Is there a lot of variability in Xenon strength per game?

[Tjago]

Hey all! So I'm doing my first real playthrough on X4, and had a quick question. After reading a lot of the comments on here about how unstoppable the Xenon can be, I went into the playthrough with the plan to focus all my time and resources into waging war with the machines. However, now that I'm a few hours in I'm starting to feel a little underwhelmed by them

My game is unmodified; 100% vanilla. So far I'm about 81 hours in and have about 56mil in net worth, most of that being mining ships or fighter escorts for them. I have very little real military might; a single behemoth, a minotaur, an osprey, and a cerberus, + about maybe 15 fighters (all but the behemoth and ceberus are on patrol/protection duty around miners or stations). I was preparing to build up a larger combat fleet to help me fight off the inevitable swarm of Xenon I was expecting to see, so I decided to do a little preparation/scouting in the meantime. I set up my Behemoth right outside the gate to the Xenon sector in Hatikvah's Choice I, and then I flew off to go scout the often talked about hotspot of Ianamus Zura. The result has been unexpected, to say the least.

First: My behemoth has completely locked down Hatikvah's Choice from any Xenon incursion. For the past 10 hours of gameplay it has just sat there chewing through every raiding party that came through the gate. There hasn't been a single Xenon seen outside of that sector on that part of the map. Nothing survives my Behemoth.

Second: When I got to Ianamus Zura, there wasn't a Xenon in sight. Odd, I thought, so I kept going through to Matrix #451... which has been completely overrun by the Teladi. There are Teladi ships and defense platforms all over that sector, and the Xenon are fighting for their lives there. Most of the Xenon has been wiped out of that sector.

I'm stumped. I was expecting something a bit more from the Xenon, and while I will still get a little fun out of eventually going into the Xenon sectors to clean the rest of them up, I'm a bit disappointed that the universe has been doing such a good job dealing with them in my stead.

Has anyone else run into this before? Did I just get some bad luck of the draw on the generation of my game that made the Xenon particularly weak for me, or is there perhaps some trigger down the road that will suddenly make them spring into life and get revenge on everyone who has gotten in their way thus far?

[mediacenter]

i really dont know
its never happened to me to have a weak xenon push, and without my help i never experienced faction take over xenon sectors, most likely they lose a bunch of theyr sectors and struggle until i push the xenon back
this happened to me in both economy and military oriented playstyle


maybe the game engine decided to give faction a suitable bunch of station to begin with and so teladi and argon can back up theyr production, but its just speculation on my part

[GCU Grey Area]

I'd give it a couple more days. In my current game it took the Xenon around 5-6 days or so before they turned really aggressive & started eating chunks of ZYA territory. Up until that point didn't see all that many of their ships. Since then there have been many more of them in the region. Also been getting more frequent alerts of Xenon XL ships in other areas (Ianamus Zura in particular). However have not been responding to those & my satellite coverage is still rather patchy outside the ZYA region, so can't be certain of precise numbers involved in each attack.

[oddible]

most of that being mining ships or fighter escorts for them.

This. No matter how many times people create threads talking about how huge a problem the Xenon are, and how many times everyone tells them that with the TINIEST amount of effort you can accellerate the faction economies so that they can hold their own vs the Xenon, people keep complaining. Honestly all you have to do is pump raw materials into ANY faction and they will push the Xenon back on their own. Let a faction wither without human intervention and then it is more left to chance, RNG, and the initial starting seed.

Also, I think the first play through is given an easier seed though I have zero evidence to prove it.

[Tidaar]

Nope , you are not the only one experiencing this. Xenon are quite weak in my game too. I had to even help them take sectors back so that they don't get wiped out.
This made me stop playing due to lack of challenge. As for the Kh'aak I don't even want to comment.. lucky for them their stations are indestructible.

[Thecrippler]

They shot program xenons so that when player starts to grow xenons shot to when players build a shipyard xenons becomes a plague now that is the challenge i'm willing to take atm all you need to do is make a blockade where xenons are coming from and that is it no challenge
xenons shot adjust to player if player have more ships blocking the path xenons shot come with a bigger force not only 1 I and 2K

[j.harshaw]

Their absolute strength does not vary much, but distribution can vary a lot from start to start. Where they're concentrated and the events following shortly after can have a large effect on how you encounter them when you do in force, likely much later in the game.

