Effectively protect miners

[Fabsch]

I have trouble protecting my miners from the Kha'ak, as long as i don't outright destroy their stations, wich i sometimes do, but flying to the other side of the map in a destroyer takes a lot of time. Also i do not really want to lessen the strain they put on the economy by being a nuisance to others.
So i made a patrol fleet of 1 lead corvette, a group of 2 corvettes & two groups of four heavy fighters each on attack role, and a group of some scouts on intercept role.
I set this fleet on patrol duty in a sector, where Kha'ak attacks happen, but they do not respond to miners or traders under attack on their own. They get into fights with the Kha'ak but that seems to be rather randomly the case, when they run into them by chance.
When i take notice early enough of an attack and i direct them to fight the enemy, they deal with any Kha'ak encountered without any problems.
I still feel like this is not the outcome i intended with setting the fleet on patrol duty though. Is there another setting where the fleet auto responds?
I know of the protect area command, but it is limited to 40km radius.
Maybe the police sector command? I was not able so actually select a sector for that, so maybe i am missing something. I do have police licenses for most of the major factions, if that is of concern here.
Any tips on how to get my fleet to auto respond to threats in the sector would be most welcome, as i do not want to be forced to rely on large miners only.

[Cyrill Echo]

X3 had it, in X4 im afraid you ll have to rely on L miners. Patrol is useless as it wont get in time to save your miners, guard area is useless due to the fact that you cant order a miner where to mine once its asigned to a station, and the better its station manager is the farther it ll go , rarely mining in the same place twice. So... L miners or escorts for each m miner, and that will get you to the same price or more of a L miner

[Zyra~]

Can Egosoft take a look at this thread?

Because Kha'ak are indeed very frustrating to deal with in an unmodded game...
Right now I'm playing on a modified version (with a mod deactivating kha'ak damage until the issue is fixed) but I hope when the multiverse venture will be available with seasons, we will also get a tool to defend our miner efficiently...

Escorts seemed useless and way too costly for an early/mid-game save. Since they could get destroyed (corvette, gunship) when you weren't near them to help.

The problem with the AI is that they aim weirdly and boost away randomly.
Depleting their shields and getting killed (which add more to the frustration of losing a dozen million worth-ship or worth: more than one ship but an entire squad)

I absolutely love the game but my first hours against them weren't really fun or didn't show me a way to counter those random raids killing all my miners in a sector. And even now I still stay with the mod activated to not deal with that frustration again :(

[Defektiv]

In my original save of around 600 hours I think I only have 1 or 2 of my miners that are not L miners that have survived, and I keep them in the HQ internal storage as trophies. Even with the best escorts they can get easily destroyed before escorts can deal with it. The best chance you can give them is to make sure their attack on order is set to Flee and deploy laser towers, and make sure they have laser towers.

[EPIC VOID]

Wait, you can destroy Khaak stations? I thought they were invincible.

[mcb0ny]

You can destroy them, but that's temporary solution. They will respawn.

[conrado.lacerda]

Step 1: be sure to lay resource probes wherever your miners go to mine (use the mining overlay to avoid redundancies).

Step 2: with the mining locations mapped, observe your miners for a while. You'll notice that they tend to revisit the same places (richer "veins", I suspect).

Step 3: set you combat squadrons with the "repeat orders" behavior to attack any target in range at these locations, and also around the stations where the miners will sell their cargo. You can chain as many locations as you want with a single squadron, but you'll probably want to limit any squadron to a cluster of locations to increase effectiveness. Clearly, fast fighters or corvettes (e.g. Katanas) are recommend. You can also chain "collect drops" at each location to get that sweet loot...

----

In my experience, this tactic works very well, but it's not perfect and you'll still lose M miners occasionally, specially when the raiding party is large and kills your miner almost instantly. Combine these with PAR/TER combat engines and TEL/TER shields for the miners to increase their chances, as well as the "flee and drop turrets" default response to being attacked.

