Xenon keep getting wiped without player involvement

[Targ Collective]

I've played a few games, and the Community of Planets is now tanking the Xenon, taking many of their sectors.

The Xenon are not successfully defending their sectors and are not capturing enemy sectors reliably. The ship metagame has not benefited from the I being replaced by the H. It is not equipped for stationcracking, has one docking port for drones, and is not as durable as the I. As a result stationcracking has suffered, and Xenon expansion has been sharply curtailed.

I suggest an economic, and military solution. The xenon need a learning algorithm for their economy in three tiers: Learned safe areas pay for economic ships with economic ships that survive to pay the cost of their manufacture. Xenon held sectors get extra safe sector points, if they have a two way connection to extra sectors there are more safe sector points. The safe sector ships pay for themselves, then investment in unsafe sector build sites, safe sectors are given safe sector points based on how many paths lead into Xenon space and unsafe sector points based on how many paths lead back out.

Militarily the loss of the I for the H has crippled the Xenon. With the Xenon economy secured, they can do what they do best - Von Neumann Replication. They need a new behaviour that focuses around their new fleet disposition to account for stationcracking. Basically that now relies on the K. The Xenon need to build fleets in their sectors, where they are safe, around stationcracking. Since the I is no longer available that basically means the use of enough K ships to reliably destroy stations, while also neutralising the Community of Planets forces, and the means to build Xenon stations in their place. The H is a joke of a drone carrier because the launches are one deep. It needs more docking ports desperately to launch rapid drone swarms, and it could be given long range, high damage weapons suited to stationcracking support.

I'm fully aware that game balance is a metagame that constantly bears refinement, and I can see clearly that your vision has amazing scope - you've made an amazing game! I'm hoping you'll find these comments useful, because I'm not trying to be nasty, I'm trying to be useful, see? I get carried away sometimes.

Anyway, I'm hoping you'll find these ideas worth the reading time.

[LameFox]

There were some threads about this a while back, I ran a few custom games as friends with the Xenon (and everyone) to watch. I am pretty sure the biggest change has been improvements to the other factions' starting economies, more than any particular nerf to Xenon. Also, I don't think the H has replaced the I. They still use it as far as I know—the H seems rarer and mostly appears to hang out in their own space.

Another thing I recall is that the Xenon often appeared to have resources they just weren't expending even as they were being pushed back, which lead me to suspect they're just stretched a bit thin. It's not ideal but my current fix has been to start the game with just Timelines and ToA. When I have my own shipyard going I intend to activate SV and then selectively cull Xenon pockets in places I don't go much. Then do the same with CoH (this one has a big impact due to Intervention Corps, if you were going to turn off any one DLC to save them it should be this). Boron could probably be added whenever, I'm thinking somewhere in the middle. Starting this way I haven't seen the Xenon lose a single pocket of their space, even in the same seed, so I think it looks promising so far.

I'm hoping they find some solution though as I do like starting out with Terran tech...

[MKL81]

The Xenon I are still available, might be that existing H are occupying the unit cap that could be spent on K and I? I don't feel like messing with scripts to check this out, probably somebody already knows the answer anyway. In general I feel that Xenon are too weak, in my current games even without any kind of help - the Terrans and Teladi are absolutely steamrolling Xenon. Terrans were sending constant intervention fleets everywhere, mostly to Tharka's Cascade, but were also present in Atyia's and Emperor's Pride. Teladi/MIN relatively early build a considerable fleet, guarding i.e. Ianamus Zura IV gate to Matrix 451 with 6-8 destroyers, numerous S/M craft a carrier and aux. They annihilate everything that's coming out of Xenon sectors and easily push to Matrix sectors every single time.

After 7.0 came out, I had to install Xenon Jobs Lite and Cheaper Xenon Ships mods to make XEN even somewhat capable.

What is even THE POINT of giving Xenon sectors that have literally zero ore and silicon? I don't see any for Scale Plate Green Sectors?

[LameFox]

SPG does have ore and silicon, as do the neighbouring (unclaimed) Turquoise Sea sectors. Though they don't do a very good job of taking those.

