My Xenon are failing, again...

[LameFox]

In my most recent game, I sabotaged the shipyards (not wharf) of ANT, HOP, and PAR (so they don't kill HOP). I also went around in the Erlking killing the lesser, remote Xenon areas to shore up the ones I want to preserve—mainly the more central ones, which I feel keep the game more interesting. I do not spend meaningful time near, for instance, Emperor's Pride, but Tharka's and Atiya's tend to output Xenon ships in areas of the map I visit more. I left BOR alone, because if they take Frontier Edge (they did) it can actually help preserve Xenon a bit since their capitals don't seem super good vs buildings.

...aaand they're losing anyway. I went to have a look and found a massive HOP destroyer fleet cleaning them up, which they must have had since the start of the game. The trickle of Xenon reinforcement ships arrive too late, too broken up, to make a difference. Why is it HOP can keep all those ships together, but Xenon never manage? Meanwhile, as I was looking at that, something has arrived and taken their defence platform in Atiya's down to its last molecule of health, and from there, it's a short walk to their wharf. A situation I've watched many times now.

Is this seriously what's meant to happen in this game now? We have to babysit the big bad enemy faction and it still can't fight with its forces concentrated and its enemies hamstrung? I don't even feel like bothering with this again at this point.

[adeine]

They pretty much can't fight back at all with 7.5 since all other factions' capital ships outrange their station turrets (and correctly do so now most of the time). Similar issues with other faction wars.

[LameFox]

What was interesting is that the HOP fared worse when I was watching. A chunk of their fighters died on a Xenon defence platform, and an I and two K's took out some of their destroyers, even though by the time they limped into combat the other Xenon ships had trickled in and died uselessly. So maybe in addition to poor fleet cohesion, they are having low-attention balance issues. This might also explain why it's often the case that they are alright when I check on them, and then, I look away briefly and see their stations dying/dead on the map.

Whatever it is, it really needs looking at. I haven't had them even hold their own since 6.20 and it was a coin-flip back then. Now it's worse. Even when I intentionally try to protect them and prune the weak parts like some ailing house plant, they still die. The fact it's even come to doing that with a mandatory-hostile faction is ridiculous.

[LameFox]

Running another sim now in a custom start with fewer DLC to see if that helps. One thing I noticed though which I had underestimated before is how many SE's get killed when a defence platform is sieged. Not only are they trying to fund its repairs (I guess?) while it's actively under attack, when a turret on some destroyer fires on them, they respond by attacking it and dying.

Meanwhile the Xenon have capital ships the next system over (Faulty Logic VII in this case) tied up in trying to chase M miners that passed through a gate. To their credit, though, the AI does send fleets to respond, as inadequate as they are in the face of HOP's destroyer clusters.


edit: so far, it looks like even in the core game, they're non-competitive. No wonder clearing out remote areas wasn't enough.

I've seen TEL and HOP sieging stations with groups of 9 and 14 destroyers respectively. However, it's not just that the stations can't fight back. Xenon seem hard capped in their fleet composition. The most they will ever respond with is the fleet of 1 I, 2 K, and escorts. This is not adequate to the task, and so they fail to repel the attacks of these destroyer-heavy factions and lose ground.

[Targ Collective]

The problem is bad economy. The xenon need to anchor economy in safe ground, manage risk of unsafe ground, and take ground. If they can't afford mining ships or too many get destroyed it really hurts them. Xenon mining ships need to favour Xenon claimed sectors unless they don't have any and manage the risk-reward of speculative resourcing with much more care because they have no allies. This could be done with one job - "Consolidated Logistics Unit" would be a good title - that only gathers and trades resources in Xenon owned space.

[LameFox]

I do think that would help them, but, in this case I'm also seeing them take a lot of losses in their own territory. In this particular game I'm watching, their front with ANT is fairly stale. They have Frontier Edge and have essentially stopped there for now. The big losses I've been watching were SE's going to defence platforms in territory being invaded by HOP, and dying to large destroyer fleets.

