How to defeat the HOP of doom?

This forum is the ideal place for all discussion relating to X4. You will also find additional information from developers here.

Moderator: Moderators for English X Forum

Post Reply
Athelus
Posts: 31
Joined: Sun, 2. Sep 07, 12:23
x4

How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by Athelus » Sun, 13. Sep 20, 00:16

I've been having a fantastic time with X4 since the new updates. In my new game I found myself putting all my efforts into stoppin ZYA being wiped out by the Xenon and helped them make it back from one system. I thought I was doing well. Then I saw the South of the map:

https://i.imgur.com/bCwgLqQ.png

Hop has taken over most of Argon, Antigone, Godrealm and Teladi space. So... what to do?

I thought I was being clever building my first shipyard in Argon Prime, buying as many argon blueprints as possible and forbidding sales to HOP, but it hasn't been of any use.

Do i need to go to war with HOP directly? What ship loadouts would be best? Is there any way to restore sectors to their prior owners? Can i still undermine them in some way?

I think i'm a bit doomed. This is by far my best X game so far and i'm loving how unexpected this was.
Last edited by Terre on Sun, 13. Sep 20, 14:36, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Images posted directly to the forums should not be greater than 640x480 or 100kb, oversize image now linked

Raevyan
Posts: 1463
Joined: Sat, 4. Oct 08, 17:35
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by Raevyan » Sun, 13. Sep 20, 00:42

Well I stopped HOP by not selling them ships and instead only build PAR/TEM ships at my shipyard in Holy Vision. They managed to kill their wharf at some point. But that was pointless because both the wharf and the shipyard didn’t get enough resources.
So they started to to loose ships and were not able to rebuild. In my game a Xenon I and it’s 2 K escorts took care of the HOP fleets in Trinity Sanctum, coming from Hewa Twin. After the Xenon killed their fleet PAR was able to retake sectors.

Your best bet is to stop selling to HOP entirely and accept some Defence station missions and build some proper defenses instead of just fulfill the requirements. When they don’t have supplies their fleet will die relatively quickly. You might also just sabotage their shipyard/wharf.

Athelus
Posts: 31
Joined: Sun, 2. Sep 07, 12:23
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by Athelus » Sun, 13. Sep 20, 00:45

Already selling to all but HOP, but hadn't thought of the missions, good call.

Sabotaging the shipyard is an interesting idea- is hacking shields/weapons whilst attacking with a fleet viable?

Thanks for the tips!

pref
Posts: 5589
Joined: Sat, 10. Nov 12, 17:55
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by pref » Sun, 13. Sep 20, 00:47

Sell argon/teladi lots of claytronics and perhaps hull parts if that is needed, ime that really boosts NPC station builds. Especially if they don't have admin or equivalent modules in their lost sectors any more.

Alternatively do station build missions, and add missing production for station building materials no matter what you have to build. Once all modules required by the mission are finished the station will switch owner and you don't have to pay for finishing the rest. Make them self sufficient because factions have unlimited cash but limited production. Just building them claytronics production without support modules will not do any good due to this, and selling them from your own stations is just as good as building them self sufficient complexes.

Check if your friends have any defence modules/wharves/repair docks in HOP space. If yes then kill all HOP's admin modules/wharves/repair docks. Then they will instantly take over the sector.
If you have high rep with HOP you can do that without dropping to unfriendly - recently i took over 2 argon sectors, and killing 4 station modules only dropped me to 28 or 29 from 30. Do not destroy anything else (ships, turrets, shields) if you care about rep.

If you are at war with HOP then just kill their wharves, ships, high tech production but let them keep the sector. Probably that's the most fun way, and i don't think any serious preparation is needed apart from pulling your trade assets out of their space. I just killed the whole Rhak army in a dragon raider and i don't think HOP would be much worse, but they are next so soon i'll have more experience with that. I had a fully loaded carrier and a destroyer follow me from sector to sector, but never had to use them apart from boarding ops.
Do not take over those sectors yourself, that might block any further attempt from friendlies to take it back.
Getting back to neutral from -30 took 2 or 3 khaak kills, they had so densely populated sectors that for a single kill i was awarded by several stations.

Unfortunately argon do not use their ships for offensive purposes as most other factions do, at least for me just selling them ships did not help them taking sectors at all. Teladi is better from this aspect.
Last edited by pref on Sun, 13. Sep 20, 01:03, edited 1 time in total.

