Help with Xenon- they are taking over

[Ploutonas777]

Hello everyone,

I am about 25 hours in my latest save, and the Xenon have started to invade all systems. I am not talking about small raiding parties- these are full blown invasions, with destroyers...as in more than one. Also, they have established a defense platform right by the gates of HC, creating a serious gate camp there, with 2-3 destroyers killing every single ship out of the gates.

This has prevented my ships from trading and i am now without any means of fighting back. Is there a point in waiting for Argon and others to push them back, or should i restart?

[Gibbo]

Oh god no don't restart. What you have there is what a lot of us would love. Try and keep your miners/traders away from them. A Terran fleet does turn up and will wipe the floor with them at some point.

Try and use M ships as these can ride the highway and will avoid the worst of it. If you have any resource probes that means you have to travel through the Xenon then deactivate them and your miners will go elsewhere. I would use more miners than traders. Miners will always be safe in certain sectors. Traders never are. Good luck!

[Ploutonas777]

Thank you, I appreciate it. I really like this more active universe in this save game. Other times I would get to have 3 L ships before any action.

Right now, I have a Pelican and a Cerberus, and I was thinking selling the Pelican to get smaller ships....until I realized I can claim the abandoned destroyer everyone talks about online.

Maybe if I get that and sell it I can buy a small army of miners and keep them in systems that are still safe, and then get more M traders, like Demeter Sentinel, to start up my trading empire again.

Any thoughts? Advice?

[Axeface]

"Invade all systems" but you only talk about Hatikvahs Choice, which they are invading from gamestart. No dont restart, everytime you start a new game there will be Xenon at that gate.

Buy a fighter with burst rays and strip the K's if you want to, the argon will show up to finish them off.

[eMYNOCK]

i suggest to errect a cheap but armed to the teeth (round 16 million) defense station near that gate...

but thats only a solution if you have that money to throw at the problem.

anyway, like the two others said..
don't give up on that save, many veterans in here would give an arm and leg to have agressive xenon (including me).

[Gibbo]

Well I would put at least 4 L miners in Oort Cloud. 2 ore and 2 silicon. Also Segaris is pretty safe to begin with as is Gain Prophecy? the Khaak will eventually find their way there, but if you have L miners and are not playing with mods they shouldn't bother you. So that's 6-8 L miners that should be safe for a very long time. That's a good start on a passive income. Cardinals Redress is a really good sector to mine, but the Khaak love it and they can build up to silly numbers that will overpower a L miner if you let them. Watchful Gaze is great for miners that work for your stations and if you have all the dlc it's only one sector away from your HQ which is very handy. Be careful because pirates as well as Khaak like it in there.

That should get you started and well on your way. :)

[climbingeastofwinter]

Argon and others may not actually push them back without help. The good news is you have access to war mission that will give you a steady supply of ways to help the war effort.

Well-built defensive platforms, even on a budget, make a very big difference with regards to sector defense. Also remember that ships categorized as large (and larger) can't use the super highway, so they're stuck using jumpgates and travel-moding it through systems if they want to get around. Take some Xenon War station building missions and try to get some defense platforms established. If HC is too far gone to do that safely, fly around personally in Argon Prime or other sectors you want to develop and look for other station building opportunities.

[🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑]

Defense station is a good shield against Xenon. Though there is problem to build it cuz the hatch of the sewer isn't closed.
Xenon will make Argon weak by constantly cutting civilian traffic but I wouldn't expect huge system losses in the near future. Take your time and think of how to handle the issue.
Actually the most danger comes from Xenon XL and you can deal with them by putting mines on their back. Friends-foe or tracker ones. Use pause to drop a lot of them.

[Ploutonas777]

Thank you all for your feedback.

I am now trying to claim the Odysseus so I can have either the extra cash or a fighting chance once properly upgraded.

I will let you all know what happens.

As for which systems are being invaded, I see them in Second Contact , Black Hole Sun, and Silent Witness, plus HC of course. Destroyers in all these systems.

SW is getting worse by the gate as they have a base in HC. All dead NPC traders everywhere.

[blackphoenixx]

Anything between The Void/Getsu Fune and Tharka's Cascade XV is Xenon Alley. Pretty much the only sectors MORE likely to be invaded by Xenon are the split ones.

