[Game Play] Report from the Xenon War Front

[Bardicheart]

So I thought I'd share a little of what's been happening in my own game. Both some of the good and bad about the game itself and some of the things going on in my game after 250+ hours on the current play thru.

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The war with the Xenon has been heating up. During the early part of the game I did what I could to get the wharves and shipyards producing. Not right at first because this is also my first game I started and I hadn't figured things out yet, but once I did I got to work. The result was after some work and doing some manual trades I got the Paranid and Argon and ANT guys all building and there are now a LOT of ships of all types in my game. The HOP built up a pretty large fleet in Holy Vision at the gate to Faulty Logic. The Teladi also have a large fleet at the gate to Scale Plate Green. The Argon for whatever reason have built two carrier groups but are keeping both at Argon Prime, and have posted only one or two Behemoths at the gate to Tharka's Cascade, sometimes they only have S or M ships patrolling there.

The Xenon have begun pushing in. The Teladi have held at Scale Plate Green and I've watched a couple of Xenon fleets get vaporized by at one point a dozen Teladi Phoenixes. They may look like flying mushrooms but they can do some damage when massed! I thought the HOP were in pretty good shape, they had a similar fleet of 8+ destroyers and a carrier at the Faulty Logic gate plus they're Paranid ships... I was wrong... very wrong. At one point I got there just as the last HOP destroyer, the only survivor of the fleet was trying to fend of 3 surviving Xenon Ks. There were a LOT of dead ships... an I, 6-8 Ks plus all of the HOP fleet except the one destroyer. I'm no friend to the HOP but I love killing Ks so I helped out. That was enough to jump my rep with the HOP from a 14 to a 21 LOL Guess they really were grateful for my saving their bacon... er... snails... or whatever.

Hatvikah's Choice has been the real hot spot though. The Xenon have pushed hard and with little military defense its fallen to the locals to form a militia. Seen some pretty crazy freighter pilots, Builder pilots, as well as nearby stations launching their defense drones to help out in an ad hoc defense that somehow has worked. Plus I've been in there frequently hunting Xenons (and getting loot and a few blue mod drops and a LOT of greens). The Xenon have sent waves in, I's, lot of Ks, lot of Ps and Ms. The worst was an I and 6 Ks with a bunch of Ps and Ms came thru the gate and no sooner had we killed those here came another I and 8 more Ks with escorts!!!

I figured I'd better do something so built a defense station as close to the gate as I could (in retrospect my placement wasn't as good as I thought, but it's close enough to engage stuff coming through). The down side is the station will not open fire first on Xenons, it waits until either they fire on the station or one of my ships. At first the Xenon ignored the station so they'd end up just cruising right past which was very frustraitong (I spent nearly 250 mil on the station!). But I found a way to trick the game, put a few laser towers right in front of my station on the side facing the gate. Xenons come in, towers fire on Xenons, Xenons shoot back and inevitably hit station, station fires, Xenon vaporize (the station does have massive firepower, so once it opens up even an I doesn't last long). I just have to replace the laser towers every so often, its annoying but until EgoSoft comes up with a fix, its a workaround.

With that having gone well I decided to explore. The electromagnetic storm would make trying to do much in Tharka's Cascade risky to impossible so I settled on just defending Hatvikah's Choice. I explored Faulty Logic (watch out for the mines) but since I don't like the HOP... meh... let'em suffer! That left Scale Plate Green, which it turns out not only could I explore but with a bit of back up I could push into it. There were no stations near the jump gate on the Xenon side, just ships and sometimes the Teladi sent squadron's of fighters in, if I held it we could hold off the Xenon there together. Further in their was a Xenon power station, defense station and a wharf (Scale Plate Green I, haven't fully explored the other zone). I got the idea that maybe I'd contest the sector.

