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

[Gavrushka]

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.)

In an earlier game, I eliminated the Xenon prior to SV dropping, but in that game the Northern Xenon went wild and all but eliminated Zyarth after I installed the DLC. - On starting a new game, I had almost nothing in the way of ships and certainly no factories, but noticed the Xenon were again wacking Zyarth, and the Split shipyards and wharfs were lacking resources to fight back. - All I did (all I could do) was put a resource probe in a Zyarth sector with a little ore, and sent two mineral miners to sector mine... Around 20 more game hours in, and Zyarth are building ships without having lost a sector.

I would like to take all the credit, but it's more likely I merely tipped the balance from negative to 'mildly positive.'

The great thing about a simulation is that little tweaks can change the course of the game, and that's empowering for a fledgling player.

[Bozz11]

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.

I've seen something like that in 1.0 that's the last time now they do tend to have more ships than the other factions like PAR ARG or ANT... but never seen anything like that, also I see something weird, The Teladi carrier is travelling from TEL space to second contact where he got destroyed a few times I don't really know what he wants to do there VS the whole HOP fleet...

[Candergart]

In my current save, Xenon were very strong in Zya space (which is quite common) and tried pushing in to HAT space, which is also very common.
Basically the top center area of the map got overrun by the Xenons until I pushed them back.

But in all my former maps, Xenons had a lot of other strongholds too, like Matrix9 and Matrix451 (TEL FRF Space), Scale Plate Green, Emperors Pride and the area around Faulty Logic, Frontier Edge and Atiya's Misfortune.
All of these areas have been cleaned out by HOP/ANT/TEL and PAR in my game.
It turned the game into a really boring session as there is basically no Xenon's left.

Even Tharka's Ravine IV is empty.
It feels like Xenon's are waaaay too weak in total.

Best Regards.
Me

[CBJ]

This thread is over 4 years old, and things will have been very different back then. Just start your own thread if you want to discuss the situation in the current game version.