As for advice i'd say just avoid that area and trade & mine in Paranid space. Pious Mists IV and XI in particular are really solid mining sectors and thanks to proximity to the highway ring you can sell to both HOP and PAR (or even further than that, but you won't need to unless you have a lot of miners) and make very respectable profits with relatively few ships.

There's some Khaak, but the local BUC pirates serve as rather efficient patrols against them and they don't bother miners (they WILL bother traders, so keep that in mind. Great place for your first mining station though).
Also HOP is pretty much always resource-starved and has some of the best miners in the game so that's a nice synergy for growing your empire as a cherry on top.

The other option that Gibbo already mentioned is Terran space.
The pro here is that some sectors (notably Oort Cloud and Saturn 2) are completely safe from both pirates and Khaak, and the terran industry is always hungry for more resources. You can easily make 50+ mil per hour just selling minerals and gas to them without ever having a single shot fired at your miners by anyone, so you can go cheap on the shields.

The cons are that terran sectors are large and don't have highways, so you'll make less money per ship.
It's also a long way from the other races which makes it hard to increase your reputation with them. Which you'll probably want to since terran miners and traders aren't very good and cost about 2-3 times as much as their counterparts despite that, so you'll probably want to get commonwealth (non-Split because they suck too) ones.

[Ploutonas777]

Thank you all.

I now have the Odysseus and I attacked the Xenon defense platform at HC. Solo. I managed to get it down to 4 percent hull but a xenon army showed up with a destroyer and many smaller ships.

I started running away and I am trying to get to an Argon defense platform but I am moving too slowly and cannot use travel mode as the enemies followed me.

I upgraded the turrets of the Odysseus, using Argon plasma and flak, and must say they do serious damage now.

Hope I make it to safety. HC is way too defenseless in this save. The only combat ships that tried to help were paranoid destroyers that eventually run away too. One Zeus died!

[SirProsik]

That Odysseus with PAR plasma and ARG Flak will work great against fighter swarms.
Expensive to give it TER shields but well worth every penny.

Did the ship come with forward guns or did you have to acquire them afterward?
I have found the ship equipped with them maybe twice.

You can load it up with 10 M transports and have more storage than the largest L transport :)

[Ploutonas777]

I made it!!! I am now looking to upgrade the ship further, add the front guns since it came with none, just turrets.

The Xenon are spearheading a massive defense of their almost destroyed defense platform, it was epic. I still see the mess there through my satellites, and many more ships have showed up, others died... it is a huge ship graveyard now. I need to get a Tug Boat there and nom nom nom everything!

Thank you all for your feedback. This has been the best experience with this game so far. I thought I was done for, but discovering the Odysseus made a huge difference.

[eMYNOCK]

haha... glad your experience was a good one.
may you have many remarkable and glorious battles... on the winning and loosing side.

everything can be a unique story to tell if you like to.

and let me formally welcome you into the ranks of the battle hardened community, into this group of excentric and sometimes weird people that we are.

[Ploutonas777]

Thank you for the warm welcome. I enjoy this game more than I should perhaps, but it is by far the best space game of it's type.

I am currently after more Xenos, cleaning up their invasions as they pop up, and trying to make enough credits to get a second destroyer to be able to take down those bases they put up.

The hard part is that, due to their aggressive presence in the Void and other systems, all trade routes seem to be broken, even for medium ships. NPCs are losing tons of ships, even close to Argon prime. I lost a Demeter with fast engines, and had to sell my Pelican as it was unable to make even a single trade without being attacked, then fleeing.

This is a very different playthrough than any of my prior attempts. The galaxy is dangerous, and any profit comes with risk, similar in some ways to Eve. It requires a lot of planning and manual control of trade ships to make a successful run. So, I followed the advice in earlier posts, and switched over to mining.

Miners, so far, have been able to make a steady profit with ore and methane. The Crane makes about 300k and the M miner about 100k per run.

I am glad I listened and did not start over. Wish there was a way to save the galaxy seed that was generated, because this is an awesome galaxy to get lost in.

[Wraith]

Go into one of your save and share the seed?

Then you can just copy paste it into a custom game budget

I’m in need of more good Xenon seed