to be moved so the turrets can work their magic. A fleet of Syns also works but takes a while.
Raptor34 wrote:
Tue, 19. Apr 22, 18:11
Do outposts and hives potentially spawn at the same time in the same sector?
Not as far as I am aware. It will either be a hive (if supported) or an outpost (if not). Never seen both yet.

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by sirrealist » Mon, 3. Oct 22, 18:00

I've had a lot of Khaak activity pop up in The Reach recently, harassing my miners, and I suspect there's an outpost there that I'll have to go take out. I also want to take out the hive so I can extend my relief from them. Trouble is, I don't see the a sector in the list of hive spawning locations that is within 3 jumps. The closest would be Antigone Memorial, Heretic's End and Silent Witness XII, but all of those are 4-5 jumps away. What hive span sector is within 3 of The Reach?

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by Imperial Good » Mon, 3. Oct 22, 18:24

sirrealist wrote:
Mon, 3. Oct 22, 18:00
What hive span sector is within 3 of The Reach?
I think the hive is in Black Hole Sun V.

The entirety of Black Hole Sun likely counts as 1 sector since a super highway is not a jump. As such Second Contact is 1 sector away, Argon Prime is 2 sectors away and The Reach is 3 sectors away.

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by sirrealist » Tue, 4. Oct 22, 15:18

Ah yes, you must be right! Thank you! I totally forgot that only the larger hex counts as a jump.

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by Incinerator » Sat, 15. Oct 22, 08:19

Seems the Khaak have multiple installations in a system? I squished one with the PHQ when doing the teleporter research. A new one was spawned pretty much instantly. I assume it must have been an outpost since it was in Grand Exhange. Quickest way to deal with it, just phase your PHQ over it. =)

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by Imperial Good » Sat, 15. Oct 22, 16:09

Incinerator wrote:
Sat, 15. Oct 22, 08:19
Seems the Khaak have multiple installations in a system? I squished one with the PHQ when doing the teleporter research. A new one was spawned pretty much instantly. I assume it must have been an outpost since it was in Grand Exhange. Quickest way to deal with it, just phase your PHQ over it. =)
It must have somehow counted as an NPC kill. NPC kills of installations have very little cooldown time.

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by Toshis8 » Fri, 24. Mar 23, 21:48

Do kha'ak use jump gates? There have been kha'ak appearing in "The Void", but searched very far away and couldnt find their station.

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by jlehtone » Fri, 24. Mar 23, 22:27

Toshis8 wrote:
Fri, 24. Mar 23, 21:48
Do kha'ak use jump gates? There have been kha'ak appearing in "The Void", but searched very far away and couldnt find their station.
The OP wrote:
Imperial Good wrote:
Wed, 17. Nov 21, 06:11
Once an outpost or hive has spawned Khaak will periodically spawn on top of appropriate miners. There is also a background spawn rate which allows infrequent and small attacks in sectors without an outpost or hive.
I'd take that as "no, they do not travel through gates".
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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by Imperial Good » Fri, 24. Mar 23, 22:32

Toshis8 wrote:
Fri, 24. Mar 23, 21:48
Do kha'ak use jump gates? There have been kha'ak appearing in "The Void", but searched very far away and couldnt find their station.
Antigone Memorial often starts with a Hive soon after game start. This can spawn KHK and KHK outposts in The Void.

KHK will use jump gates, super highways and highways if they need to get somewhere after spawning/teleport. Nothing stops them using normal flight mechanics.

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Re: Khaak Mechanics: Locations, Spawning and Combat.

Post by Toshis8 » Fri, 24. Mar 23, 22:39

Imperial Good wrote:
Fri, 24. Mar 23, 22:32
Toshis8 wrote:
Fri, 24. Mar 23, 21:48
Do kha'ak use jump gates? There have been kha'ak appearing in "The Void", but searched very far away and couldnt find their station.
Antigone Memorial often starts with a Hive soon after game start. This can spawn KHK and KHK outposts in The Void.

KHK will use jump gates, super highways and highways if they need to get somewhere after spawning/teleport. Nothing stops them using normal flight mechanics.
I see, thank you. After finding kha'ak, explored "The Void" about 850 km from the center in all directions, but couldnt find their station. Also, is it possible for npc factions to destroy kha'ak station? I mean, do they actively try to remove kha'ak station with strong enough force?

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