That their defence platforms are routinely outranged (and frankly swarmed) and the largest fleet they can respond with seems more likely to lose on average than defend successfully means they struggle to hold ground when a faction commits to invasion.


edit: HOP are actually the ones stupidly throwing away miners in this case. They keep flying to Mists of Artemis and a good chunk don't make it.

[Sway Grunt]

I only have a little time in X4 compared to most of you so my experience is limited, but in my game at least Zyarth got absolutely rolled over by the Xenon. They also took Open Market and were working on Two Grand but I intervened and eventually cleaned up the whole north. If I hadn't done that the whole northern area would be red I think, the Teladi and Split seemed completely helpless to stop it.

That said, Emperor's Pride, Atiya's Misfortune and Faulty Logic were all cleared up by the adjacent factions. I'd be interested to read a bit about how different seeds affect faction strength, I don't know how much randomness plays a role. But I will also admit that I didn't really want strong Xenon presence in my game since it's my first run of X4 (though I put 365 hours into X3:TC back in the day) and I've just been doing a very milquetoast "be nice to everyone / can't we all get along" type of playthrough, and maybe that also plays a role.

[LameFox]

I only have a little time in X4 compared to most of you so my experience is limited, but in my game at least Zyarth got absolutely rolled over by the Xenon. They also took Open Market and were working on Two Grand but I intervened and eventually cleaned up the whole north. If I hadn't done that the whole northern area would be red I think, the Teladi and Split seemed completely helpless to stop it.

That said, Emperor's Pride, Atiya's Misfortune and Faulty Logic were all cleared up by the adjacent factions. I'd be interested to read a bit about how different seeds affect faction strength, I don't know how much randomness plays a role. But I will also admit that I didn't really want strong Xenon presence in my game since it's my first run of X4 (though I put 365 hours into X3:TC back in the day) and I've just been doing a very milquetoast "be nice to everyone / can't we all get along" type of playthrough, and maybe that also plays a role.

This isn't an uncommon outcome in a game left alone. Split have a bad economy and their ships aren't well suited to Xenon since they both rely on low range weapons and Gravitons shred things in close range. So Xenon push into Split space, and meanwhile other factions wipe out Xenon elsewhere. Since they do have a limit on how many things they can build, this frees up some of that limit, letting them further solidify their claim on Split space. So if you don't intervene, you end up with essentially the north of the map being Xenon. TEL generally hold them off so a bit of FRF survives, by ZYA don't cope well.

Of course, generally you (probably) want to keep the Split in your game, so if you help them out the more likely outcome in my experience is that other Xenon are still wiped out, except the Tharka's Cascade region since it's so deep and can only be attacked in one direction. This then pushes into Hatikvah's Choice (unless again you want to preserve HAT), although sometimes ARG can hold them off. I generally do, if only because a lot of my own ships transit through that system. Xenon can still get out one-way towards Getsu Fune, but TER and/or BOR tend to lock that down pretty tight.

End result, mostly you have one patch of contained Xenon you just sort of farm.

[stooper88]

I posted a reply to the [FEEDBACK][7.5B7+] A problem: Stations, combat balance, and faction response thread with similar findings. Long story short, the faction capital ships are now very capable of taking down not just Xenon stations but also Xenon capitals too. In 7.1, entire fleets of faction capital ships could be held off by even a single K when in high attention. But as of 7.5, the faction capital ships are much more adept at using their main batteries and self-preservation. This allows them to persevere and bite back against Xenon capitals. Hence, the standard Xenon response fleets are woefully ill-equipped to tackle the waves and waves of faction capitals and it's only a matter of time before Xenon defense platforms fall one by one and Xenon sectors with them.

I'm now forced to contemplate permanently hacking faction shipyards to halt their reinforcement capabilities. The irony is, when I first started playing X4, I was gob smacked by how inept my destroyer pilots were against Ks. But with the latest release, it seems the Xenon will become just a memory before long.

