Xenon broken in 7.0

[Waylander]

A known bug (reported in the Egosoft forums) state that the Xenon are not building defence stations.
Whether it is due to a supply bug or something more serious, the ramifications are that the Xenon will no longer be a threat until this is fixed.
This appears to be the reason why since 7.0 the Teladi easile take Matrix 451 and (in my 50 hr save) also take Matrix 9 without any input from the player.
Sadly, this leads to an extremely boring mid-end game as basically one of the major game threats has been neutered.

As i say, the bug has been noted and reported, (also noted by several streamers) so hopefully something will be done about it otherwise the game will lose a lot of players.

[TwinChops]

Mine working like clokwork, every hour or so some defence stations will appear out of nowhere.
Sure they cant build it but thats only because i wont let them.

[Vault Traveler]

Mine build aswell but maybe its a bug if you have updated on an old savefile? Because I started with 7.0.

[piep]

it's kinda ironic that most of the time I play, I find myself babysitting xenon so they don't get completely erased from the map

[Andros]

They build them for me

[Kilo_60]

Agreed!

My building stations in Terran and Argon space and trading extensively with them have created mega fleets that are going in and completely decimating the Xeon Sectors before I can build my fleets and do it myself!

It seems the only way to prevent this is to just be a pirate and not trade or build stations in any factions sectors to keep them weak…

[Balm]

Xenon are obliterating everyone in my game, this is despite me pumping terrans with a massive economy.

I heard somewhere that Xenon aggression level is set on universe creation, and if you get passive ones that's what you are stuck with.

For me, ever since I initiated the yaki questline to go invade their space and blow up their stuff, the Xenon have been rampaging and the terran invasion fleet can barely get their tip in.

[RaideR]

Only started from 7.0
But already have around 150 hours in my first game
Gotta say, I expected from xenon way way more
The are trying to push, they are trying to build, but it's just stalemate
Only once I managed to stir a big fight, in hatikvah
I went to scout out Xenon H reward, so I just fly by to assess the threat and difficulty how I'm going to claim it
Went back to hatikvah, a literally few minutes later 3 K pops out, bunch of M and P's, I actually managed to capture another B, happy days
So I was like, wow this if finally happening, obviously with my help boomzooming on their engines they didn't really had a chance and defence station popped them
Another like 5 minutes later, when I was about to proceed with my claiming the H adventure, two of I's appeared with bunch of other ships
Well, that's when I had to call in the boys, we lost a station, bunch of allied ships, and had loooooots of fun
But, that's about 1 hour highlight from 150 hours fighting
I have around 1400 xenon ships destroyed myself, but I never invaded them
But they didn't really managed to push elsewhere, even split still standing, and I haven't even touched that part of the galaxy yet, got -16 with all the splits, except the curbs, but they are doomed anyway, I won't let's them live lol, they lucky that I got much better things to do then wiping them out.... yet kek

Tl;tr - xenon Must be harder, way way harder
In my game they left unchecked, and the won't push hard

[Mythos]

Xenon is general feel really weak in 7.0. I had to get a mod to make them harder. Without it, they barely do anything.

[Rejected Spavvn]

Just gonna share some facts here.

1: The universe seed is capable of making the Xenon go extinct in a worst case scenario, with the player just sitting on ass for a few hundred hours doing nothing. Always been the case, the universes have insufficient failsafes. Just as easily a universe can of course generate a situation that causes a major breakdown of the entire commonwealth economy in a few dozen hours and the Xenon will wipe everything everywhere eventually. Point of the story: Don't bother saying "I didn't see what you saw in my game!" because it's a meaningless comment, the game is too randomized for you to think you've seen it all after only a few thousand hours, I'm closing in on 10k and the universe still throws curveballs.

2: Xenon can't expand if they don't have enough available mining ships. Long standing issue, if you see a station they've plopped down that just won't build you can shoot the storage and see that either ore or silicon is missing entirely, the mining ships are completely tied up by a wharf or shipyard and won't give a second thought to a station in a sector they haven't claimed.