So.. first attempt, I rounded up my small fleet and headed in, secured the area around the gate and held it. The Teladi helped out. So far so good. Lots of laser towers out, FoF mines, I set up a pretty good initial defense. Next I claimed a plot, sent for a builder and started on a 300 MCr fortress to guard the gate. Station was building, things were going well and then civilian ships started appearing... and that's when it all went pear shaped. For whatever reason, instead of humanoid civilian ships, my station was spawning Xenon civilian ships, a lot of them, which were all flagged as hostile and both my defense fleet and the Teladi fighters opened up on them. It was quite the turkey shoot and a bit funny until I realize their missed shots were damaging my brand new (and still unfinished) station... by the time I caught on hull strength was already down to 89%, eventually my own ships would kill the station before it could even be finished and there was nothing I could do. If I pulled my ships there would be nothing protecting the builder and unfinished station and it didn't have the guns to defend itself yet.

So, reported bug (they're already aware and looking into it apparently). Reloaded from before I claimed the plot and decided to try something else. I got my 3 destroyers, my squadron of Nemesis corvettes and went to try an kill a Xenon station.

It was a tough fight at first, all those defense drones, but once my fleet got those down the station defense crumpled pretty fast and then it was just a long time pounding on it. But... I did eventually destroy it and I don't mean I crippled it... I mean the station literally blew up! After leaving the sector for a bit, the wreckage despawned and even the Xenon plot marker is gone (meaning I could claim the same plot if I wanted). This is good news, we can indeed completely destroy stations, yay! My game did crash once the first time I blew it up, but I'd fortunately saved prior to that so after a reload and about another 10 min I blew it up again and this time no crash.

That leaves two Xenon stations, and my current plan is to destroy them both and then see if the sector turns neutral (unclaimed). I've scouted the entire sector, there are only those two stations left for the Xenon and no other stations. IF the sector goes neutral I'm going to try building another defense fortress and see if it lets me claim the sector, and if so if that changes the civillian ship traffic to humanoid ones rather than the Xenon drone civillian ships. If it works it means the civilian ship bug is probably keyed to who owns the sector, I'll report back on that if things work out. In the meantime I've got two Xenon stations to vent my frustrations on... and like many, I've got a lot of frustrations to vent! ;-)

So far no major battles that I've seen between the other factions. The Kha'ak have been fairly quiet but I think I'm seeing an small increase in their activity and they actually attacked one of my mining ships (first time anything has ever attacked any of my miners). Fortunately it was a L miner and it ate them. LOL

If there's any interest I'll post more as there's noteworthy events. Otherwise, just thought I'd share some of my own game experience. Share whats going on with the factions in your game if you like. Kinda curious how things are developing for others.

Oh an the game was started on the 1.5 patch, that seems to have made some difference from what I've heard about games continued from earlier starts, but I can't confirm that, just sounds like it.

I'm using few mods, nothing that changes the factions or economy or AI behaviors. Just some NPC mods (Variety NPCs, Training Seminar fix, paint unlock).

[starmind]

nice pots , good to know that at least in few cases the game could start a real war

[Kitsune Yuki]

Yes you can claim Xenon territory, I have already done it, all of them. There are no Xenon in my game now.

[|$m0k!n| - El Novato -]

Nice captain log. :D

[Bardicheart]

Originally posted by wiwi56888:

Yes you can claim Xenon territory, I have already done it, all of them. There are no Xenon in my game now.

Did you notice whether that affected the kind of civilian traffic spawned or not? Or are you still getting Xenon drones? I wasn't sure if it would change it or not but figured it would be a good experiment.

Good to know we can claim Xenon sectors, that'll be something interesting to do.

[Kitsune Yuki]

Originally posted by Bardicheart:

Originally posted by wiwi56888:

Yes you can claim Xenon territory, I have already done it, all of them. There are no Xenon in my game now.

Did you notice whether that affected the kind of civilian traffic spawned or not? Or are you still getting Xenon drones? I wasn't sure if it would change it or not but figured it would be a good experiment.

Good to know we can claim Xenon sectors, that'll be something interesting to do.