[flywlyx]

Xenon K previously had a clear advantage in high-attention combat, but now, with capital ship AI frequently failing to respond, Xenon is hit even harder due to their lower ship numbers.
They should be assigned more jobs to reinforce their fleet.

[LameFox]

In my test game (core + TOA + Timelines + Hyperion) the situation seemed to stabilise after a while. I was wondering what had happened... turned out the commonwealth were out of weapon components and (secondarily) hull parts. This was of course with zero player intervention.

It really does seem like something has to be done, whether it's in terms of improving their ship balance (KE and IE when?) or economy or just willingness to travel in sturdier groups. There was a time when I was the only one in the universe throwing groups of 12 destroyers around, but we are past that now. Their balance needs to reflect this.

[Raptor34]

I'm now forced to contemplate permanently hacking faction shipyards to halt their reinforcement capabilities. The irony is, when I first started playing X4, I was gob smacked by how inept my destroyer pilots were against Ks. But with the latest release, it seems the Xenon will become just a memory before long.

Order your L ship to make some change in loadout at faction shipyard. Then give them a dock and wait order. Voila! They'll stay docked in the fab bays until you give them a new order. You can even keep the captain there too, as long as your dock and wait order is there, they wouldn't budge.
Then open up your own shipyards so you can more easily control their ship flow, unless you want to undock and redock your L ships when you need to turn on ship construction for some reason.

[stooper88]

I'm now forced to contemplate permanently hacking faction shipyards to halt their reinforcement capabilities. The irony is, when I first started playing X4, I was gob smacked by how inept my destroyer pilots were against Ks. But with the latest release, it seems the Xenon will become just a memory before long.

Order your L ship to make some change in loadout at faction shipyard. Then give them a dock and wait order. Voila! They'll stay docked in the fab bays until you give them a new order. You can even keep the captain there too, as long as your dock and wait order is there, they wouldn't budge.
Then open up your own shipyards so you can more easily control their ship flow, unless you want to undock and redock your L ships when you need to turn on ship construction for some reason.

Yes, thanks for the advice. I'm aware of this "loophole" to block faction shipyards but am just averse to exploiting it. Admittedly, the ship exploit is more effective for being as indefinitely long or short as desired, but I prefer to keep my L ships and their pilots "active" by trading, patrolling, or whatnot. And I have a surplus of security decryption systems and components to make more. Overall, I would just rather not have to artificially hold back the NPC factions.

[Raptor34]

I'm now forced to contemplate permanently hacking faction shipyards to halt their reinforcement capabilities. The irony is, when I first started playing X4, I was gob smacked by how inept my destroyer pilots were against Ks. But with the latest release, it seems the Xenon will become just a memory before long.

Order your L ship to make some change in loadout at faction shipyard. Then give them a dock and wait order. Voila! They'll stay docked in the fab bays until you give them a new order. You can even keep the captain there too, as long as your dock and wait order is there, they wouldn't budge.
Then open up your own shipyards so you can more easily control their ship flow, unless you want to undock and redock your L ships when you need to turn on ship construction for some reason.

Yes, thanks for the advice. I'm aware of this "loophole" to block faction shipyards but am just averse to exploiting it. Admittedly, the ship exploit is more effective for being as indefinitely long or short as desired, but I prefer to keep my L ships and their pilots "active" by trading, patrolling, or whatnot. And I have a surplus of security decryption systems and components to make more. Overall, I would just rather not have to artificially hold back the NPC factions.

You can pretend they are actively sabotaging the refit of the ship.
But from my long experience of maintaining the status quo, there isn't really much else you can do. Well, not passively anyway, if you do the 1 EC trading exploit to build rep, then you can actively hunt faction destroyer groups.

[LameFox]

I think that is what bugs me about it the most. I don't want to help the faction that's canonically this great threat to the universe so that they don't go extinct, it's a real immersion killer. I want to be able to fight them. It's different with a normal faction struggling against Xenon, because that's how the game presents things as actually being, and because trading with someone to help them makes sense. The only ways to justify what I end up doing in *every single game* lately is that I'm either running some sort of wildlife preserve or determined to be the sole supplier of ships in the network—but never too many ships, of course, because this big threat they all face is actually pretty feeble. It gets old.

