My Xenon are failing, again...

[Raptor34]

I mean YOU build it, not the Xenon. Like a Xenon beacon.
That way if you want it, you can do it. If you don't want it, don't do it.
I imagine it'll be like the old Terran Atmo Lifters, where they'll spawn from way off map and you can see them come in.

That basically makes Xenon's extinction the default outcome, which feels dull to me.
Imagine a new player who hasn’t done anything yet, only to find the biggest villain already defeated by some random NPC. Now, that player has to work to bring the villain back just to make the universe feel alive again—it’s almost like an antihero story.

Factions can still kill whatever building it is if under Xenon control anyway.
But just give them a Xenon M0, something that can't go through gates so it's defense only.
Maybe use it to test out a mobile station thing, so it can mine and build ships and all that.

[flywlyx]

Factions can still kill whatever building it is if under Xenon control anyway.
But just give them a Xenon M0, something that can't go through gates so it's defense only.
Maybe use it to test out a mobile station thing, so it can mine and build ships and all that.

If every time that station (whether a wharf, shipyard, or a new type) is attacked, a full fleet of Xenon I/K/P/B/M/N spawns from outside the map and moves directly to defend it, it should be enough to stop most NPC factions, given their limited fleet sizes. Meanwhile, players would still have the option to outnumber and overpower that fleet.

[Eyeklops]

Maybe 7.5 is different, but in my experience Xenon defense fleets respond too slowly. I swear I've seen HOP tearing up stations in Faulty logic while a death fleet of K's and I's camp out in Atiya's doing nothing.

[flywlyx]

Maybe 7.5 is different, but in my experience Xenon defense fleets respond too slowly. I swear I've seen HOP tearing up stations in Faulty logic while a death fleet of K's and I's camp out in Atiya's doing nothing.

All faction defense fleets respond slowly. In most cases, as long as the patrol fleet isn’t in the same sector, my fleet of 10 destroyers can safely destroy the defense station and leave without encountering any patrol fleet.

[adeine]

Maybe 7.5 is different, but in my experience Xenon defense fleets respond too slowly. I swear I've seen HOP tearing up stations in Faulty logic while a death fleet of K's and I's camp out in Atiya's doing nothing.

All faction defense fleets respond slowly. In most cases, as long as the patrol fleet isn’t in the same sector, my fleet of 10 destroyers can safely destroy the defense station and leave without encountering any patrol fleet.

One destroyer is all it takes.

[LameFox]

Maybe 7.5 is different, but in my experience Xenon defense fleets respond too slowly. I swear I've seen HOP tearing up stations in Faulty logic while a death fleet of K's and I's camp out in Atiya's doing nothing.

From what I could tell, their individual fleets don't get very large in terms of capitals. However they do sometimes have more than one of those fleets around, often with local defend orders. Then they might peel off one at a time to go fight.

These fleets can get lucky sometimes, as with an I and two K's they can still deal a lot of damage if they get close. But it seems like often their slow speed means their escorts die ahead of them and there's nothing left to distract all the destroyers and their turrets to cover the approach. One time while I was watching a separate group of S/M ships had engage just before they arrived, and that was enough to turn the tide and wipe out the group of HOP destroyers. But that didn't make much long term difference until the weapon components ran out. It seems like Xenon can only survive when the economy dies.

[LameFox]

Something else I'm observing is that when I encounter a Xenon capital ship like a K that has been fighting enemy S/M ships in low-attention prior to my arrival, it tends to be stripped of most if not all turrets. This almost never pans out in a fully high-attention engagement, the attacking ships would tend to suffer very heavy casualties instead.

edit: Another thing is that I tried a start with more plots complete to see if the resulting wars could make it easier for XEN to survive. But due to the delay between forming TRI and Dal contacting the player, they have nothing better to do than exterminate nearby Xenon with all their starting forces, so this isn't ideal. It really starts to feel like I may as well drop this game until they fix it. I don't enjoy playing in universes where the Xenon are meaningless, and that's every single game I start now.

[vkolosov]

I play with the following mods:

• Xenon Jobs+ 7.0

• Increased OOS turret fire chance

• Cheaper ships for Xenon

After enabling Xenon Jobs+, the Xenon do an enormous push, that is very hard to overcome. That is very cool. But after you deal with this force, they revert back to being pretty passive, and attacking sectors with smaller forces. Still much better than vanilla.

The current problem with Xenon strength: when you begin the game, they are scary. And you can't do anything to them, as you do not yet command destroyers to counter K's and I's. But later in game, when you command heavy fleets, Xenon do not have anything to properly challenge you.

[LameFox]

Honestly, right now, they're not even scary at the start of the game. Everyone seems to rush them—even ZYA, although they don't make as much progress as HOP or TEL and start to fail once their initial resources run dry.

It's certainly tempting to just give up and use mods, but, as ever I run into bugs whenever I play and want to be able to report them easily.

[jlehtone]

There are players, who do not want to be "important". They like it is Galaxy handles its own even when they nothing and dislike if that have to be the "hero".
There are also players, who want to be the center and focus of everything. The main character. There seems to be less players that want to save a faction (XEN) from all other factions, than those who want to save all other factions from XEN.