This tactic is useful even if you migrate to L miners since, while the Khaak won't be able to kill them, their travel speed to the station is drastically diminished by the constant attacks.

Edit: don't use the "patrol" or "police" behavior with anything less than a destroyer because, if the squadron finds the Khaak station, it's game over for them...

[[FR]Ortpor]

Oh they can destroy L miners. They did it a few times in my unmoded game. So many that I gave a Jian escort to all my L miners in the most Kahak active sector. I'm trying to find their station but so far no luck with 2 scouts exploring all the corners and expanding the map. I'm really trying to not install mods to nutter them because of the Boron DLC but this is getting ridiculous...

I get new Kahak fleets on my miners every 2 minutes now and I have been looking for the station for hours...

[Incompertus]

the kaahk station may not be in the same sector as the attacks. i belive they can be up to 2 sectors away

[conrado.lacerda]

Worth reading:

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=443020

[Min]

I got to the point now where I don't use M miners at all, most of them have been destroyed. It is such a hassle to do attack area for each area because I got so many miners and having a squadron on partol sector does not work that well neither. I think if combat ships are set to patrol sector they should have the ability to respond to friendly miners when they get attacked instead of only attacking when they are in range.

[Defektiv]

In my experience the only that that destroys my L miners are either the occasional Xenon capital making a long break through the front lines or pirate destroyers getting the jump on them. You can however, eventually with a sizable amount of terraforming and faction gaining effort, neutralize the pirate attacks.

[cant]

Originally posted by Min:

I got to the point now where I don't use M miners at all, most of them have been destroyed. It is such a hassle to do attack area for each area because I got so many miners and having a squadron on partol sector does not work that well neither. I think if combat ships are set to patrol sector they should have the ability to respond to friendly miners when they get attacked instead of only attacking when they are in range.

did you see the post above from conrado? now below here.

Originally posted by conrado.lacerda:

Step 1: be sure to lay resource probes wherever your miners go to mine (use the mining overlay to avoid redundancies).

Step 2: with the mining locations mapped, observe your miners for a while. You'll notice that they tend to revisit the same places (richer "veins", I suspect).

Step 3: set you combat squadrons with the "repeat orders" behavior to attack any target in range at these locations, and also around the stations where the miners will sell their cargo. You can chain as many locations as you want with a single squadron, but you'll probably want to limit any squadron to a cluster of locations to increase effectiveness. Clearly, fast fighters or corvettes (e.g. Katanas) are recommend. You can also chain "collect drops" at each location to get that sweet loot...

----

In my experience, this tactic works very well, but it's not perfect and you'll still lose M miners occasionally, specially when the raiding party is large and kills your miner almost instantly. Combine these with PAR/TER combat engines and TEL/TER shields for the miners to increase their chances, as well as the "flee and drop turrets" default response to being attacked.

This tactic is useful even if you migrate to L miners since, while the Khaak won't be able to kill them, their travel speed to the station is drastically diminished by the constant attacks.

Edit: don't use the "patrol" or "police" behavior with anything less than a destroyer because, if the squadron finds the Khaak station, it's game over for them...

[Charles]

The fleet AI is kinda dumb when it comes to responding. They will eventually respond, but it will usually be after fighting has been going on for a while. I can offer a suggestion that has worked well enough for me. It does require pilots who can use mimic so that's the only hitch. You need to either train them, or use a mod to deal with that issue. I personally just use a lightweight mod for that one. Although the tactic I mention may be useful even without using a mod. There are aspects that don't need mimic.

1. Get a carrier, not strictly required but its kinda nice and looks good and helps keep fighters alive a bit longer.

2. Get a bunch of interceptor type fighters. You want good equipment on them if you can afford it, but stuff like probes etc are optional. I personally use the Takoba as it is fast and has good shields. That seems to be a good combo for keeping them alive and intercepting.

3. You can also assign some heavy fighters that are equipped to deal with frigates, but you might just want more interceptors. I tend to also assign a destroyer or two to the fleet just to deal with anything big and nasty that might show up. Such as a pirate destroyer.

