Strategies for taking (and holding) Xenon sectors

[-=Sid=-]

I never played far enough and so I have no experience in conqering and fasten whole sectors. what i dont like is spending hours configuring thousands of menus to get the ship ai doing it in an acceptible way. so, are there methods doing this in an "easy" way? maybe out-of-sector?

is there a way to get one ore more of the factions to help? or assisting a faction to get sectors back (in my actual playthrough zyarth is almost completely vanquished)?

what stations (fortresses, configuration) do I have to build near xenon-gates?

thanks in advice for sharing your experience! please mark ideas/suggestions as such (if you post any), so that i can see what is to be tested first.

[Pandorian]

Easiest way to completely cripple Xenon is go into their sectors and kill every S you see. Once the wharf runs out of materials to make more their economy is dead in that sector.

If you want factions to assist you then you have to build up their economy to where their fleet is strong. AIs build fleets Economy -> Defense -> Offense so they need to have most of their economy and defense ships out of the way before they build offense ships. Then they might use those offense ships in other wars they're fighting.

You don't really need to build anything near gates to corral the Xenon, just supporting AI economy will work. If you really want to put down stuff, I hear laser tower spam is the way to go.

EDIT: Xenon S, not S as in S size.

[Min]

The way I take Xenon sectors (don't know if it is the easiest way) I already have a fleet with a raptor, chimera bombers, asgard, a few L destroyers and a bunch of tokoba fighters. I have them all subordinated to the carrier bombers on bombard and fighters on intercept. Then I park them near the gate hold down the position while I build a defense station. Once the station is built I move the fleet to another hold area usually another gate or a choke point and do it again. I can leave them OOS unless a massive fleet attacks them like a xenon I with a bunch of Ks, in which case I go into the asgard and snipe the caps from range while bombers focus on the caps also. Usually the losses I take are my Chimeras or Takobas which are just S class so it is acceptable losses.

[zpc]

IMHO easiest way is to buy a carrier, stuff it with 2 or 3 groups of fighters each consisting of ~15 ships and use position defense. Bolster with Destroyer groups (small packs consisting of 4-5 ships) if needed. (e.g. if the sector gate borders a Xenon region with more then one Xenon ship yard, their "output" in terms of attacking ships will be higher then).

Easiest because it is the most flexible solution and automated to a very high level (the position defense ships will activley seek reparis and thus survive a lot more the simple interceptor / attack assignments). The carrier also isn't that important in terms of equipment. It could just have barebone equipment - the enemies won't come anywhere near as long as it isn't positioned in the kill zone.

[Malkuth]

Originally posted by Pandorian:

Easiest way to completely cripple Xenon is go into their sectors and kill every S you see. Once the wharf runs out of materials to make more their economy is dead in that sector.

If you want factions to assist you then you have to build up their economy to where their fleet is strong. AIs build fleets Economy -> Defense -> Offense so they need to have most of their economy and defense ships out of the way before they build offense ships. Then they might use those offense ships in other wars they're fighting.

You don't really need to build anything near gates to corral the Xenon, just supporting AI economy will work. If you really want to put down stuff, I hear laser tower spam is the way to go.

EDIT: Xenon S, not S as in S size.

I think one of the devs said that all xenon share from the same pool of resources. So yes killing S will hurt them, but as long as another sector is still thriving you won't cut off a sector. If you want to kill a sector you have to take out the ship building facilities.. Than it will die. and than kill the rest of S.

Laser towers don't work for long. It will slow them down but eventually when the I pops through the gate and more than 1 K.. The laser towers will die. (tried it).

[Pandorian]

Originally posted by Malkuth:

I think one of the devs said that all xenon share from the same pool of resources. So yes killing S will hurt them, but as long as another sector is still thriving you won't cut off a sector. If you want to kill a sector you have to take out the ship building facilities.. Than it will die. and than kill the rest of S.

Laser towers don't work for long. It will slow them down but eventually when the I pops through the gate and more than 1 K.. The laser towers will die. (tried it).

They don't share resources they share fleet cap. I farmed my X-Treme rank by going from station to station when they were all in connected systems and drained the stations by killing defense drones. If they shared resources I couldn't have done that.

[-=Sid=-]

Thanks for all posts so far! This already sounds not as complicated as i thought it would be. Could you please share your ship- and station configuration as well? meaning in detail:

stations built near gates (modules and - if important - from wich faction, weapons/missiles, ...)
fighters (weapons most effectively against xenon?)
bombers (weappns/missiles?)
capitals (surely plasma is the way to go?)

Is it for sure, that the (xenon-)AI is not cheating? Thought this would be by design and ships can simply spawn somewhere to have a constant threat...

Which ships (+config) do you use against stations? Tried this with a L Boron ship (takes forever) and in a second try with a rattlesnake with plasma on L-turrets (which was a better choice but also takes far too long).

[Pandorian]

Originally posted by -=Sid=-:

Is it for sure, that the (xenon-)AI is not cheating? Thought this would be by design and ships can simply spawn somewhere to have a constant threat...

Which ships (+config) do you use against stations? Tried this with a L Boron ship (takes forever) and in a second try with a rattlesnake with plasma on L-turrets (which was a better choice but also takes far too long).

For sure they don't cheat. If I do brawling I use the Erlking. The more purple mods for the turrets the better.

[Min]

Originally posted by -=Sid=-:

Thanks for all posts so far! This already sounds not as complicated as i thought it would be. Could you please share your ship- and station configuration as well? meaning in detail:

stations built near gates (modules and - if important - from wich faction, weapons/missiles, ...)
fighters (weapons most effectively against xenon?)
bombers (weappns/missiles?)
capitals (surely plasma is the way to go?)