Athelus
Posts: 31
Joined: Sun, 2. Sep 07, 12:23
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by Athelus » Sun, 13. Sep 20, 01:02

Ahah good to know! Neither Godrealm, Argon, Antigone or Teladi have shipyards left now so i might be in trouble!

pref
Posts: 5589
Joined: Sat, 10. Nov 12, 17:55
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by pref » Sun, 13. Sep 20, 01:11

Having no wharves is not really an issue, they can always buy ships from you and fill their quotas like that (hope you have all the warship related blueprints, or the faction rep could still respawn somewhere).

If they have access to station building materials they will build lots of stations. I have quite a few sectors with ~50 npc stations in them due to this. My factions have a pretty strong economy now, and Split had a single sector with just a few stations at one point.

Athelus
Posts: 31
Joined: Sun, 2. Sep 07, 12:23
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by Athelus » Tue, 15. Sep 20, 18:31

Well, i realised that different race faction ships aren't exactly the same and i had no godrealm blueprints

Iuckily godrealm built a trade station which i managed to land at and buy all the blueprints by draining my wharf's operating budget before it was destroyed by two HOP destroyers.

Close call!

https://i.imgur.com/J2OcQHl.png
Last edited by Terre on Tue, 15. Sep 20, 19:15, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Images posted directly to the forums should not be greater than 640x480 or 100kb, oversize image now linked

jlehtone
Posts: 21801
Joined: Sat, 23. Apr 05, 21:42
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by jlehtone » Tue, 15. Sep 20, 19:19

Athelus wrote:
Tue, 15. Sep 20, 18:31
Iuckily godrealm built a trade station which i managed to land at and buy all the blueprints by draining my wharf's operating budget before it was destroyed by two HOP destroyers.

Close call!
8)

That reminds me of X2/X3R "Xenon Taxi mission". A passenger wants from one station to another, in a hurry. Always within same sector.
Xenon show up and chase. You can choose to fight Xenon and then deliver the passenger, or deliver and then ...
At higher rank Xenon K's show up. Their turrets shoot at nearby targets (stations) while you are not in range.
So ... I leave the passenger at the dock when K's are already all over the station.
I got the money. Client got where he wanted. Xenon got to blow things up. Win-win-win. :twisted:

The feeling of perfect timing. :lol:


HOP builds stations, don't they? At least to claim sectors. You need wares to build a station. Wares in Build Storage. You can deliver them? With two M and one L ships. What if they deliver only one unit each and Pilot Union declares a strike while they are still docked? How do the rest of the materials get shipped? :gruebel:
Goner Pancake Protector X
Insanity included at no extra charge.
There is no Box. I am the sand.

Athelus
Posts: 31
Joined: Sun, 2. Sep 07, 12:23
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by Athelus » Tue, 15. Sep 20, 19:45

jlehtone wrote:
Tue, 15. Sep 20, 19:19

HOP builds stations, don't they? At least to claim sectors. You need wares to build a station. Wares in Build Storage. You can deliver them? With two M and one L ships. What if they deliver only one unit each and Pilot Union declares a strike while they are still docked? How do the rest of the materials get shipped? :gruebel:
That's... some evil genius I never thought of and I absolutely love it.

Wow forgot about those Xenon taxi missions, fantastic source of credits.

GCU Grey Area
Posts: 7776
Joined: Sat, 14. Feb 04, 23:07
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by GCU Grey Area » Tue, 15. Sep 20, 20:59

Mostly kept HOP in check in my game by building defence platforms for their enemies, mostly for war missions.

This is my standard Argon design:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0nkcy56wt77si ... 1.jpg?dl=0
This is what I built for the Paranids:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fgqhdg7ggjavn ... 1.jpg?dl=0
Some factions don't offer war missions, or sometimes there's a request for production station but it's in the perfect location for a defence platform.
In such cases often ended up building stations like this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/y92iipt07y7lq ... 1.jpg?dl=0
All the firepower of my standard defence platforms (more in fact since production modules are armed too), but it also makes stuff.

Did make a considerable loss every time I built one of those. The mission reward would often only cover about 1/3 of the build cost. End result however was that it kept HOP contained in their corner of the universe. Considered it a worthwhile investment to keep trade flowing & stations belonging to my customers intact. They were also mostly built with HOP resources, which would otherwise have gone into HOP ship production.