[jlehtone]

The Xenon are not successfully defending their sectors and are not capturing enemy sectors reliably. The ship metagame has not benefited from the I being replaced by the H. It is not equipped for stationcracking, has one docking port for drones, and is not as durable as the I. As a result stationcracking has suffered, and Xenon expansion has been sharply curtailed.

I did look at two saves. One from New Year, other my latest. Both have 5 I. Only the latter, for obvious reason, has (4) H. Point is, no change on I.

I have seen 3 H simultaneously, in separate Xenon sectors. They had "Space Control" in their name and were not raiding; home patrols, not crackers.


It is true that the Xenon have fared differently on different game versions. Probably most of that can be attributed to "OOS Combat Resolution".
Yes, they seem to need help. Then again, for (un)lucky player Xenon forces may have a feast on one spot. Add one notch, and you get very unhappy non-militant players.

[MKL81]

SPG does have ore and silicon, as do the neighbouring (unclaimed) Turquoise Sea sectors. Though they don't do a very good job of taking those.

SPG I I think has very little resources, SPG IV - now I cannot check, but there should be a bit more, problem is, this is apparently not enough for AI. This is the ongoing thing that AI does prefer richer sectors on the other half of the galaxy than mediocre ones next door. That is not that much of a big deal for Commonwealth or Terran, since they are not enemies to each other most of the time, maybe with one exception here and there. As a result their trading and mining ships can travel freely and mine whenever they want. That is not the case for XEN, obviously. I watched SPG closely for some time now (among other XEN sectors) and the AI tend to send 90% of their mining fleet through Company Regard up to the other sectors, where they are sitting ducks. Then XEN lack resources, stop building ships, then Teladi destroyers pay them a visit and destroy their stations from safe distance, mostly unharmed.

Turquoise Sea is being overrun by Teladi early in my game, by the time I discover those sectors, they are already owned by the lizard white collar buddies. The fragmentation of XEN sectors is a significant handicap.

[LameFox]

When I was watching in my tests they didn't actually run out of resources. I could see the contents of their shipyards and wharves due to having full rep, and although sometimes they'd be weaker in one than the others, they could in theory have built more ships right until the end. What exactly needs changing with them, I'm not really sure. It appears that there's no single point of failure, they're just faring worse across the board than the commonwealth now that the latter's economy isn't totally dead at the start of the game.

Also, I noticed some of the suicidal SE's were actually not mining at all but going to reinforce other pockets of Xenon that had lost theirs. Though that being said, I do think (all) miners incorrectly weight resource values so highly that the travel time can make the route worse.

[LameFox]

On another note, it appears I spoke too soon about my experiment earlier: they may have taken longer to fail with the DLC disabled, but are still failing. Their shipyard in SPG is down to one module, and HOP and TEL have cleared several of the stations I mapped in Matrix 451 and Faulty Logic, which usually precedes those pockets' demise.

I guess it's time to shelve this game yet again while waiting for a patch. Feels like I do that quite a lot lately.

[GCU Grey Area]

Think 'without player involvement' needs to be defined. Assume this means no direct military involvement in fighting against the Xenon. That however is not the only way the player can be involved. Trading with the factions also has a significant impact, particularly in a 'friends with everyone' type of game.

By design each faction has inefficiencies built into it's economy - not quite enough industrial infrastructure, miners or traders to operate at peak efficiency. It's done this way so the player can fill those gaps, make money & gain faction rep. However that does have the side effect of turbocharging their ship-building, making them MUCH more capable of defending themselves against Xenon incursion & potentially capturing Xenon sectors.

I tend not to play 'friends with everyone' games. Like to have at least one faction (frequently several) in each game that consider me an enemy & other factions that are on my embargo trade list (e.g. in one of my Split games I had ARG & ANT as enemies, while PAR were on my embargo list because they were fighting my HOP allies). Tend to find that factions that I'm trading with fare far better against the Xenon than those I do not support. Generally means I still have substantial Xenon activity, even in games which have been running for 30+ days.

Can also be helpful to make plot decisions that pit factions against each other. In particular restarting the Terran Conflict makes a huge difference to how well the Xenon do. Terrans can't do much to the Xenon if their Intervention fleet is attacked as soon as it enters Argon territory, while the Argons are often too distracted blowing up Asgards etc to mount an effective anti-Xenon defence in Hatikvah's.

