X4 uses too many cheats

[Winter's Embers]

So, I had issues with Kha'ak ships hitting my mining ships in "The Reach." Okay, so, assign a couple frigates to each one. That should help. Nope. Frigates just cruise right along, ignoring the Kha'ak no matter if they're set to Intercept, Defend, whatever.
So, give them fire authorization "Ruthless" against Kha'ak. That should take care of the issue, right? Nope. The Kha'ak show up only AFTER the commander has given orders to the frigates to "Fly and Wait" at the HQ drop off. So, the frigates cruise right along, ignoring the fact that 6 Kha'ak ships (2 queens guard, 2 hive guard, 2 forager) have just appeared and are smacking the hell out of the miner.
And this is how it happens every single time. The Kha'ak only appear after all orders have been given and the miner and it's escort have orders overriding any attack. Don't believe me? Here's a video:

https://youtu.be/rfnlEAfBR1Q

This is a blatant cheat.

[Farrel]

Trusting NPC pilots to protect your assets is generally not going to go well, the AI just isn't up to the task when it comes to the kha'ak.

Better to temporarily blacklist the sector if the problem is bad, locate the kha'ak base (it'll be there somewhere) and then send in the destroyers.

You could also consider switching to large miners, kha'ak are generally much better at shooting down small and medium ships, but they don't have the damage output to hurt large ships in any significant way.

[Dinvan]

The game kinda forces losses on you.
I am allied with all the pirates in my game, have every where secure and no M miners.

Kha'ak then spawn in systems with no hive and attack my M traders forcing losses.

I dont know if this is intentional or not but its getting kinda tiresome to continually replace ships due to ships popping into existence right next to my only vulnerable ships.

But yes, generally the AI cheats in many areas which leads to forced losses.

[climbingeastofwinter]

I mean, it's not ideal. I'm still learning the game, but have you tried changing the default behavior of those frigates to 'Protect Ship' and selecting the miner? Also, are the turrets on the frigates set to defend or attack? There may be a better way of getting your ships to do what you want, and I don't know that any of what I suggested trying will help, but I'm sure someone here knows the right order combination.

Edit: Oh yea, make sure your miner is equipped with some laser towers and set their 'Default response to attack' be 'Flee and deploy laser towers'. That too might help a little.

[Cellar_Cat]

I've experienced a bug in the past where M ships assigned to roles like intercept or bombard would say they were doing it, but stop actually responding to enemies nearby until the order was re-issued. I believe I reported it in the previous game version, but maybe they didn't fix it.

[「Hliey」]

Originally posted by Dinvan:

Kha'ak then spawn in systems with no hive and attack my M traders forcing losses.

That's because the Kha'ak hives/outposts have a range of 3 sectors for raids.

[Wraith]

You should probably show the whole thing

You kinda stop half way with the video we didn’t get to see the actual attack

[Targaryen22]

I've had very minimal problems with assigning ships to act as escorts escorting. I would highly suggest if you are attempting to set ships to escort your civvies make sure you are assigning faster ships then the protectee. (I love Katanas and Gorgons for escort vessels. Hydras as well). assign them to intercept for the protectee. Defend i'm fairly sure only means they will react when the protectee gets shot. If you have them set to defend the trade ship and they don't attack it the escorts will likely just sit and spin their wheels, so to speak.
I usually don't assign escorts to my civvie vessels personally, though I have started adding some frigates and corvettes for my L traders (tired of losing L traders to a singular SCA raider phoenix or ANT behemoth). Most of my solution for the pirating problem has simply been 2-4 Destroyer patrol battlegroups (3-4 destroyers, 8+ mix of frigates/corvettes and some Fighters/heavy fighters) on patrol in problemmatic sectors. Topped off by 3-5 (give or take) medium patrol fleets in the system. Katanas my go to, Gorgons my second. I've been able to heavily trade and mine The Belt, I've secured Hatikvah and i'm currently spending 1bil on ships for patrol in Loom whatevers Revenge, Mo ti (Sp?) etc as I'm currently building small defense stations in both sectors to claim them.

[Azunai]

Don't waste money on escorts. Scout out the khaak installations, get a few destroyers and bombard them. Takes a few hours, but you don't have to be present and can do other stuff while the destroyers kill them. Don't bring other ships. They'll just die.


They will eventually respawn after 100 hours or so.

[Targaryen22]

Originally posted by Azunai:

Don't waste money on escorts. Scout out the khaak installations, get a few destroyers and bombard them. Takes a few hours, but you don't have to be present and can do other stuff while the destroyers kill them. Don't bring other ships. They'll just die.


