Xenon conquering the galaxy

[clarkeveritas]

So, I'm 14 hours in, using a few mods (VRO and a few minor ones), and a single Xenon Destroyer basically wiped out the sector south of Argon Prime. So.... I saw wave after wave of fighter squadrons get crushed but no capital ships ever came to help out the sector. Is this common? I've seen sectors LOADED with cap ships and I would think that cap ships from Argon Prime would come in and help out. Much of my 14 hours was learning how to do everything, I'm not even CLOSE to being able to help out fighting the Xenon aside from their small fighters and the occasional P.

Is this game a rush to build up a super-massive military to fight the Xenon? In the older X Games i slowly built up a huge trading/economic empire and then got around to building up some fleets- but I'm MANY hours away from being in that position and by then half the factions could be dead. Also- any good mods that either improve factions defending their territory or speed up their economic growth? I'm totally cool with playing a big role in fighting the Xenon but at the rate things are going the war will be over before I can buy any major cap-ships that can help. In X3 I'd deploy heavy fighter squadrons with some light cap-ship support to shore up key sectors that needed help but I wasn't in a position where the factions were doomed so quickly without me.

Thanks for any info!

[Harrison]

In my experience, VRO makes the Xenon much more dangerous than they are in Vanilla. Mostly just by making their guns more powerful and their ships harder to kill.

My current VRO save is at about 6 days of game play and the Xenon have:
Taken everything from Litany of Fury to Open Market, only my ships holding the line at Zyarth's Dominion IV has saved ZYA.
Pushed HAT and ARG out of Hatikvah's Choice and Morning Star III, funnily enough, even the robots don't want Heretic's End.
Evicted ANT from The Void and are pushing into Antigone Memorial and Second Contact
Most of Holy Vision is in ruins and HOP has been pushed out of True Sight.

The only ones mostly holding their own are TEL and PAR, somehow.

[clarkeveritas]

Actually most of the issues that I was talking about had anything to do with my mods- do sectors typically not respond to invasions? If so that seems a bit odd, especially since Argon Prime definitely has some serious firepower.

Well any helpful answers would be appreciated. 14 hours in just seems like a REALLY small amount of time for the Xenon to be attacking in such force and the lack of response is what gets me. I'd think they'd bring in some heavy firepower when their stations start getting wrecked. And none of my mods are any that make the Xenon more aggressive.

[clarkeveritas]

Thanks Harrison, my response was for Grumpy but it posted after yours because my screen hadn't refreshed yet.

[Sooner535{UFIP}]

If I remember right fleets are "assigned" based on a hidden point type system. So no I don't think those AP fleets will ever help unfortunately :/ I am 20 hours into my VRO game though and the Xenon have almost lost the Void lol, no interaction from me at all (except I have 2 miners in Silent Witness providing silicon and 1 traded gathering dropped items on the border of ARG and HOP space). Joys of a sandbox I guess?

[Oddible]

Your issue is 100% your mods. Are you a new player using a total overhaul mod (VRO)? Yeah I'm going to recommend against that. Here's the problem. VRO significantly nerfs fighters in is goal of improving capital ship combat. Early game the factions rely heavily on fighters for defense. A swarm of Aaron fighters can successfully take down a Xenon K. But not in VRO.

No, the goal is not to amass a huge fleet quickly. X4 offers a lot of different play styles. If you want to amass a huge fleet and take the fight to the Xenon yourself, you can! If you want to supply faction shipyards with wares so they can build capital ships you can do that too. The recommended route however that won't have you babysitting the factions all game is to economically build up resilient factions. Feed them raw materials. The difference is they will use those to build stations and miners and traders as well as military and it will make the factions stronger overall. You can significantly tip the balance of power in this game without building a single military ship for yourself.

Also note that original randomization can place stations in positions that can give a faction or the xenon advantages. Every game has a different start.

Ditch the mods, most of us vets would recommend you play vanilla your first play through. I have > 1000 hours in and I'm playing a vanilla game right now. Install a few lightweight ease of use mods if you like but save the overhaul mod until you know the mechanics and what you're getting into.

[Harrison]

Originally posted by clarkeveritas:

I'd think they'd bring in some heavy firepower when their stations start getting wrecked. And none of my mods are any that make the Xenon more aggressive.

They do, but there are a couple of things at work here.

First depends on the seed with which your game started, only a few stations are hard coded to exist at the the start of any given new game, mostly the shipyards, wharves, trading stations, and equipment docks. Every other station at the beginning of a new game is left to chance, meaning every faction could start with a decent distribution of stations and have a strong economy from the start or one or more of them could start the game barely hanging on by their fingernails.

Second, the Xenon I. In the base game the Xenon I is dangerous but easily manageable. With VRO, the I can wreck whole fleets. From what I've seen, this is more true when out of sector than in sector, just the other day I watched from in sector as the ARG Shipyard solo's an I and it's supporting capital ships, I suspect the fight would have been more damaging for ARG if I'd been watching from the map. It can be especially bad if the Xenon send out two of them with supporting Ks, Vs, and Qs.

In my experience, when one of more factions starts to get curb stomped by the Xenon it's usually because they started with a bad hand to begin with and then lost most of the fleets to the Xenon horde and weren't able to replace them because their economy couldn't support them.

Originally posted by clarkeveritas:

Thanks Harrison, my response was for Grumpy but it posted after yours because my screen hadn't refreshed yet.

That's fair.

Edit: as a side note, one of the more damaging changes that VRO makes and that I most dislike, is the reduction in the number of large turret hardpoints on defensive structures. I sort of get the reasoning, but it’s a change I’ve considered taking out of my game.

[mazrados]

It seems to be very good reason for me not to use vro mods. Now I know what it is, something that should not be used.

[hurepoix]

I did nt had play VRO recently, but in any game I played with it, xenons were not much more active than at x4 vanilla, and NEVER been able to conquere the universe.
The worst that can happen is xenons can conquere a few sectors, and I call that an opportunity. Destructions and war is the main means at X4 to keep the economy dynamic.

[Mythos]

Originally posted by mazrados:

It seems to be very good reason for me not to use vro mods. Now I know what it is, something that should not be used.

War can be very lucrative for you as a player if you supply shipards. When war stops the economy stagnants. Don't be so quick to dismiss war as being a bqd thing.

[mazrados]

I don't. But even without this mod, Xenon almost cut Sol from the rest of known galaxy.
This is enough for me ;)

[hurepoix]

May be what you need is a peaceful game without ennemy, like city skyline, banished or may be railroad tycoon like games ?

[mazrados]

Maybe you should think before you write something? Go away.

[hurepoix]

You can insult others, but you have no power to ban them.

[mazrados]

That's unfortunate, that on Steam there is no option to block idiots who p*ss me off.

[mazrados]

I hope you're right. I could not find that recently but perhaps it has changed.