OOS Way to deal with K?

[PyroMancer]

The XEN have started launching K ships into systems and while I can deal with them while I'm in system in a fighter once their escort is gone they keep showing up and in multiple locations.

I tried sending in my fleet of 5 Ody Destroyers but they lose 1-2 against a single K. I can't really afford losses like that as I hit the XEN sector last night and kited 3 K one at a time to the firing line after stripping it's turrets making it easy pray. But I fell back to friendly space and K ships continue to come through the gate.

I can't get much else done as I'm constantly running over there to deal with them and don't want the K to single handly wipe out a system as I've seen them take out multiple NPC stations on their own before going down.

I want to find a design or combination of ships that I can just send out to deal with the K ships when they show up without worrying that like half the fleet gets blown up and I need 10s of millions to rebuild which I can't afford. I have a decent income but not enough to replace the kind of losses I would be taking with my current setup.

[Zalzany]

Best done in person upgraded telportation research will let you telport to the fleets you sending at them. but in reality your not suppsoe to be able to defeat them in a fighter, its why some made VRO mode becuase fighters in sector could take down the best Destroyer in the game lol. You could try using missile fleets they hit harder but its super pain in the ass to resupply. If you got Terran DLC there is meson cannons that are great for high burst dps on large targets many use those for bombers since there is no resupply issue.

Also the Asgaurd Battleship is crazy expensive but its the XL combat ship you can get will just melt anything if you put arg turrets on it its insenly OP. Otherwise your gonna need like carreer with good expensive fleet of strike craft. OOS is all paper fighting, your dps vs their tank, and vice versa there is nod dodge the enemy fire use blind spots in OOS you got go for max damage, and also make it so you can handle its return fire. Its why most people will fight a K in sector every time.

Another alternative is build defense stations with heaps of Plasma L turrets for it to fight. Basically there is no cheap option for Ks minus teleport and deal with it personally or be so rich you can throw piles of credits at it that i know of. I mean Ks are suppose to fight NPC miltary fleets that have like 6 destoryers, and couple of wings of patrol fighters sicked on it. I seen some battles with AI in sector where there are heaps of destroyer wrecks and their just throwing police patrols at it like fodder waiting for more destroyers to come to the rescue.

K attacks probally make up for most the x universe demand for ship parts lol. them trashing fleets is number cause of npc factions build orders lol

[Gregorovitch]

I find the best way to deal with I and K incursions before you're ready to blast their whole sector to kingdom come is to build a defence station bang slap in front of the blighter's gate. About five defence disks full of L plasma turrets. A fleet of maybe 20 heavy fighters assigned to the station on defend to help deal with S and M adds.

K's and even I's don't last two minutes against this.

[PyroMancer]

Well when i say take down I just fly in with shield pen weapon and strip off it's turrets. Then I either have my fleet take it out or just leave it to the system forces. I"ve started parking fighters in various hot zones so I can use the Teleport to go to them and strip the K then just dock and go back to what I was doing as the local ships finish it off. With out it's graviton guns it's just a big meat shield.

I can't buy Asgaurd BS. I have the DLC and 23 faction with the TER but it says "This ship is no longer sold to third parties. It sucks as the whole reason I focused on getting my relations up with TER was after checking out ship stats online and seeing how strong that ship was. So instead I'm going to try out the Raptor, it's been pending construction for a long time as the SY seems short on supplies.

I'll have to look into Def Stations. I really haven't done any station building aside from a small bit on my PHQ for story. I wanted to get the tech first so I could go around scanning modules to get their BP for free. But now that I'm at that point in the game I've got decent money and don't feel like doing the teadous scanning hoping to find a leak with BP.

When mentioned the NPC fleets with fighters. I was wondering how effective are fighters OOS? I know in previous games it was just easier to build fleets of L&XL ships as you rarely lost them but a fleet of dozens of fighters which could cost as much as several L ships would drop like flies. I assume it's the same in X4 and not worth the effort?

[PyroMancer]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

I find the best way to deal with I and K incursions before you're ready to blast their whole sector to kingdom come is to build a defence station bang slap in front of the blighter's gate. About five defence disks full of L plasma turrets. A fleet of maybe 20 heavy fighters assigned to the station on defend to help deal with S and M adds.

K's and even I's don't last two minutes against this.

What is defense disk and where do I buy the module BP? I haven't done much station building.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

What is defense disk and where do I buy the module BP? I haven't done much station building.

A defence disk has IIRC about 8 L turret hardpoints and about 12 M turret hardpoints, or something like that. The BPs are available from any faction rep. I can't remember what the rep requirement is for them off hand, if any. You'll need all the turret BPs as well. L Plasma is what does for Ks and Is. They are also pretty good for Ps. M Flack is good for the small Xenon ships.

Note building such a station needs babysitting it during construction as the Xenon take a dim view of folks building stations like that in front of their gates. Once it's built though it will shred anything coming through in a jiffy on it's own.

[Lander1]

You can't buy Asguards or Syns but you can make them yourself. You will need a Terran XL and a Terran L shipyard though.

[ScareCrow]

You need overwhelming force to deal with K's OOS I had a carrier fleet with cruisers and the likes and they plow through the K's all alone but if I'm in sector things go ugly bad real fast I hate that there is so much of a difference between OOS and In sector combat

[BurlsoL]

Thermal disruptors deal damage through shield, so is good against Xenon. Blast mortars are also very good at packing a punch with a small ship. You already know about Ion blasters, so just need to pair them with shard or flak which does good hull damage on a turret.

Can usually do pretty well with a few medium ships and a handful of small ones as long as you pull them out before it goes pop. When attacking a target, you can expand the attack command and select (disable target), this will make fighters focus on turrets, engines, shields.