The station traffics will spawn as Xenon initially but after you actually claim the sector everything will be normal.

[cwsumner]

Great story! 8-)

And some good info.

Be careful wiping out the Xenon. It is said that the Sohnen are cybernetic beings, and they don't like genocide. It is also said that they were responsible for the gate shutdown a hundred years ago, in order to prevent the Xenon from being completely wiped out. Some think that the Sohnen were the tech helpers for the ancients that built the gates. It is possible that trying to wipe out the Xenon could trigger other things happening...

[Bardicheart]

Originally posted by wiwi56888:

Originally posted by Bardicheart:

Did you notice whether that affected the kind of civilian traffic spawned or not? Or are you still getting Xenon drones? I wasn't sure if it would change it or not but figured it would be a good experiment.

Good to know we can claim Xenon sectors, that'll be something interesting to do.

The station traffics will spawn as Xenon initially but after you actually claim the sector everything will be normal.

That's good to know. Seems the traffic generated really is flagged by who controls the sector. Kind of a silly mistake to make but I guess the good news is it shouldn't be hard for EgoSoft to fix.

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As for wiping out the Xenon and game lore. In X3 we had the Hub which was built by the Xenon and could re-align gates. Kinda makes you wonder just how much they may have had to do with the gate shutdown.

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More War Reports.

I'm still prepping for my full assault on Scale Plate Green. When I go back I plan to have 2 maybe 3 full squadrons of Nemesis (7 per squadron) as well as my new Zeus flag ship (more like a mobile base). So in the meantime I've been doing more exploring and watching what was happening.

Xenon attacks on Company Regard seem to have slowed or stopped, guess my lil bit of destructive activity put them on their heels for now. Hatvikah's Choice continues to see regular incursions of Xenon fleets. I took the time and dropped about 100 FoF mines in front of the gate and more laser towers. Later a couple of Ks popped through and right into the mine field... and died in record time. I wish there was a mine laying order you could give your ships though, its tedious dropping them manually. Still, watching two Ks go pop that quick right out of the gate was funny.

So out of curiosity I decided to check out just what the ANT, ARG, PAR and HOP were up to. I hadn't been paying enough attention to know if they were even shooting but when a PAR fleet blew up two HOP freighters just outside my main station in Trinity Sanctum I got curious.

The ANT don't have anything larger than a Cerberus in my game that I can find. But they have a lot of Cerberus and fighters in Second Contact, especially around the gate to True Sight. In True Sight I saw both ANT ships and some larger ARG ships attacking HOP shipping. So far it seems to be mostly commerce raiding but there were a few dead ships near some HOP stations, no dead stations though. The HOP had no defensive ships larger than a fighter in True Sight, so their freighters were pretty vulnerable and the ANT were aggressively killing them. For now the ANT / ARG pretty much own the Z+ area of True Sight around the gate to Second Contact.

In Holy Vision the HOP seemed to be trying to rebuild their fleet at the gate to Faulty Logic, but they didn't have much. Didn't see any Xenon activity or evidence of it, they haven't destroyed any stations yet but the HOP are vulnerable to it.

Over in Pontifex's Claim the PAR had five destroyers and two small squadrons of Nemesis on the X+ side and they were holding it while doing some commerce raiding. They made one attack on a HOP station that I'd call a draw... the station survived but lost most of its drones (so it won't survive a second attack by the PAR) but the PAR were forced back with 2 destroyers lost (leaving them with 3 and they have plenty more they could send in). After doing a full survey, Pontifex's Claim has 22 stations now total, including a defense station and an the equipment dock. I don't now how many of those were original, but it looks like they've been busy building stuff there.

I made some notes about Pontifex's Claim, which also seems to have a good mix of resources... in the future if I go to war with the HOP this might be a good sector to clear and claim for myself as a start.

I haven't made it back up to Inamus Zura to see how the Teladi are doing up there or what the Xenon there are up to but if Company Regard is any indication the Teladi are probably holding their own. Will have to check that soon though.