3: The stations that get built are usually near a big enough cluster of Xenon sectors so that they have spare resources, and obviously the stations that won't get built even after more than 500 hours (YES I WAITED THAT LONG) are never going to get built because the nearby Xenon sectors don't have enough ships to send any extras. The typical tipping point is 3 connected sectors, any lower and they will practically never expand, 3 or more they usually expand just fine after a while.

4: The issue has been reported a horrifying number of times for years with utter silence as a reply but finally there was a little bit of a reaction to one of the latest threads on their official forum recently. Maybe a fix is coming, don't hold your breath for it arriving in 7.10 though but eventually it'll likely be dealt with.

[Waylander]

Sadly, the reality is that you spend hours/days building up a decent economy, fleet getting ready to have some fun killing Xenon then look at the map and realise the Xenon have already been beaten by all the other races.

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=455267

Link to the Bug report on the official forums, seems 7.0 made the other races stronger which in turn made the Xenon beaten before mid-game, often before you have even explored the map.

Sadly, this makes for a very boring game and i'd advise people not to purchase the game until this major problem is solved.

[Cellar_Cat]

They still build (in the beta). It's just very very slow. Not only is the process of construction very slow, they can be very slow at delivering wares because they don't seem to prioritise it.

[Persony Person]

The main issue stems from the Xenon defence stations not getting Ore. The other 2 wares get very quickly filled as soon as they drop.

It's not an issue of not having enough miners. It's an issue of priority. The Xenon prioritise shipbuilding above all else.

If the Xenon are invading a sector with a large group, they'll switch that priority to the defence station in that sector and give it the ore it needs. Hence why it doesn't happen 100% of the time.

The issue tends to happen most often with neutral/unclaimed sectors.

[Rejected Spavvn]

Originally posted by Persony Person:

--If the Xenon are invading a sector with a large group, they'll switch that priority to the defence station in that sector and give it the ore it needs. Hence why it doesn't happen 100% of the time.--

Yeah well I've seen them not expand for over a real life MONTH of actual game time with me monitoring their moves with a dense satellite network, they launched countless enormous invasion fleets and never bothered actually taking any of THREE sectors so what you've seen was nothing more than a fluke as far as I can tell.

[BlackD]

Interesting. Could be the reasen why in my game HOP deleted all xenon in Faulty Logic and Atiya's Misfortune after ~30-40 hours. I had to place a defense station in AM-I so they dont wipe out antigone too.

[Persony Person]

Originally posted by Rejected Spavvn:

Originally posted by Persony Person:

--If the Xenon are invading a sector with a large group, they'll switch that priority to the defence station in that sector and give it the ore it needs. Hence why it doesn't happen 100% of the time.--

Yeah well I've seen them not expand for over a real life MONTH of actual game time with me monitoring their moves with a dense satellite network, they launched countless enormous invasion fleets and never bothered actually taking any of THREE sectors so what you've seen was nothing more than a fluke as far as I can tell.

I did a lot of testing with the Xenon in AI only saves (involving leaving the PC on overnight on SETA) during the 7.00 Beta (https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=461932). It's not a fluke. I've watched it personally happen where an initially ignored Xenon defence station construction site in Wretched Skies X, suddenly had a whole bunch of miners feeding it with ore. The difference before and after is that a small Xenon battlegroup was attacking the sector where it wasn't before. You can witness the same event happening for Family Zhin or Hatikvah's Choice I if they get past the defence stations or in any occasion where the Xenon do expand.

The three systems where I've seen the issue occur the most is Frontier Edge, Turquoise Sea and Mists of Artemis. For whatever reason, the Xenon does not have the same urge to fill defence stations in unclaimed sectors as it does with sectors owned by other factions.
They also only expand into a system that borders them. For example, they aren't going to claim The Void despite heavily raiding the sector, because they still don't own Frontier Edge.

I'm not saying that I don't believe you and intend to contradict your observations. But I'm just stating my own. That's what I've seen.