Is it for sure, that the (xenon-)AI is not cheating? Thought this would be by design and ships can simply spawn somewhere to have a constant threat...

Which ships (+config) do you use against stations? Tried this with a L Boron ship (takes forever) and in a second try with a rattlesnake with plasma on L-turrets (which was a better choice but also takes far too long).

Cap Sips (Asgard, Raptor, L Destroyers) - L turrets are all plasma (I use paranid ones for the added range but some prefer split for rate of fire) M Turrets are Flak and Bolt.

Bombers: Chimeras with 4 Torp tubes and one mass driver in the middle so they stay at range when shooting (Bombers sit in carrier unless they are actively hunting cap ships, don't let them dogfight set them on bombardment order)

Interceptors: Set to intercept order I personally use Takobas and Moreyas but you an go with what ever you want. These are just to kill S class and xenon Ps. These guys will be flying outside most of the time chasing small to medium ships. They wont engage Ks or Is.

Oh and I also have a supply ship attached to the carrier for repairs and rearming bombers and some M class traders attached to the supply ship.

[D55]

Most times i find the build storage on a Xenon station and knock out any turrets facing it and then drop laser tower mk2`s around it which will farm the Xenon S for you then i go and knock out the ship building facilities connected to the area i want to take over, starting with the wharfs then i move on to the shipyards.
It is also good practice to have a lot of laser towers as it is highly likely you will get swarmed by small ships but spamming laser towers as you move around give your shields enough time to tank anything.
This is a hit and run mission so dont hang about trying to nuke the whole stations, just hit the ship building and keep moving taking out any K`s you come across as they can fast travel on top of you if you`re not careful, one doing it is fine but often times you can get pinned between a few of them and it doesnt end well.

[Daddy Shark]

What I've been doing lately is using the HQ's teleport ability offensively. I make sure it's ready to teleport, then hop in my trusty Katana and go drop a nav beacon near the target defense station/shipyard and then book it out of there. When the HQ teleports in, it comes in with a massive bang. Anything within a wide radius is insta-gibbed. I basically stacked up defensive disks on top of one another and then space these totem poles of death around the perimeter of the HQ's plot. When the enemy sends their fleets against the station that just blew up their infrastructure, the HQ obliterates everything in seconds. Not to mention it's holding about 2000 defense drones that come swarming out to clean up any stragglers.

[zpc]

Ah right, forgot about the Deathstar ...

[Min]

Originally posted by Daddy Shark:

What I've been doing lately is using the HQ's teleport ability offensively. I make sure it's ready to teleport, then hop in my trusty Katana and go drop a nav beacon near the target defense station/shipyard and then book it out of there. When the HQ teleports in, it comes in with a massive bang. Anything within a wide radius is insta-gibbed. I basically stacked up defensive disks on top of one another and then space these totem poles of death around the perimeter of the HQ's plot. When the enemy sends their fleets against the station that just blew up their infrastructure, the HQ obliterates everything in seconds. Not to mention it's holding about 2000 defense drones that come swarming out to clean up any stragglers.

Ah yes this is also a good tactic. I haven't used it yet. Just wondering when you teleport the HQ what happens to all the assigned and docked ships? I am thinking of doing the Heart for Pirates quest using this method, the one where you have to clear xenon fully out of Savage Spur to help Yaki

[rubyismycat]

First prepare before you star fighting the xenon it might be to your advantage to let them for example crush the Split first saving you the effort of doing it yourself assuming you intend to take the whole universe or most of it for yourself secondly make sure you have a builder ready to slap down an admin station the second you conquor the sector you dont want another faction claiming ownership before you so you need tons of extra cash. Next depending on what faction you are playing you need to select you assault fleet carefully you want ships that can pummel hard targets from range keeping clear of those pesky station guns i would advise you not to bring carriers fighters and corvettes stick to destroyer or massive ships like Asguards and lastly once you have claimed the sector have a defense fleet of one carrier and two destroyers ready to patrol the system and demolish any attempts by those machine monsters to rebuild they will try and they get oober cheats meaning they can build a station in the time it takes you to eat lunch

[Defektiv]

I haven't done it since Split hit, but back then I used 5 Raptors packed with 150 fighters each, 2 aux ships for on site repairs and close to 20 destroyers to clean up the stations after the sector got cleared. I think I had a bunch of carriers guarding gates because I had old carriers laying around, but they didn't really help much and are a bit overkill if you deploy towers to keep enemies from going travel mode. It worked really well, I only lost a handful of destroyers and maybe 10-20 fighters each for the Raptors.

You have to kind of creep in, one sector at a time. They are really aggressive about not only defending, but retaking. Even if you corner them in a dead end they can get behind you and start rebuilding. And it takes a while after cleaning them out before they stop dropping new plots and trying to sneak ships in.

Today I'm working on a different strategy. Going in solo with an Asgard seems possible but I have to be super careful. So far I haven't pushed it more than one sector with a couple defense stations and a solar factory. I know the AI can't use the Asgard very well so for the AI groups I might just anchor an Asgard as an anti fighter tank and surround it with destroyers and see how that goes.

[Daddy Shark]

Originally posted by Min:

Ah yes this is also a good tactic. I haven't used it yet. Just wondering when you teleport the HQ what happens to all the assigned and docked ships? I am thinking of doing the Heart for Pirates quest using this method, the one where you have to clear xenon fully out of Savage Spur to help Yaki

All docked ships go along for the ride. All assigned ships like miners in the field will make their way to the new location.