So that's the current war news in my game. Looks like the HOP are getting a hard lesson in why its a bad idea to have everyone mad at you. I'm also thinking of doing some PAR, ARG and ANT war missions against the HOP and see if that triggers anything.

For IGN... this has been Talis Sidoische Tusclytern IV reporting. ;-)

[Bardicheart]

First up, I managed to clear Scale Plate Green I of Xenon stations today. I then claimed a plot and started building a defense stations using the same design I used before when I encountered the civilian traffic bug. Here's the results.

First, when I destroyed the last Xenon station the sector went white indicating it was no longer owned.
Second, when I built my new station and the admin module completed, the sector went green indicating I now owned it.
Third, when the station (which is still under construction as I write this) got far enough along to start generating civilian traffic, it was normal ships instead of the lil Xenon drone ships.

So, clearing and claiming the sector does indeed solve the bug, confirmed.

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This is Talis Sidoische Tusclytern IV for IGN reporting from the Xenon War front with breaking news!

Today, EireCorp launched a major offensive against the Xenon in Scale Plate Green I, reportedly destroying a number of ships and three Xenon stations including a ship wharf that had been producing ships attacking Company Regard. The Teladi defense fleet sent a portion of their fleet to support the operation in an apparent move of cooperation with EireCorp. IGN cannot confirm whether this was a planned joint operation or if the Teladi simply chose to support EireCorp's initiative. In addition, the Paranid sent a single Odysseus class destroyer to support their long time ally. The combined force was able to hold the SPG side of the gate while EireCorp forces dealt a devastating blow to the Xenon with no losses!

Currently EireCorp is constructing a massive defense outpost near the SPG gate and the accelerators to secure the system from further Xenon attacks. The Xenon made a final abortive attempt to counter attack but were quickly smashed by the combined forces around the gate area. Reports of Xenon activity through out the sector now seem to be in sharp decline.

In other news, the PAR destroyer group that had been attacking HOP commerce in Pontifex's Claim have withdrawn after their failed attack on a Refined Goods station. It is not known whether this is a move to regroup for a renewed attack or if the PAR are halting their offensive.

In True Sight the ANT forces continue to harass commerce attacking HOP freighters at will and several ANT Cerberus have even been sighted in Holy Vision. The remnant of the HOP fleet seem unable or unwilling to engage at this time.

This has been Talis Sidoische Tusclytern IV reporting for IGN, now a word from these commercial sponsors.

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One other bit, I used an alt save to try out the Taranis battlecruiser mod and all I can say is... that thing is what capital ships in X4 should have been like! Its a beast without being over powered for the game. I would love to see EgoSoft take a look at it, do their own version (which they could do better I'm sure), and also upgun the other capital ships in a similar fashion.

You can find the mod over at Nexus.

That's all for now.

[Kitsune Yuki]

Nice work, we did what human couldn’t in the past 1000 years. Seems like you have not secured Matrix 451 and Matrix 9, the tough fight is there so prepare yourself for that. Since their primary ship production is there I lost 17 fighters for destroying their wharf in that battle. If I did not force destroy it, they would keep attacking the freighter and prevent the construction of my defence platform. Those who survived the fight now become the factory manager and captain of my factories and carriers.

[eMYNOCK]

pah... #451 and #9 are easy prey... only problem is the indestructible Kha'ak Installation in 451... though, if one leaves them allone they make nice pets.

relating Scale Plate Green...

MynoCorp Technologies, the Teladi Company and MIN from the Myno-Verse are sending their best wishes throughout the multi-verse.

May Scale Plate Green prosper again after the last of those Machines has been destroyed.


Profit and fortune!
Mykosis Nopileos Kokalis II - CEO MynoCorp

[Bardicheart]

Heh, thanks, glad some of you are enjoying my "reporting".

The wharf was a somewhat hard fight but by that time I'd learned how to deal with the defense drones. It went something like this.

