strategy for defending your trading ship

[Ariki]

i'm finally at the point where i can use xl trading ships for nearly every trade runs.
though they keep getting destroyed by stray xenon k's chilling around the jumpgates in some random sector.
i keep wanting to tear my hair out everytime i saw a report of my xl ship getting destroyed by a stray xenon, and i get this overwhelming desire to murder every xenon i see.
how do i protect my trade ships from getting destroyed like this? should i be like appointing escort to each and every one of my trade ships or should i be like, try constructing defense stations on every jumpgate and pray for the best?

[grapplehoeker]

XL traders shouldn't need an escort.
You could build defense stations at jump gates along your trade routes, but why try to put a band aid on the problem when you could be dealing with the cause of your distress?
Go kill those K's and prevent anymore from camping the jumpgates your traders use.
A couple of destroyers guarding/patrolling those gates should be more than a match for K's, with or without a defense station.
The key gate points to defend with stations would be those that border Xenon sectors. If you prevent any Xenon incursions, then your traders will be free to travel. Only when pirates start using destroyers should you be concerned and then same again, go kill them.
If it's an I though, then you'll probably have to step in and take it out yourself.

[Sticky]

If you look in Global Options you can make some blacklist rules for your Military Ships or your Trade Ships or both. Some sectors just have a lot of Xenon activity and will be too dangerous to travel in until you can get a Defense Fleet to protect certain sector areas. But until you can dedicate a fleet to protect the sector the Blacklist will do for now.
There are two ways to protect a L Trader, Assign ships directly or have a ship with the order to protect the L Trader with a Group of ships for his attack group. I suggest a mixture of both. If you can stay out of Xenon Sectors you might get lucky and only have to deal with Pirates.

[arrak]

I only use Paranid medium trader. They are extremely quick, and Always get away. I have them on "flee" setting, and Not notify me. That way they do not wait for my response and always get away. The Yoshyoh something L trader of Argon does 95m/sec and is to damn slow. Finish your trades in a blink of an eye, and lots of small amounts make a big amount, and they do that before your large reaches its destination

[Ariki]

that's what i just did earlier. made some defense stations on a xenon sector that hopefully will make my life easier. but still, those k's seems to come out abruptly without any notice, it is as if they spawned out of nowhere. the problem is when you're too far away from the trader to do anything about it. i'm looking at the most efficient solution. yes, posting destroyers at a gate or making them as escorts will make my life easier, but making a defense station is cheaper overall. with 20-25m i could have a station with so much firepower it's almost cheating, yet a single destroyer would cost me more.

[Ariki]

blacklist, i always use it. it is convenient when you have a monopoly on hull plates and you want to weaken a faction in a war. you just blacklist them from your trade and they'll die because of shortages. hatikvah's choice always ends up getting overrun by xenon on every playthrough i had so i blacklisted them by default. i also forbids my ships from travelling and doing trades in a sector owned by enemy.
the problem with medium trader is, you've got to have a lot of them to make more profit.... but i'm playing on a laptop, and it's already laggy as it is, so i try to limit how much ships i use for autotrading. i got more ships than i could handle on my first playthrough and the lag was killing me and my brain.

[HoloByteus]

Until you secure space the Buffalo is the only L trader I'd use and unless you have a shipyard I'd stick with S/M transports or even Frigates like the Gorgon or Marauder Raiders. Take a look at the jobs their getting... Don't need a L transport to trade 3 hull parts.

[hurepoix]

I dont rely stations. I wil,l the day these stations will attack any ennemy at range instead of let them pass through.

I Use destroyer squads to guard gates. Most of my traders are hermes vanguard. Anyway they travel most time half empty despite they had the smallest M traders load. For my personal usage, and non assigned, I use demeter sentinel. Most time, it is for pick nano and hull part farer than station managers can see.

My standard behaviours for all ship, if harrassed by pirates, is ; flee. The standard behaviours for X4 is attack. It is extremly stupid in real life, it is even more at x4. Of course I have to manually config each of my military ships in attack pirates. But I have, usaully, at least at early game more civil than military ship.

The most important is, in case of attack, to configure behaviour for your civilians in ; flee.

After that choose the solution you love to deal with xenons.

[Ariki]

they will do that? dang, i won't make stations then. i guess i'll farm more money to build more destroyers then. i'll just keep my eye on every sector for now until i got more patrol ships.

[Sticky]

Originally posted by Ariki:

they will do that? dang, i won't make stations then. i guess i'll farm more money to build more destroyers then. i'll just keep my eye on every sector for now until i got more patrol ships.

Defense Stations are very effective but only when in-sector in my experience. You can always port to a station and it will work fine. What i did in some games was have a small fleet docked at the station if i needed to clean the little red ships in a sector, then i'd force them all to dock. I would port to the Defense Station if it was a Capital threat.

[Wraith]

My strategy is taking out the scale plate.

After I taken out all SCA pirate stations in silent witness 12 and 11 they have effectively died out in my owned neutral space and it has become alot safer.
They still hang out on other faction territories so any trade ships that goes out of my space of silent witness 1 will be assigned an escort.