[LameFox]

Think 'without player involvement' needs to be defined. Assume this means no direct military involvement in fighting against the Xenon. That however is not the only way the player can be involved. Trading with the factions also has a significant impact, particularly in a 'friends with everyone' type of game.

During my test runs in custom games I did not do anything but observe and they were still losing. Without player involvement the only part of their territory that seems to do okay is Tharka's Cascade / Savage Spur. But this is a problem if you then want to clear it later for plot reasons...

I've yet to get a full production chain in actual gameplay post 7.0 because the Xenon are always dying first and then I don't want to continue with that game. First it was bugs, now perhaps just balance issues after 7.10. I keep trying new ways to start out so that they'll live but it seems like they are just really not in a good place. It's getting tiresome. I've actually rolled my game back to 6.20 now because even disabling DLC only delayed the inevitable.

[GCU Grey Area]

During my test runs in custom games I did not do anything but observe and they were still losing. Without player involvement the only part of their territory that seems to do okay is Tharka's Cascade / Savage Spur. But this is a problem if you then want to clear it later for plot reasons...

I've yet to get a full production chain in actual gameplay post 7.0 because the Xenon are always dying first and then I don't want to continue with that game. First it was bugs, now perhaps just balance issues after 7.10. I keep trying new ways to start out so that they'll live but it seems like they are just really not in a good place. It's getting tiresome. I've actually rolled my game back to 6.20 now because even disabling DLC only delayed the inevitable.

Well ,as I said, I'm not totally uninvolved, just selective about which factions I do business with. For example, in games where HOP are an enemy faction I generally do supply their ARG & PAR rivals, which very much diminishes HOP's capability to fight against the Xenon. In such games my Faulty Logic/Atiya's Xenon generally prosper, particularly if ANT/ARG to the north are also busy fighting the Terrans.

On the whole though I don't need the Xenon to retain absolutely every sector they start with. Any they lose often just means they consolidate their forces & infrastructure, becoming stronger in their remaining sectors. As long as they can still maintain a full fleet quota, & have plenty of stations to support that fleet, that's sufficient for my purposes. Doesn't particularly matter to me precisely where they're doing that.

Need the Xenon to have a full fleet etc to provide a reliable source of objectives for guild missions, however beyond that I'd much rather fight the other factions. Battles are more interesting; the non-Xenon factions use missiles (often copiously), have a far wider variety of ships & stations to destroy & there's no automatic range advantage for destroyer main guns, plasma turrets, etc.

[LameFox]

Considering the game positions them to be the primary enemy faction though, I don't think it's in a good state when they will largely cease to exist even if the player were to just fly around looking at stuff for a while. And unlike other factions, we can't directly help them, nor can we any longer restore them when they die AFAIK. I think that stopped working with the new physics or some time around then.

[GCU Grey Area]

Suspect that might be why they're comparatively weak (no missiles, short range turrets, very few turrets on their defence modules, etc). Easy enemy to fight because no one playing a standard vanilla game has any choice but to have them as an enemy. May be concerns that if the Xenon were significantly stronger they'd be howls of anguish from new players that the Xenon are overrunning their universe before they've even had a chance to learn how to play the game. That is just speculation though.

[LameFox]

I doubt it's intentional that they're in the game just to watch them be exterminated without lifting a finger. Their balance has fluctuated over the years but post-7.0 is the first time I've ever had to actively try to design my game universe to preserve them as a force in it.

Even a game where I have to buy ships at a wharf and send them to an EQ dock for weapons because of advanced electronic shortages can manage to see them driven out. It's not even a good economy that kills them as much as one that exists, at all. My guess is that all these years the Xenon were balanced for the starting economy to be completely DOA, because anything more than that and they'd exterminate everyone except maybe Terrans. Now that they've made changes to improve its health in the beginning, it reveals how weak the Xenon have actually been this whole time. And probably it slipped by unpatched because there were bugs after 7.0 making it worse, so we didn't find out until 7.10 what the effects would be.

[MKL81]

Think 'without player involvement' needs to be defined. Assume this means no direct military involvement in fighting against the Xenon. That however is not the only way the player can be involved. Trading with the factions also has a significant impact, particularly in a 'friends with everyone' type of game.