[Raptor34]

I think that is what bugs me about it the most. I don't want to help the faction that's canonically this great threat to the universe so that they don't go extinct, it's a real immersion killer. I want to be able to fight them. It's different with a normal faction struggling against Xenon, because that's how the game presents things as actually being, and because trading with someone to help them makes sense. The only ways to justify what I end up doing in *every single game* lately is that I'm either running some sort of wildlife preserve or determined to be the sole supplier of ships in the network—but never too many ships, of course, because this big threat they all face is actually pretty feeble. It gets old.

Imo what they need is stiffer home defenses.
Like remember how the X3 Valhalla was super powerful but cannot use the gates and need jump beacons? Something like that. Of course since we have no jump beacons now it means they are stuck there, and that's fine. Players don't need to worry about that overrunning their defenses.
That and their shipyard/wharf could use some L Gravitons XR(Extended Range) too.

Another thought I had is that lore wise, there are supposedly millions of Xenon lurking outside the edges of the sector too. So while it's reasonable that the Xenons just give up the area around the gates, you could also have a mini "crisis" in the sense it uses similar mechanics. You build some kind of antenna station or something in Xenon space, and by that I mean the areas where they start with, and then it generates a signal to attract these out of sector Xenon in, i.e. spawning them in and they move in.

[flywlyx]

I think that is what bugs me about it the most. I don't want to help the faction that's canonically this great threat to the universe so that they don't go extinct, it's a real immersion killer. I want to be able to fight them. It's different with a normal faction struggling against Xenon, because that's how the game presents things as actually being, and because trading with someone to help them makes sense. The only ways to justify what I end up doing in *every single game* lately is that I'm either running some sort of wildlife preserve or determined to be the sole supplier of ships in the network—but never too many ships, of course, because this big threat they all face is actually pretty feeble. It gets old.

I push Xenon into border sectors to ensure they are always surrounded by three war zones, preventing their elimination. For example, turning Trinity Sanctum into a TRI/TEL/XEN conflict zone allows Xenon to take over Hewa's Twin and remain safely in that pocket.

Another thought I had is that lore wise, there are supposedly millions of Xenon lurking outside the edges of the sector too. So while it's reasonable that the Xenons just give up the area around the gates, you could also have a mini "crisis" in the sense it uses similar mechanics. You build some kind of antenna station or something in Xenon space, and by that I mean the areas where they start with, and then it generates a signal to attract these out of sector Xenon in, i.e. spawning them in and they move in.

That makes sense—there should be a special station they build to spawn ships, allowing players to destroy it and force Xenon to relocate.

[LameFox]

I mean lately they are losing ground well before I've done anything as grand as create TRI. The ones in the south-east are often the second to go, after Atiya's. I guess I could set up a budgeted start where TRI already exists, TER is fighting ARG/ANT/BOR, and ZYA has eaten a chunk of FRF, and then maybe it would be more stable to begin with. But it also would not really resolve how weak they are, exactly, just weaken everyone else—and I'd always have to be careful not to help them too much.

Adding some way to return them to a game does seem ideal, be it via the "crisis" or something else. At least then the long stretches of poor balance wouldn't be as bad, but, I'd still rather they do something to make them a bit more durable from the outset.

[Raptor34]

Another thought I had is that lore wise, there are supposedly millions of Xenon lurking outside the edges of the sector too. So while it's reasonable that the Xenons just give up the area around the gates, you could also have a mini "crisis" in the sense it uses similar mechanics. You build some kind of antenna station or something in Xenon space, and by that I mean the areas where they start with, and then it generates a signal to attract these out of sector Xenon in, i.e. spawning them in and they move in.

That makes sense—there should be a special station they build to spawn ships, allowing players to destroy it and force Xenon to relocate.

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.

[flywlyx]

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.