If you need additional help, you can make ships drop friend foe mines or laser towers while they're flying around. Mines will damage enemy turrets and engines while towers will distract turrets and fighters.

[Zalzany]

Originally posted by BurlsoL:

Thermal disruptors deal damage through shield, so is good against Xenon. Blast mortars are also very good at packing a punch with a small ship. You already know about Ion blasters, so just need to pair them with shard or flak which does good hull damage on a turret.

Can usually do pretty well with a few medium ships and a handful of small ones as long as you pull them out before it goes pop. When attacking a target, you can expand the attack command and select (disable target), this will make fighters focus on turrets, engines, shields.

If you need additional help, you can make ships drop friend foe mines or laser towers while they're flying around. Mines will damage enemy turrets and engines while towers will distract turrets and fighters.

He is asking about OOS (out of sector) seems like your mistaking in sector wich he claims he can solo with a fighter himself, so he knows to target modules and all its blindspots already... I mean with practice you can blow them up with an M or a Heavy Fighter once you knwo the blinds spots, and where the modules are, like he said hardest thing in sector is the S and M ships that come with it, once you got something for those to fight, its not as hard to kill them yourself. but AI won't hide in blind spots and poke out picking off modules like a player would would mess up whole game balance if AI could do what player would do would make fighting it 10 times worse, as your destroyers would have S and M tearing you ships a new one. Would be no point in L or XL ships in the game...

[ScareCrow]

I personally find S and M ships easiest in the game, its the XL ships I hate, thats why I leave that for the OOS :D to each his own I guess, oh and I use a S or M ship myself most of the time, I'm more of a Dogfighter ;)

[=X-men=]

Easy way is to build a defense station near the gate with lots of turrets

Now in 4.2 OOS damage calculation was changed most damage go to 1 target (previous damage split to all ships in range) so K has bigger chance to destroy L ships its more realistic, to survive K attack use more heavy ships 5 XL Asgard .
Do Asgard main caliber upgrade to get 800-900k dmg first grade, and engine forward speed, drag mod, shield recharge.

You can capture Asgard in Xenon sectors, this take time, or build one on yours shipyard.

[SpaceToast]

like 12 captures destroyers from FAF and SCA can handle 1-2 K in OOS

[BurlsoL]

Originally posted by Zalzany:

Originally posted by BurlsoL:

Thermal disruptors deal damage through shield, so is good against Xenon. Blast mortars are also very good at packing a punch with a small ship. You already know about Ion blasters, so just need to pair them with shard or flak which does good hull damage on a turret.

Can usually do pretty well with a few medium ships and a handful of small ones as long as you pull them out before it goes pop. When attacking a target, you can expand the attack command and select (disable target), this will make fighters focus on turrets, engines, shields.

If you need additional help, you can make ships drop friend foe mines or laser towers while they're flying around. Mines will damage enemy turrets and engines while towers will distract turrets and fighters.

He is asking about OOS (out of sector) seems like your mistaking in sector wich he claims he can solo with a fighter himself,

This all works OOS.

These weapon types are all effective in the hands of NPC ships. I've been using a hit squad of 3 Nemesis (2 ion, 3 pulse laser, 2 flak turret) and 12 Ares (2 blast mortar, 2 pulse laser) and they have been able to reliably take down K ships while out of sector as long as I keep an eye on them and send the fighters away before it hits ~4%. Thermal disruptors also do wonders since it will still cause hull damage OOS, I just wanted to have a hit squad I could also use for boarding other ships. It might take some losses from larger fights, but the idea is something quick and cheap.

Within attack command, you can expand it and click the box for 'disable target' and your fighters will prioritize damage to modules. This also works OOS if you don't have time to finish something off, or only have a few fighters to spare. This works very well when the K is attacking an NPC station since the station will be taking the focus of the damage.

Mines and Laser Towers work OOS. You just need to position them close where things are coming through the gate.

Destroyers, generally, suck against other destroyers unless doing lots of them. About the only advantage is that you don't have to worry about the ship explosion stuff.

[PyroMancer]

I'll try some of the suggestions once I get the stuff unlocked, like TER BS which need to make my own SY, buy the ship BP, but first save up cash to afford that. I can build the Defense Station once run out and get those BP, and the suggested fighter squads.

Ultimately though it will be when the XEN make there next big push. I figured best solution given my current fleet and funds was to cut the head off the snake. So I took my fleet of 7 Destoyers and Carrier(w/o fighters) into XEN space to locate the Shipyard. I found it with 2 K under construction. Out ranged the stations guns and took both out. Then proceed to micro manage the fleet for about 4+ hours while it out ranged the station guns, nearly lost the carrier when it decided to move in closer on it's own :P.

In the end it was a victory without any loses. Follow the SY destruction the K's haven't been attacking that front. The rest of the XEN stations are still there so not sure if or when they might rebuild the shipyard. But so far no attacks on the south front in HOLY space like before.

[BurlsoL]

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

In the end it was a victory without any loses. Follow the SY destruction the K's haven't been attacking that front. The rest of the XEN stations are still there so not sure if or when they might rebuild the shipyard. But so far no attacks on the south front in HOLY space like before.

From my experience, it either takes them a long time to rebuild shipyards, or they will only make new shipyards when they take over systems. I neutered (attacked solar plants and shipyard, but left the wharf so the sector doesn't completely dry up) the Xenon in Matrix 9 and 451 early on in my current playthrough since they were trying to destroy the trade station in Ianamus Zura so intently. Been over 100 hours since then. They've rebuilt the defense and solar stations in 451 I also destroyed, but have not yet replaced the shipyard.