By design each faction has inefficiencies built into it's economy - not quite enough industrial infrastructure, miners or traders to operate at peak efficiency. It's done this way so the player can fill those gaps, make money & gain faction rep. However that does have the side effect of turbocharging their ship-building, making them MUCH more capable of defending themselves against Xenon incursion & potentially capturing Xenon sectors.

For some time now in my games I tend to isolate Teladi from my empire. Same for Terrans. I don't trade with any of them, I don't do any resource supply missions nor the station building missions. I don't involve military-wise as well. They cannot build at my wharf/shipyard. They do buy some resource from me from time to time, not very often since I start my manufacturing in Heretic's End and Morning Star sectors. And even then, by the time I get my manufacturing up and going, the Teladi are already a powerhouse. I haven't noticed any inefficiencies, if there are any - they are quickly accounted for or not really significant.

This is completely opposite for Split for example, even with enormous help from my side, defense station missions grind to have them placed in strategic locations - they still suck. They build lots of traders/miners, then they send them through Tharka's Cascade and they get killed mostly. If not by Xenon then by Argons. They build very little fleets. When I look at ARG/ANT - with my help they have considerable military, lots of Behemoths, with fighter wings and M support. When I check ZYA sectors - they have a single Raptor on patrol with zero support, wtf? A Cobra and 3-4 fighters patrolling other sector, that is a sad joke. They should be swimming in fighter support wings and Cobras, but for some reason - they don't. When I sell them a number of ships, they immediately go for scraping - how come they've reached their unit cap if barely any military is present? On top of Xenon threats from multiple directions, they get their asses handed to them on silver platter by Boron. Split are completely broken. This is the only faction that have significant difficulties dealing with Xenon all the time, every time.

[MKL81]

On another note, it appears I spoke too soon about my experiment earlier: they may have taken longer to fail with the DLC disabled, but are still failing. Their shipyard in SPG is down to one module, and HOP and TEL have cleared several of the stations I mapped in Matrix 451 and Faulty Logic, which usually precedes those pockets' demise.

I guess it's time to shelve this game yet again while waiting for a patch. Feels like I do that quite a lot lately.

7.10 is the first time I decided to install Xenon Jobs+ Lite together with Cheaper Ship for Xenon mods. I could not stand watching them behave like child lost in a fog, dying to everyone. It is not funny to play in a stagnant, boring universe. War with Vigor can deliver a bit of fun, but that's it. I suggest you may try them out.

[LameFox]

When I sell them a number of ships, they immediately go for scraping - how come they've reached their unit cap if barely any military is present?

I have also seen ships purchased from my wharf immediately go to recycle before. Reported it as a bug but I don't know if it ever got one of those tracking numbers.

[jlehtone]

When I sell them a number of ships, they immediately go for scraping - how come they've reached their unit cap if barely any military is present?

Just to check: this "sell" is them ordering ships from your Wharf? (Not you selling ships, which definitely are scrap.)

[MKL81]

I have also seen ships purchased from my wharf immediately go to recycle before. Reported it as a bug but I don't know if it ever got one of those tracking numbers.

Just to check: this "sell" is them ordering ships from your Wharf? (Not you selling ships, which definitely are scrap.)

Slight misunderstanding here. I was selling them ships directly, not through their own buy orders at my wharf/shipyard. I find that allowing factions to build at your factories is hardly profitable, they will quickly deplete your materials and even with prices set to 150% they pay pennies for what they order compared to what you actually need to pay when buying ships. This nerf by Egosoft was too much, in my opinion.

[jlehtone]

There are, AFAIK, three ways that NPC can get ships from the player:

• Player sells ships. That is an active action initiated by the player. NPC does no effort to place the ships into any vacant jobs but scraps them. This supports NPC in the sense that NPC receives materials from which they can build the ships they want
• Missions. NPC requests ships and puts them on a job -- most likely not one of the regular jobs. Player action is required
• NPC buys ships. They have a need for ships for jobs and therefore have ships built where possible. Player action is not necessary (if infra is set up)

---

I have also seen ships purchased from my wharf immediately go to recycle before. Reported it as a bug but I don't know if it ever got one of those tracking numbers.

Fascinating.