[Meteor1981]

In my game with 100 hours I've fighted and I'm fighting strong the Xenon. My goals were been:
1)support the Teladi's economy
2) prevent the destruction of Teladi's farms or his military fleets.
3) destroy the Xenon power plants or the defensive stations that block the commerce from sectors.

Now in my game I have completed destroyed all the building in the Matrix 413 and the sector now has a grey colour. I've cleared the commerce ways from Teladi/Split from Xenon's defensive stations. Now the Teladi has increased the quantity of capital that now send in offensive attack and mission of patrol.
The Teladi at the beginning of the game was in difficult and without my early support they lost sector 100%. Now the Teladi are able to attack the Xenon and the Xenon is losing builds and sectors.
I like the Xenon's aggressive behaviour

[Meteor1981]

About the Xenon's aggressive variability it seems that they stop the activity but in real: change the target or wait the production in order to increased theirs fletts before move them.

[Falcrack]

First: My behemoth has completely locked down Hatikvah's Choice from any Xenon incursion. For the past 10 hours of gameplay it has just sat there chewing through every raiding party that came through the gate. There hasn't been a single Xenon seen outside of that sector on that part of the map. Nothing survives my Behemoth.

You are going to get complacent, focus on other things, then find at some point that your Behemoth has been destroyed by a K or an I than came charging through that gate.

[easternsun]

Sometimes the Xenon get a perfect world map where the lose to another faction and respawn in another sector with full resources. In my game they took over Antigone's sectors and can produce so many ships that every 15 minutes a new fleet is ready.

I have the War Mod and I need 5 shipyards going to stop them taking over Argon.

[Waltz99]

don't try to beat them but use them.
If you are interested in a sector where xenon show activity then let them take it over.
Once the sector falls in xenon hands you easily can take it from xenon and have it in your possesion.
I destroyed a complete xenon defence station with only one rattlesnake which I controled myself and have been very patient but can also note that 20+ xenon N and M where trying to defend it but failed .

[Bozz11]

Nope , you are not the only one experiencing this. Xenon are quite weak in my game too. I had to even help them take sectors back so that they don't get wiped out.
This made me stop playing due to lack of challenge. As for the Kh'aak I don't even want to comment.. lucky for them their stations are indestructible.

I totally agree with this!

I also strongly agree, I don't use mega complexes or massive defense stations around gates to kill them I don't even build many ships so I don't overpower anyone but they still weak, the strongest they sent was like 1 I and 2 Ks with a few fighters.... would be nice if they were a bit like in AI War 2 if you push them too hartd they become crazy active and start building ships like crazy i'd love that xD

[dtpsprt]

I also strongly agree, I don't use mega complexes or massive defense stations around gates to kill them I don't even build many ships so I don't overpower anyone but they still weak, the strongest they sent was like 1 I and 2 Ks with a few fighters.... would be nice if they were a bit like in AI War 2 if you push them too hartd they become crazy active and start building ships like crazy i'd love that xD

It depends on the way the player plays his/her game. The more (if possible all) factions you befriend and supply with resources the less aggressive the Xenon seem to be because the factions are able to keep them in check. The player "choosing sides" has the "side effect" of the Xenon being able to grow and become really dangerous because some of the factions have to face three opponents the Xenon, the faction they are at war with and the player who tends to be more than a superpower than a faction..

Personally I believe that the "ideal" way to move forward is supply the factions (all of them) so the coming and going of war continues, the economy moves and the player intervenes only in extreme circumstances, like when a faction faces simultaneous attacks from the opposing faction and the Xenon, taking care (of course) of the Xenon threat (but not annihilating them).

[Bozz11]

This game has 0 threats when it comes to combat, I played for nearly 500 hours and I never felt any kind of threat !
Factions are extremelly weak, only HOP starts with a decent fleet but once they loose it by attriction they'll never manage to rebuild it, never seen any other faction actually build a fleet they only seem to field a few destroyers and factions like ANT and ARG don't even seem to be capable of having more than 3-4 destroyers, it's ridiculous xD they can oppose 0 threat to the player from my experiance.
Xenons actually have a decent fleet but don't really use it properly, and they don't seem to target further away from border sectors... only sometimes they'll sent some fighters or crovettes.
No one ever attacked any of my stations and I'm at war with half the galaxy, they just don't have the ships to do it and are not able to build them even when you supply them for 400 hours, I expected egosoft to work on this but I guesss that on next start I'll use some mods because right now you can wreck the whole galaxy with 10 destroyers... And you can get those very fast in this game...