The Xenon had three stations in SPG, a solar power station off by itself and a defense station and the wharf that were close to each other. I took on the solar power station first as this was my first attempt at attacking a station. First I took a run at it in my modded Nemesis but the drones were just way too much for me to handle in that so I retreated and jumped in my destroyer (at that point I only had one, the Armagh). At first I just stood off at a distance and picked at turrets with long range fire. I found that if I stayed at max range (8km) I could use the main guns to kill turrets on the station without them reacting and managed to kill all the L type turrets and some of the M ones. With the drones they lost to my Nemesis the destroyer was able to handle the rest by dropping a cluster of laser turrets (open the ship information screen > go to deployables > turrets > select and then deploy about 60 Mk2 turrets > then fly your ship in a circle at about 100 m/s until it finishes dropping them all). With that "cloud" of turrets killing the drones and the strong shields of the destroyer I was able to survive it with only light damage. After that I finished killing the station turrets, called my fleet in and killed the station.

The wharf was the real challenge, it had a LOT of defense drones. Too many for my destroyer to handle even with the laser tower trick. So I got even sneakier. I used the same method to drop about 100 FoF mines in a "cloud", then dropped a cluster of turrets behind that. This would be my retreat point. Then I went in and deliberately got the station to launch its drones at the destroyer and mad enough to chase me... led them right into the minefield and the turret cloud. Mines took out the first groups of defene drones and that cut their number by maybe 1/3. Laser towers kept the rest busy, I called in my squadrons of Nemesis to attack the surviving drones while moving around to keep my destroyer's shields up (the drones were hell bent on killing the destroyer and I used that against them). With the drones gone the the next hard part were the defense platforms on the wharf but I found that again by staying at max range I could just destroy each module and that took care of them. From there is was just killing the smaller turrets, I didn't even bother killing them all myself, called in the squadrons and let them have fun. Took about 2hrs but the wharf died.

As soon as I killed the wharf the Xenon tried starting construction of a new defense station. I don't know if they were going to try an replace the wharf (or if they even can) so I dropped some laser towers near the build storage to keep that suppressed until I could get my own station up.

From there it was just a matter of finishing the defense station, which was not nearly as tough as the wharf had been and after that I had a neutral unowned sector to claim. You guys know the rest.

For awhile there was no Xenon activity in the sector at all, was kind of spooky almost. I found a gold lock box and opened it (I get out in my space suit and use the hand laser to pop the locks, I find that is the best way to open a lot of locks without destroying the box... besides, 5 autocannons on a Nemesis don't really work for that job LOL) Whole time I was EVA not a single random ship spawn... just my fleets patrolling and the Teladi fleet which was an unexpected surprise. The PAR have a destroyer on patrol and the ARG even sent a token Cerberus... nice to have allies.

So at this point the station is still early in its construction and I'm still watching to see how things turn out. I'm not sure if I'm going to try an wipe out the Xenon or not, but it was certainly fun taking SCG I. I'm seriously thinking I may try to invade and claim Pontifex's Claim next, actually go to war with the HOP just to see what happens (what will the other factions do? one sure way to find out!).

I'm hoping in a future patch EgoSoft will enable setting individual faction relations so we can have stations that will aggressively fire on enemies, that would be really handy for war fighting.

I'm not sure what to make of the Kha'ak, if their stations are indestructible, kinda makes you wonder what the point is? Not thinking that was a good idea on the part of EgoSoft.

Also REALLY hope they upgrade the capital ships to be more like that Taranis, oh boy... that would be fun, and fierce! Same for the Ks and Is, they really need more defensive turrets so its not so easy to hull crawl in a Nemesis and kill off all the turrets.

Oh, my current character / pilot is an Argon (well, Human... Irishman :-) but I'm thinking I may play a Teladi next since I have that start unlocked.

So far I have four start options.
Young Gun (Argon)
Unworthy Entrepreneur (Teladi)
Dedicated Warrior (Paranid)
Untested Explorer (Alliance of the Word)

Not sure what else there is, working on my rep with the ANT and HAT, see if that unlocks any more starts. Think I may also try upping my rep with the SCA and see if that unlocks a pirate start maybe.