Athelus
Posts: 31
Joined: Sun, 2. Sep 07, 12:23
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by Athelus » Wed, 16. Sep 20, 15:44

GCU Grey Area wrote:
Tue, 15. Sep 20, 20:59
Mostly kept HOP in check in my game by building defence platforms for their enemies, mostly for war missions.
I may steal your designs! Need to adapt my tactics to fight a proxy war, can't just use the same run and gun tactics as I was with the Xenon Hegemonising Swarm to the nort I guess!

aard00
Posts: 175
Joined: Sun, 2. Aug 20, 01:55
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by aard00 » Wed, 16. Sep 20, 16:09

Athelus wrote:
Sun, 13. Sep 20, 00:16
Then I saw the South of the map:
I had *exactly* the same thing happen, and I crapped myself because I'd dealt with XEN and thought job done. My map looked almost identical.

For me the solution was gate defenses with 3-4 Behemoths parked on top. Like that, even a 4 disc cross shape with all L Plasma and all S Pulse can be very effective, but I usually at least doubled the number of discs so I could be less hands-on. But 4 will get you off the ground in a pinch. Those defenses should be built as close to the gates as possible. This is much harder on the ring though, because the small ships just ride the ring right past you. Luckily Ls don't.

After you've bottle-necked them into a few sectors, you've more or less regained control. So after that I just focused on building fleets of 10 behemoths. I flat out never bother with smaller ships because they don't last. With 10, you can deal with their doom fleets if you manually control your ships and make copious use of the pause button. So for example, I'd order my 10 to attack 1 straggler, then retreat if it got too hot, then repeat. A real chicken's way of fighting! :) That's on the map and out of sector btw. In sector I think your chances might be better, though I never fought them like that, so can't confirm. But I have fought different battles since in-sector, and the ships have seemed to survive better. It's a lot more fun too, so I wish I'd done it more back in the day.

User avatar
euclid
Moderator (Script&Mod)
Moderator (Script&Mod)
Posts: 13289
Joined: Sun, 15. Feb 04, 20:12
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by euclid » Wed, 16. Sep 20, 16:24

rene6740 wrote:
Sun, 13. Sep 20, 00:42
.... After the Xenon killed their fleet PAR was able to retake sectors ....
Let the Xenon do the job is a rather old idea but unfortunaltely in X4 it needs some luck either to have them spawned in the right system or to get a corresponding mission. However, once they've spawned you can kite them to the HOP stations/SY etc. ;-) Not sure it works that way anymore with the latest update but that's what I did to wipe out HOP.

Cheers Euclid
"In any special doctrine of nature there can be only as much proper science as there is mathematics therein.”
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Metaphysical Foundations of the Science of Nature, 4:470, 1786

jlehtone
Posts: 21801
Joined: Sat, 23. Apr 05, 21:42
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by jlehtone » Wed, 16. Sep 20, 17:48

euclid wrote:
Wed, 16. Sep 20, 16:24
... to have them spawned in the right system or to get a corresponding mission. ...
:o I have not seen missions in X4 that would spawn Xenon. Am I missing something? :?
Goner Pancake Protector X
Insanity included at no extra charge.
There is no Box. I am the sand.

User avatar
LennStar
Posts: 879
Joined: Fri, 1. Apr 05, 15:22
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by LennStar » Wed, 16. Sep 20, 17:58

If you think that is bad you should see my ZYA game.

I just got my first Split destroyer. I am not sure if I can prevent the other Split faction from getting Xenon killed. I am busy defending ZYA and maybe getting back their sector.

Meanwhile HOP is building stations in Argon Prime and besieging Antigone. MIN has basically been wiped by the start game Xenon I and TEL has taken the place, but they are strangely not able to defend their trade station.

Which has brought me into a corner. I am deep red with the Argons, so my usual stregy to build a factory in Argon Prime that produces what the shipyards want is impossible.
:idea: BUG REPORT INFO: I play X4 vanilla. You can find all my bug report files in there:
All X4 files: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/83j3cjfhkdlf ... w6HLa?dl=0

User avatar
euclid
Moderator (Script&Mod)
Moderator (Script&Mod)
Posts: 13289
Joined: Sun, 15. Feb 04, 20:12
x4

Re: How to defeat the HOP of doom?

Post by euclid » Thu, 17. Sep 20, 11:55

jlehtone wrote:
Wed, 16. Sep 20, 17:48
euclid wrote:
Wed, 16. Sep 20, 16:24
... to have them spawned in the right system or to get a corresponding mission. ...
:o I have not seen missions in X4 that would spawn Xenon. Am I missing something? :?
I think they are of the type "Protect Station". Sorry, can't check as I have not yet unpacked the gamefiles yet (new rig).

Cheers Euclid
"In any special doctrine of nature there can be only as much proper science as there is mathematics therein.”
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Metaphysical Foundations of the Science of Nature, 4:470, 1786

Post Reply

Return to “X4: Foundations”