[Ruges]

Not counting split territory. You have 4 places the Xenon come and attack. Hatikvah, Inanmus, frontiers edge-faulty logic, and south of Herwa's twin. profit center alpha can be bad later on in a game if the split are getting hammered.

You can pretty much avoid Herwa's and Inanmus. Hatikvah is a special case. You have about 24 hours of play time before it becomes to hostile (IE always a K or an I at the gate killing everything). You could setup a defense to help out. However this location kills allot of AI ships. thus its really good for profits to let the Xenon kill off the factions ships traveling through there. However it does mean you need to put that region on a blacklist. This does cut off a huge part of your trade. and I typically avoid setting up satellites in silent witness and profit center alpha. and just focus on the southern regions for trade.

This leaves Frontiers edge-Faulty logic as a hostile area. HOP seems to keep them penned down in faulty logic so holy vision is usually safe. However they can really push ANT around into the VOID unless you help out ANT. And all you have to do for that is put 3 miners in Antigone memorial and a trader locked to that region and ANT will be strong enough to keep the Xenon from pushing into the void and then second contact.


Thus you should never have to worry about protecting your trade ships from the Xenon. If xenon have ships in a region you are trading or traveling through, You need to stop the Xenon from going into that system or stop your traders from going into that system.

Pirates are a bit trickier. However for the most part they will keep on poping up in the same area's. And with this I keep a couple of cruisers ready in those regions ready to deal with them.

[Ariki]

i think it was a xenon that spawned from a random encouter spawning system, as they're coming out of nowhere. i've lost a lot of ships on HOP's territory, and its kinda bugs me because its a sector where HOP's security are pretty much nonexistent in my game because they're busy at the moment taking out the ANT at second chance. i've been helping the ANT by building a 200mil mega hull fab on antigone memorial catering to them and the argon, and the argon and antigone are steadily pushing back the HOP.
hatikvah is already a lost cause, but i plan to take out the xenon defense station once i find a good way to do it without losing too much money in the process. ianamus is still okay, i once helped them to build a defense station and i was going all out with all the entire reward money so that the station could have the firepower to repel all the K's. only the split territory has fallen hard to the xenon because i rarely caters them and because ZYA hates me by default. i think nearly all their territory is now lost to the xenon because i did neglect the split, and i confess i feel quite bad about it. frontier's edge is lost but i've made a 25mil defense station and a fleet of phoenixes lounging around by the gate to help the ANT keep the xenon at bay. all of herwa's twins sectors already succumbed nto the xenon but the paranid is doing a good job containing them by pasting tons of ships by their border.
do you know the way to befriend the ZYA by the way? their stations are off limit to me by default and i plan to make them my ally on my next playthrough. also who are alliance of the world and why do they only have a single shipyard by the paranid's territory?

[Ariki]

Originally posted by Vinerable_Sin:

The most effective strategy I have discovered after over 1000 hours of game play is to set up defense stations as close as you can to where enemy ships spawn on a gate with a gate blockade force and/or take over the xenon sections that are close to your trade runs.

yes, i just found out this strategy worked really well in containing the xenon inside their own sectors. i guess i'll do this again on HOP's territory where the xenon usually spawned in.

[Ariki]

Originally posted by Vinerable_Sin:

I have a couple questions for you though. Has anyone been able to level up a pilot beyond 3 stars without having to complete quests or give them an item. So far the most effective way i have found to level up a pilot to 3 stars is to have them assigned to fighter squadrons and farm incoming xenon ships. I think they earn experience from kills, docking and undocking. I have also found that my trade ships do not get beyond 2 stars no matter how long they are trading or how many times they complete a trade, dock or undock. After you have acquired/manufactured several hundreds to a few thousand ships it becomes impractical to do quests or give pilots items in order to level them up. I would like to be able to have them level up beyond 3 stars without having to provide them items.

i've read that the only way to level them fast enough is by making them do combat, so that's what i've been doing from the start, by farming the xenons.

[Gregorovitch]

I don't think escorting trade ships is viable really, both from an expense point of view and from an effectiveness point of view, also from a hassle point of view. I find traders can almost always escape pirate or Xenon attention unless they are attacked by overwhelming force (in which case an escort isn't going to help anyway and the losses multiplied considerably).

List of things to do, many of which have been already mentioned above:

1. Equip medium grade 2 travel drives on traders, L3 ones take too long to charge up.

2. Set traders to escape/no notification by default.

3. Use blacklists to keep traders well away from "hot" areas. Study the map and work out safe main trade lanes, blacklist all sectors you can outside of these lanes. Basically keep them well away from hot areas even if that extends their trips a bit in some areas.

4. Camp gates with fighter squadrons, especially Xenon gates. This is great for pilot training anyway.

5. Assign a destroyer to "Bait and Switch" duties to tamp down local pirate infestations. This is a destroyer filled with expensive trade goods which will bait pirates into attacking it. Have it patrol a main trade lane in an infested sector. Obviously set it to attack if accosted by pirates by default.