[Altimis]

Its random. And its depends on how player interactive with the current game save.

I play normally, no rush, just do my thing, crystal farms until I can buy a decent fleet without focusing on Xenon. Its not until 200-300 hours, Xenon start to devastating everything on the HOP southern border (I am surprised HOP losing to Xenon and unsuccessful on capturing Xenon sector.) So I decide to intervention if I am not, everything will be ruins in no time.

[Ezarkal]

In all the playthrough I did so far (4 or 5 since 1.0, ranging between a few dozen hours to multiple hundred), Xenons have been disappointingly weak.
They would make the occasion push, take a sector or two, then lose most of their sectors to HOP. The best I've seen them do is push Teladi back up to Hewa's Twin I, where I sent my fleet as support.

However, I'm usually a pretty active player where the economy is concerned, and I consider a starving shipyard as a good station building opportunity. I usually set up trades fairly quickly, and don't acquire more military than needed to fend off the occasional pirate attack on my traders... until I'm rolling in enough money to buy whatever I want. Therefore the other factions are usually stronger because of the wares I feed them in exchange for credits.

On the other hand, I've seen so many players complaining about how OP the Xenons are, that you can't deny that truth either. I saw some people reporting instances of total onslaught of xenons destroying most fringe sectors and quickly moving to core worlds within a few dozen of hours.

So, I assume there's some RNG involved as to where they will strike and how NPC factions will react to them. But at the same time a lot will depend on what you're doing as a player.

[GCU Grey Area]

never seen any other faction actually build a fleet

Have seen some fairly big fleets in my games. This is what the Teladi managed to put together in my last game:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/39chopkrlh93y ... 1.jpg?dl=0
Ignore the big green splodge near the west gate (that was mine) & just count the number of destroyers the Teladi had guarding that single sector. They certainly did not start the game with that many. Might not be quite up to HOP standards, but I still consider it a decent enough fleet.

[dtpsprt]

+1 to that.
I once noticed 17 Teladi destroyers and 1 Carrier in 6 fleets in Company Regard (difficult to forget eh?) and that was some 14h into the game...

[jlehtone]

Different factions have different Order of Battle; what is in one "formation". Does one formation count as "a fleet"? I presume yes.

I saw huge/many HOP fleets early in the game. They have all vanished and HOP can at most trickle new ships (which probably suicide alone).

Can't tell whether Teladi had fleets to begin with, but when the (Northern) Xenon were pushed back (by me), the Teladi did step in, did claim (empty) sectors, did send fleets (as shown by previous posters) and even cleared several Xenon sectors on their own.

ZYA had been beaten by those Northern Xenon (and ARG). They had at most one Colonial Rattlesnake in far away FRF space. Queues full on all ZYA Wharfs and Yards, but no resources to build from and no ships/infra to get resources. That is when I did "provide logistics services". At modest price.

The result: ZYA did (re)build fleets. Dozens of Rattlers. Flagship Raptor (soon killed by ARG). Patrol Raptor and Flagship again (so they have now two Carriers). Supply Monitors for several fleets. S/M galore. Eventually, ZYA Wharfs had no more ships in production. They must have reached the limit of how many ships they can have. (They do build more, if they do suffer losses.)

Therefore: +1, have seen faction build.

I might spoon-feed HOP next.


The Xenon, who were initially pushing out almost everywhere (and clearing&claiming several sectors in the North) have gone almost silent. Feeble. Now they trickle (and thus suicide). Only XEN SY is left in #9 and it has no resources. Teladi did that on their own.


Economy is warfare.
AI either
* has big fleet, takes more sectors, gathers more resources, and still has big fleet
- or -
* doesn't have many resources. The little they have they spend to build lone ships that die before they have big fleet. Hence they can't get/save more resources

The player knows to hit the supply lines, removing the infra behind big fleets.
The player can ship amounts of resources that the AI logic is not smart enough to build up.
Alas, spoon-feeding resources to the Xenon is not trivial.