Here we are. It is quite safe to do nothing. At most you lose profitsss when "natural consumption" is reduced.
If we want to defend a faction from evil aliens, then there are the poor helpless Xenon for us to save.

[balistos]

Just another testimony from base game (no dlc), vanilla, v7.10.

I mainly spend time to save Xenon. The time I made to initiate my economy, they were already wiped out from Scale Plate sectors with Teladi that had strongly colonized the zone and the surroundings. I took control of those and destroyed all Teladi belongings there, but there is no chance Xenons would ever come back, as massive Teladi fleets are still patroling.

Xenon sectors north to Ianamous Zura, and south to paranid HOP were being murdered but I somehow managed to save them by taking control over sectors adjancent to Xenon ones, thus preventing other factions to assault their neighbour sectors. Still working on Ianamus Zura with its Teladi trading station which is really hard to destroy : I don't want to lose reputation, so I sell destroyers outfited with plasma turrets to HOP, broken engines seating just in the face of the station, so that HOP is doing the dirty work... but those Teladi trading stations are too big, I am planning to jump my head quarter onto it to make the Teladi station explode (well, bye bye reputation...).

Overall, I try to capture as much sectors as I can to balance factions power, so that Xenon would become more significant, but it's a very long task : I have been playing this since months.

Work in progress...

[LameFox]

Yep... I had hoped by starting a (mostly) core game, I could strengthen them over time. Plan was to build up industry using closed loop and only trading with VIG and RIP, so as not to contribute to the economy. Then kill one of the Xenon batches, enable SV, kill two more, and end up with all their forces concentrated in 3 places (Tharka's, Atiya's, and Matrix #9).

But even without CoH and the Intevention Corps, or any Boron at all, I'm not sure if they'll live long enough to pull that off. I've already had to resort to sabotaging ANT and HOP shipbuilding. This time their wharves as well as shipyard since just shipyards wasn't enough on my last attempt. Even fighting for hours against factions that can't build ships, Xenon haven't yet cleared the enemy defence platforms in their own territory. Yet those same factions as long as they could build would roll right over Xenon ones and were doing so before I stopped them.

edit: I've started sabotaging the repair on defence platforms bc it lasts for 5 hours, and even still they haven't killed one. Unbelievably broken faction.

[klock_x4]

Add me to the list of folks underwhelmed by late game Xenon behavior. This was probably starting pre-7.5 in my particular save, but it's really obvious in 7.5 now.

As an aside: I'm really not interested in a new start / mods. Really. Spent a lot of time on this save game, building up an empire (85 billion creds, probably 15-20 stations of which most are mega factories/wharves/docks, 50 Asgard, several dozen destroyers and a handful of carriers), modding ships, etc. I get that some folks might suggest "well, start a new save" but I'm looking at this from the perspective that this is a "sandbox" and that bulldozing an existing sandbox when everything goes wrong due to some fundamental game mechanic rather than life-choices (I did NOT try to obliterate the Xenon in their home bases, just contain them) seems "wrong".

The only thing I haven't done yet is to kick off the Xenon crisis (wondering if it will actually "help"). Several Matrix sectors have fallen from the Xenon and are now possessed by NPC factions. There used to be a pretty solid ownership of sectors by Xenon, but now they're down to a total of 5 or 6 sectors which have NPC presence and virtually no combat Xenon ships or miners.

Short of a borderline exploit (docking all my ships at the wharves / docks to prevent new ships plus no longer selling ships to any NPC) or going to mods, is there any dev review (would love an @dev function on the forums), what's the fix in the queue? I can't believe this was "working as intended". And, I really don't want to start blowing up NPC stations but that really feels like the only other in-game option available to me. Which, of course, seems to be the course some posters are suggesting...despite being not in character.

I don't fully know if this is a balance issue or what, but seems like the Xenon should be a bit better at coping with aggression by the player and the NPC factions than it appears. Otherwise, the backstory on everything needs to change from "the Xenon are a significant threat" to "the Xenon are a minor annoyance and it's really these [Faction name] that are the real problem".

It's immersion-breaking...whether you count the fact that I can't really get any more Exceptional mod drops or the fact that there's no threat out there to stations/sectors.

[LameFox]

My observations here are generally based in new games, so I actually wouldn't recommend starting anew anyway: they'd still lose. Nor does the crisis help at all, sadly. What you get there are only combat ships, so they have no way of contributing anything to restoring the Xenon already in your game (or not in it). They also don't last very long and their relevance in the crisis waves compared to the Kha'ak L ships is pretty low.

[adeine]

The only thing I haven't done yet is to kick off the Xenon crisis (wondering if it will actually "help"). Several Matrix sectors have fallen from the Xenon and are now possessed by NPC factions. There used to be a pretty solid ownership of sectors by Xenon, but now they're down to a total of 5 or 6 sectors which have NPC presence and virtually no combat Xenon ships or miners.

Unfortunately no, all the crisis does is spawn waves of 1 I, 3 K and a couple of fighters in sectors you have assets in periodically. The Xenon might as well not be involved in the "Xenon" crisis as the only real threat is from the Kha'ak Ravagers (which will happily annihilate the spawned Xenon, too).