4. The most important thing you need to do is assign all of them to the carrier/ Fleet leader. You want to assign the subordinates to mimic commander. Then you tell the commander to patrol a system. The subordinates will all then individually patrol. This works great for having a bunch of tiny ships roaming around the area. They will run into anything before the miners do and then the rest of them will slowly trickle in to help deal with the threat. The fighters can also repair at the carrier, I think. I don't tend to watch them do it but I don't lose many and they are often at full health.

5. You will want to use blacklists to control where your trade/mining areas are. Assign a fleet like this to each system that has a high indecent rate. If you can afford it you could also assign a fleet like this to every sector you normally operate in. It is kinda demanding at first but it works really well.

6. In the same area as the blacklist you can set up alerts. Set one up for the sectors/enemies you are worried about. Choose a custom alarm and message so you know immediately exactly what it is that is attacking you. Now whenever a enemy is spotted in the alert area you will get a notification and a sound will play. This lets you get an idea of how often they are showing up. You can also go to the message log(not the mail one) and type in the name of the alert to see all the times it has triggered and where.

7. Get some really fast ships with some advanced satellites/nav beacons on them and use them as scouts. Give them an idle order to dock at one of your assets/defend a safe location. Whenever you get alerts for kha'ak dispatch one of them to explore the outskirts and find the local nest. You can adjust the size of the explore command by clicking the plus on it in the behavior tab. After finishing the exploration the ships should automatically go back to the safety of their default order(assuming you don't tell them to wait). Which is great for poorly armed scouts. I also recommend using the advanced satellites to have a better view of sectors your ships are in a lot. It makes the alerts a lot better and it seems to help your patrols find the enemy. But that is my subjective opinion, I have not looked at the code for it. I tend to cover the core of the sector and some of the outskirts. This way I get an alert if they are lurking around. It allows me to have eyes everywhere in sector. You can also drop a nav beacon and rename it to whatever you want to mark stuff like a system you've found a big hive in. You can also rename satellites, but I find beacons are more visually distinct. You can also use the search bar in the map to find the custom name you give them. EX: If you name the beacon to Kha'ak then search it the map will filter to only showing the beacons and the Kha'ak assets. Everything else disappears and you can even zoom all the way out and see that info.

8. Have a couple destroyers on Kha'ak crashing duty. I just keep a fleet of about 8 Syns who are modded as best I can. It allows me to deal with the Kha'ak without ever even needing to look at them. The scouts find them, the destroyers crush them, and the patrols nuke any of them that get too close. With this strategy I have managed to make the Kha'ak a non factor in sectors my ships operate in and they still server the greater good by blowing up ships elsewhere.

It sounds very expensive, and it is, but its the best solution I have found. Assigning escorts to ships is viable early on. But once you have a couple hundred miners it becomes cheaper to just patrol the whole dang sector and forget about it. Also using police tends to tank relations with other factions, It is very unfortunate.

[Charles]

Originally posted by FROrtpor:

Oh they can destroy L miners. They did it a few times in my unmoded game. So many that I gave a Jian escort to all my L miners in the most Kahak active sector. I'm trying to find their station but so far no luck with 2 scouts exploring all the corners and expanding the map. I'm really trying to not install mods to nutter them because of the Boron DLC but this is getting ridiculous...

I get new Kahak fleets on my miners every 2 minutes now and I have been looking for the station for hours...

Spoiler below for Khaak spawning mechanics.

You can always google where their hives are. They only spawn in a select few systems. Those will then spawn outpost within 3 jumps. If you destroy the hives they have a very generous respawn timer. You will likely have a few days of playing before its an issue again. The outpost respond quicker but need a hive to spawn. If you destroy the hives and mark the systems you find them in you can in effect eliminate the Khaak. Which is more than could be said for the dang pirates. Also you can google the spawn info such as exact respawn times.

[LordNSR]

The solar system has a place where you can mine all the minerals you want without Khak attacking you. (I use that place if I am roleplaying as a terran).