X3AP Xenon Shipyard respawn?

[TheKauz]

Hi everyone,

if i want to start a fight in xenon sector, e.g. 472 (north of Black sun),
and i clear all ships, the station and the shipyard, then i leave the sector -->

will the xenon shipyard and xenon station and all the xenon ships in it respawn after a while?


I ask, cause i dont want empty xenon sectors, but i want places for fighting ^^

[Alan Phipps]

Yes the Xenon stations will respawn and their ships will slowly start to reappear too. You might also get some Xenon ships travel the slow way from another Xenon sector to the emptied one - that used to happen in TC but I am not so sure about that in AP.

[PilotsBallad]

Yes the Xenon stations will respawn and their ships will slowly start to reappear too. You might also get some Xenon ships travel the slow way from another Xenon sector to the emptied one - that used to happen in TC but I am not so sure about that in AP.

It still happens in AP though most of them get killed from RRF or patrolling military fleets halfway through.

[TheKauz]

TY for this Answer.

Another Question: (REMEMBER: X3AP, NOT TC)

Do only Qs and P,L,M,N respawn in 472 or do J, K and I also respawn in this sector?

Or are those ships only coming from 023 the slow way?

[hisazul]

J, K, I are just random. Not sure if fighting rank affects that or not. As long as sector has a shipyard J and K should be somewhere.

At least with maxed combat rank I see all of them and plenty. If you want combat sector for boarding, capping, shooting, salvaging etc. don't break the stations. Use them as sort of... S.O.S. signal? Hit it with a mossie and you should have plenty of flying resources coming your way.

[TheKauz]

I thought the stations respawn... are stations important for ship-respawning or why should i left them "alive"?

[Bill Huntington]

X472 is unique of the X sectors. The Xenon don't spawn in this sector under normal circumstances, after you clear it. They will rebuild in the SY, but not spawn. That is true of J, K, Q. Those will spawn in the closest X sector with a SY and migrate back to X472. There is a certain quota for each X sector. The Xenon station has no effect on anything. Kill it or not, it does not matter. The SY does. It respawns on a long schedule. Then it will rebuild the Xenon in that sector until the quota is reached.

In all other X sectors, Q and smaller will continue to spawn even when the SY is killed. The J and K will migrate from the closest Xenon SY.

So it is not hard to clear and hold X 472. You can put automated defenses to kill the Xenon as they migrate back. I use blocks of 25, 50, and 100 Lasertowers with a few satellites inside. They attack the satellites and the LTs kill them and kill them. But it is important to have your LTs outside the normal traffic lanes or they will kill passing pirates and lower your pirate rating. There is no easy way to change the key settings. If you put a station on the site of Xenon SY, it will not stop the respawn. Just kill it when it respawns and you can hold the sector.

It is a full time project to hold the other Xenon sectors. I've done it for extended game days, but it becomes a full time job and that's almost all you do. Read the posts under my name if you want my methods. And now I found better ways to have TC fun with the Xenon.

I haven't verified all this in AP yet, but Egosoft doesn't usually change things like this.

[Bill Huntington]

I read your first post, TheKauz, so let me give you a good one. You don't really want to hold a sector. You want to fight Xenon. So clear each Xenon sector of J, K, and I and Shipyards (SY). Clear X472 completely. Don't kill the SY in Core 023. The Xenon sector in TU 3 can be ignored because it seems to operate independently and there is no SY.

You end up with ALL of the Xenon capitals spawning in the SY in Core 023. After you kill all of them, you jump out or they don't respawn. You can jump back immediately and they all come out of the SY one by one. In TC there were about 15 of them. I used my Tyr with a Skirnir sidekick. You need a tough guy to feed you E occasionally. The Skirnir also can loft the occasional Shadow missile. Rinse and repeat.

If you kill the last SY, the Xenon go into spawning overdrive in every Xenon sector including X472. They don't even need a SY. It really is too much to handle. As far as I can tell, they don't stop.

If I had more patience, I could have rode this to rank XTreme. But killing a few hundred Xenon capitals can get boring.

[TheKauz]

In all other X sectors, Q and smaller will continue to spawn even when the SY is killed. The J and K will migrate from the closest Xenon SY.

Thank you for your posts!

I have a question:

In the Xenon-Sector 347 there is no J, K or I anymore, cause one Argon-patrol killed all in it, now the Xenon Q, P ,L, M N are all respawned in X347, but no J or K. You say, the J or K will migrate from the closest SY to this Sector, which is the SY in X472. I have a lot of stations in Black Sun and there never has been an J or K at north gate. But sometimes there is one at the north gate of X598.

Can u help me and explain it?

Or did you mean with "clostest SY" the SY in X023 always?

[Bill Huntington]

They might have passed you by without engaging. They had a mission to return to their sector after all, so they didn't have a patrol and destroy mission. X101 is further but they could have come from there, even though it is further. A few TC pilots have added to knowledge about the Xenon over the months. Every piece of it took a lot of observation and verification. We don't know everything about the Xenon life cycle. If you come up with new knowledge, let us know. It seems like distance is the main factor, but there could be other things too. I don't know.

The three sets of gates can change the distances too. And I'm not sure if they count the Avarice shortcut in their calculations. I've seen them there in TC but I'm not sure because the gates were involved.

[Triaxx2]

One trick to facilitate a rapid return of the Xenon to the sector, is to cut off 598's south gate, 347's north gate, and the south gate in 472 with the HUB. (In TC at least.) That way they see it as a one sector trip and you'll get a long line of them marching through the hub and typically not encountering any race patrols. You can either engage them in the Hub itself, or cordon the south gate with capitals and farm loot like that.

I typically surround it with flak heavy ships, to deal with any fighters, and then park a Phoenix just above the gate and angle it so any capital that comes through gets blasted by the forward and starboard batteries straight away.

If you want to cap, I'd suggest sitting about 10km inside the sector and using Flails to ensure they're locked on you when they arrive. I am however informed that up the nose boarding doesn't work so well in AP any more.