[LameFox]

Relevant steam thread.

How can this be the state of things lol, players wiping out the faction by accident not realizing how fragile it is. It's like X4 is simulating an ecological disaster now. Players damage Xenon habitat and, oops, we're updating their conservation status to "extinct in the wild".

[Y-llian]

I love the changes in 7.5 where faction ships now behave better. But I agree, the poor Xenon is pretty much guaranteed to lose. The issues, I feel, are as follows and they have a compounding effect.

1. Logistics.

a) Even before the recent updates the Xenon had issues. Their hive-like structure means that ships can be built in any of their clusters. At times, this means replacements for fleet engagements are built far away and not near their active war fronts or where they recently lost ships.

b) related to the above, this means logistics units can end up in the wrong place and unable to feed their shipyards.

c) (Credit to Lamefox for this one) SE units rush to their deaths on mass! Whenever a Xenon station is attacked, Xenon logistic units will start to deliver wares for repair on mass, only for them to be destroyed while doing so... This, in turn, adds yet further strain to the Xenon's logistic capability.

2. Geography.

Unlike the other factions, Xenon space is spread out over the whole galaxy with clusters disconnected from each other. They cannot reinforce their fleets properly. And coupled with the logistical issues, it often means death for them in the mid-to-long term. This is in stark contrast to the other factions who defend / expand from a core cluster though there are some exceptions e.g. Teladi in Hewa. But on the whole, the other factions can reinforce because their empire geography favour shorter supply lines that can more easily reach Xenon areas.

3. The universe got bigger

With every expansion the Xenon became more and more disadvantaged. Their enemies grew and while new Xenon sectors were added, this in itself, couldn’t help them because of points 1 and 2. More isolated sectors with the same logistical issues only prolong their struggle but the result will be the same. They die because of attrition… Unable to reinforce and supply where they need it most

4. Faction fleets got smarter (7.5)

Now with 7.5, the awesome updates for faction fleets where destroyers can out range Xenon stations and gather in better coordinated fleets means the Xenon, already suffering, have no prayer. On every level they are now at a disadvantage: their geography, their logistics, the number of enemies and now their weapon ranges.

5. Their fleet sizes remain relatively small

On the whole, Xenon fleet sizes have remained relatively small compared to their faction counterparts. So, even when they do get a fleet together, chances are it’ll be destroyed before it can do much damage.

Now, to some degree #5 feels like a design choice. The Xenon’s function is to drive the economy by destroying stuff but never to the extent that it seriously threatens the universe / factions. And while this is a logical position, it does feel like the pendulum has swung way too far against them.

So yes, I agree. Let’s give our robot baddies some love. They should be the Xenon not the Xe-none.

[Raptor34]

The logistics part is annoying. I've just noticed that apparently of the 3 clusters remaining in my save, the Emperor's Pride one apparently did not have a SPP. Somehow. Despite having existed since the beginning of the game and never being pressed at all.
And sometimes you see EC distributors or miners around. Then they just disappear because ???.
Fortunately it's also the one least pressed, but I have to occasionally Asgard the lone Oddys that wander in.
Incidentally someone noted that fleets seems to have destroyers still bumbling into station range, which from my very limited experience seems to pan out, which means these lone Oddys are incredibly dangerous because they properly keep range.

Imo it might be worthwhile for Egosoft to start treating each cluster as their own separate entity rather than just having a universal AI for it. Which doesn't even work the way it should anyway as we've seen. We should be seeing cluster 1 sending reinforcements to try to help cluster 2 ideally. What we're seeing is cluster 1 sending it's miners to die in cluster 2, which already has miners btw, for no good reason.

[Y-llian]

I share the frustration, Raptor. It’s also annoying when you see Xenon logistics units in highways full knowing they’re never going to reach their destination.

Myself and others have suggested solutions over the years, including permitting the Xenon to move ships between their clusters (without having to cross the galaxy) so they can function better as a whole. I’m sure we can find a reasonable lore reason to support such a mechanic.

[LameFox]

Another player trying to keep their Xenon alive. If I had reddit I'd warn them that while they wait for Dal to call, their newly spawned TRI will dump its starting resources into fighting its only nearby enemy... Xenon.

Logistically I think the SE's dying in an attempt to reach stations is their biggest challenge right now. From what I've seen watching them before, although they do waste a lot of SE's trying to reach other clusters, these weren't critical to their operations in the cluster they were leaving. It seemed more like they were intended to reinforce clusters which had lost some? Hard to be sure of the underlying reasons for the order just by looking at them of course. If that's true though the behaviour should theoretically be helpful, but, well, they realistically don't have any chance of getting there. SE's do not have that kind of mobility, and will invariably be killed en-route. So maybe the behaviour is pointless and should be curtailed, or maybe SE's ought to be faster ships, or something.

But when some destroyers attack a defence platform, and all their SE's in that cluster rush over to resupply it so it can repair lost modules or something—that absolutely ruins their local economy. One single siege can be a setback they never fully recover from. This seems to be a big part of what does in the Atiya's cluster in every game I started.