They will eventually respawn after 100 hours or so.

very few of my patrol groups have taken any losses, and eventually when you have so much money setting up these fleets are of little bother. I tend to pick quicker ships when I can for khaak patrols. they generally seem to do much better, so like I said above the Katana and gorgon are good for it. (and considering the gorgon gets defense drones it can add to the fight and 4 turrets that you can flak up lol)

[Killzad]

Originally posted by Winter's Embers:

So, I had issues with Kha'ak ships hitting my mining ships in "The Reach." Okay, so, assign a couple frigates to each one. That should help. Nope. Frigates just cruise right along, ignoring the Kha'ak no matter if they're set to Intercept, Defend, whatever.
So, give them fire authorization "Ruthless" against Kha'ak. That should take care of the issue, right? Nope. The Kha'ak show up only AFTER the commander has given orders to the frigates to "Fly and Wait" at the HQ drop off. So, the frigates cruise right along, ignoring the fact that 6 Kha'ak ships (2 queens guard, 2 hive guard, 2 forager) have just appeared and are smacking the hell out of the miner.
And this is how it happens every single time. The Kha'ak only appear after all orders have been given and the miner and it's escort have orders overriding any attack. Don't believe me? Here's a video:

https://youtu.be/rfnlEAfBR1Q

This is a blatant cheat.

Too me there behavior is exactly as expected. Remember that miners have no mind of there own. They are controlled by the station manager and the only job they have is go mine not give attack orders.

To do the thing you want to do first select each Gorgon individually, right click then select "Remove all orders and assignments" right click again click on "Information" go to to the "Behavior" tab the icon looks like circle with four horizontal lines inside. On this tab look at the bottom you have a line in blue color and it says "Hold position" click on this line, now a new window will open to the right with a lot of stars in it click on "Protect Ship" the window will close automatically. Now you have a blue line that says "Protect Ship" and below it you have one blue line which is blank, click on the blank blue line now it ask you to select the ship you want to be protected remember you need to click right mouse button over the miner, new window will pop with the name of the ship and in blue color "select" click on it. now on the behavior tab you need to click on "confirm". Your done.

You will see that an icon with a shield will pop up on top of your miner this indicates he is protected now.

[Winter's Embers]

Wow. And in all this time, not one of you has addressed the actual issue:

That the game is using a cheat mechanic when it spawns in the Khaak. It waits until all orders are set before spawning in. This has nothing to do with defending the ships at all (I haven't lost one yet).

All the information is great for someone who needs it but it is totally irrelevant to the topic.

[Captain Canard]

Kha'ak are defined as a "cheater" in their ability to drop in and out of hyperspace (or whatever X4's equivalent is) at will. I think that's done on purpose to make them a unique and different kind of threat to the Xenon. I too was facing all sorts of harassment of my mining fleet, which in particular seems to trigger the Kha'ak (even escort missions acknowledge this).

The key to defending against this attacks is to find the hive and destroy it. If you are being constantly attacked, there IS a hive out there in that sector, somewhere. It can be hard to find, because it will be way outside the regular circumference of the sector's population. But find it and destroy it, and the attacks will stop. At least that's always been my experience.

[MasterShake]

Originally posted by Winter's Embers:

Wow. And in all this time, not one of you has addressed the actual issue:

That the game is using a cheat mechanic when it spawns in the Khaak.

All the information is great for someone who needs it but it is totally irrelevant to the topic.

Because the common knowledge is that isn't a cheat, it's kinda their lore feature long since they were introduced in series for the first time.
The only real cheaters within current game afaik are SCA, who get their ships literally out of the void and abuse "cloak" system to extent.

[Killzad]

Originally posted by Winter's Embers:

Wow. And in all this time, not one of you has addressed the actual issue:

That the game is using a cheat mechanic when it spawns in the Khaak. It waits until all orders are set before spawning in. This has nothing to do with defending the ships at all (I haven't lost one yet).

All the information is great for someone who needs it but it is totally irrelevant to the topic.

Kha have teleportation technology it's not a cheat.

[Winter's Embers]

I know they have teleportation. And watching the system for a while, the Kha'ak appear at any time to harrass an Argon Miner. But they ONLY appear to attack MY transports AFTER the commander issues the order for the escorts to return to base (an order that should not even exist since the ships are on Defend escort duty and should follow the command ship, not lead it) so that the escort ships cannot turn and respond to attacks on the miner. I sat and watched for an hour. This happened a total of 13 times and it ALWAYS happened at the exact same time, leaving the mining ship defenseless despite having 2 escorts that each individually can wipe the floor with the entire attack wing of Kha'ak. THAT is the cheat, not the teleportation.