[|$m0k!n| - El Novato -]

Nice and detailed. Do the xenons tried to rebuild any of the stations beside the wharf that u destroyed ?

Did you see any xenon activity diverting from other sectors to SCP at all ?

[Bardicheart]

There's the one construction site which I've currently got surpressed. It has the station icon on the map as well. There is another site that has the build storage but there's no station marker. Both are a problem because ships seem to love to endlessly attack the empty build storage and I'm having to micromanage some of my patrols to keep them on patrol and not attacking the one build storage that is about 80 km from my new defense station.

That's something else that needs to be fixed, ships shouldn't attack build storage, or else you should be able to completely destroy it. Also, if the station is destroyed, the build storage facility should also be removed (which would solve the problem all together).

I *think* one of the Xenon Ks that counter attacked actually came from somewhere else (not sure where) and on its way through Company Regard attracted the Teladi fleet which is why they suddenly showed up in SPG with 4 Phoenix destroyers and a bunch of fighters. Later those ships left and the Teladi just have fighters there. The PAR destroyer and ARG Cerberus however have both stayed and seem to be patroling the sector in a random pattern.

The station is continuing to progress, and is putting a drain on both my own production as well as the Teladi and PAR production (I designed a BIG station with a LOT of guns LOL). It also has a docking ring nested almost in the center (but still accessible) that when finished will have 18 1M6S docking bays so I can pretty much dock a fleet there if I wish.

Its still too soon to tell what if anything the Xenon will or can do. I would like to clear that one construction site of any attackers and let the Xenon build just to see what happens and what sort of station they build. Would it just be a defense outpost or can they rebuild the wharf, dunno, would be interesting to find out but with a cluster of Teladi fighters constantly attacking it, they'll never get anything done.

[eMYNOCK]

relating the 4 Starts you found, i am affraid... those are all for now.

young gun and untested Explorer put you into a Male Argon and a Female Argon Body.

Unworthy Enterpreneur will place you into a male Teladi and dedicated Warrior is a Paranid.


relating the left over Build Storages... those are known but i have no intel on when they will be adressed.


and finally the building xenon station... you can either wait for it to complete or manually destroy the building module with the mainguns and turrets of your destroyer... just place your self that the module is between your ship and the station marker.

your main gun and the "stray" shots from the turrets should constantly be hammering that thing.

[Bardicheart]

Its not the building module I want to destroy, but rather the *building storage*. But there's no way to do that. I read somewhere that a cheat mod on Nexus will let you remove stations, including the left over building modules. So I may try that since there are four of them in that one sector that are gumming things up.

But yeah, that's a bug they need to address, especially if they're trying to get the war stuff working properly. I think the best thing to do would be just set it to remove that storage plat if the station is destroyed, that would solve the main issue without much complication.

I'd like to leave the one construction site alone and see if the Xenon finish the station and if so what do they build, just to find out. Might have to see to it a few fighters have an "accident" in a heretofor uncharted mine field. LOL

Other than that I don't have much interest in developing the sector, there's little in the way of resources or other points of interest. It seems EgoSoft didn't put nearly as much thought into the "alien" sectors in X4 as they did Rebirth, they're a bit bland. SPG VII is completely empty, just one Xenon defense station and that's it. Not even worth the bother unless I just felt destructive.

I haven't explore Matrix 451 and 9 much but I did find the Kha'ak station there and it has a number of defense platforms. Really wish I could get my hands on their beam tech.

In my game the main Xenon fleet construction seems to be happening in Matrix79B beyond Tharka's Cascade and that's where most of the attacks are coming from. I've found 4 stations in TC XV and 6 in TC XVII and there looks to be at least 16 in Matrix 79B so the Xenon have been quite busy there.

Now some of HOP space on the other hand would make a nice corporate HQ territory. :-D