How to take out a Xenon Shipyard OOS?

[AquilaRossa]

I have tried a bunch of 15 destroyers alone and tried with having them escorted by 100s of fighters. I have also tried just fighters (Perseus with beam weapons). It's 15 game days in so i do not know if the shipyard has better defences now, but they are brutal to my ships. In my first game I cleared the sectors just throwing overwhelming force at them, but there must be a more elegant solution than that. I tried torpedo attacks but they run out of ammo and die too. Must be a knack I do not have yet. Now I have built these huge fleets that are more than enough, but I do not want to throw them all away like WWI soldiers charging machine guns. Any loadout or tactics suggestions? My game is far too crowded with factories to do much large scale IS fighting now (if I feel like fighting I go to SPG alone and beat up on their miner fleets).

Do wings and formations have any benefit? I would setup my 40 fighter escorts into ten groups of one leader and three wingmen. The AI order to attack a target would be five seconds or so slower to reach the wingmen than if i had all fighters just defending the destroyer. Any benefit would have to be good to offset that downside. it is easier to attack groups of enemies with that setup though, so that is one plus

[Yellowman]

Check my last post in this thread viewtopic.php?f=146&t=418491

2nd i would not recommend destroying shipyards OOS. In my experience they bug out a lot.
But, if you want to make it easier OOS destroy all
L turrets first. Then go OOS and let the fleet attack. The station has much less power that way. 35 nem full plasma will be enough. If you ask me its not fun this way. Shipyards must be the "End boss" of this game. So if you cant take them out IS you're not strong enough.
And second, whats fun about seeing 35 dots eating up a hull bar...

[AquilaRossa]

i think I just found a way to do it without massive losses.

I am playing the 2.60 beta 2 and the Xenon Sectors of Tharka Cascade and Matrix 79b are the really active ones in my game. I took gate by gate by placing a fleet to protect the position and then built defence platforms there that have the admin dock module. Once I had got to the gate between Tharka's XVII and Matrix 79b and taken control of those two Tharka's sectors in the name of Val Selton, I noticed the Xenon have an Achilles Heel in that region. Without their mining ships accessing Tharka's their shipbuilding rate plummets. That allowed me to send in my hit squad of 40 Nemesis to take out all of their stations except for the wharf and shipyard, which starved them of resources even further (There was about 8 defence platforms and various stations). The Nemesis fleet took damage but no losses.

But then I saved and tried for the shipyard. My fleet was massacred. What to do? I brought in my Behemoth and Nomad that supports it to help out the Nemesis fleet. Just one destroyer and the Nomad, but 20 Cerberus and 100 fighters of various types. I moved all to about 15km from the wharf this time. I teleported in and took control of the Behemoth and advanced just a wee bit and began firing. The wharf's defence drones launched, which does not happen OOS. I teleported out and could now see those drones on the map and see them taken out by 60 Ms worth of shard turrets. The fleet destroyed the wharf in about three minutes. I only lost two ships and three needed repairs. Now I am building the admin dock for matrix 79b and getting those fleets ready for taking on the shipyard. - edit. i took on the shipyard this way. I lost two Cerberus and one discover. Some ships got beaten up quite badly before the shipyard's defence were silenced, but they got fixed up by the Nomad.

Much faster than sitting there for an hour so taking out module by module myself trying not to fall asleep. Previous post asks what is fun about dots eating a hull bar. Not much, but the fun is the long road it took to be able to build all this stuff and make Val Selton universally famous. The other way is to build massive fleets and take the massive losses like a callous WWI general under a Tsar, Kaiser, or King who were cousins having family rivalry and a feud.

btw. Before all this Xenon were getting past my defence platform and fleet guarding the gate in Hatikvah's Choice, which is why I went on the offensive. They would send an I and four Ks, plus dozens of P and M. The most aggressive i have seen them (this is after 2.60, but was a 2.50 game start). Some Ks would get thru and take out Argon stations before I realised they were in the sector. They took out the big HAT trade station admin place. There are only four stations left in the whole sector, plus my defence platform. If I build an admin module, will HAT become an enemy? The sector owner says contested HAT. They are my best contraband customer, so i want to stay friends with them.

[Imperial Good]

Just spam 2 carriers at. It is unlikely to survive 1 let alone 2.

Each carrier has 40 pulsars with 6 S Ion Blaster Mk2 and 10 Nemesis with 5 M Ion Blaster Mk2. Any Xenon station should die in minutes max.

The DPS of that is equivalent to around 400 S and M ships with Plasma guns. Some losses might happen initially but the ludicrous amount of OoS DPS should have all turrets stripped and modules exploding in no time at all. Also the carriers act as some nice initial bullet sponges while the fighters deploy.

If for some reason that does not work, add another carrier or two. However at this stage it will become ever more likely that the station would quite literally melt in seconds in the map view than put up resistance.

Your cheese approach of tricking the station to launch all defence drones works even better with this since each ship will one shot a defence drone.

[Kpla Keltak]

Buy shield and hull mods for your favourite destroyer. Piloted by yourself.
Also buy weapon range mod for your main weapons and L plasma turrets.
Have a nemesis docked inside with beam all round.
Have a gorgon docked with pulse set to attack all enemies.


Have a couple of destroyers with pulse all round to protect you and drop laser towers once you tease thedefense drones out. Kill them off.

Now inch forwards until your modded L plasma come into range and take out the L turrets one by one.

Take it out by yourself. None of this OOS stuff.

Then play the mini game in your nemesis and go goodie hunting from the repair drones.

Have fun.

[Imperial Good]

Also buy weapon range mod for your main weapons and L plasma turrets.

One can only apply weapon mods to the L Main Battery guns. One cannot apply weapon mods to L and XL ship turrets. This is intentional and related to technical complications with the multiple turrets per bank but only 1 weapon mod per bank.

With legendary range extension mods the main batteries have over 10km range, longer than any turret in the game.

[Vondor]

Okay that's Funny. I just wanted to visit the forum to complain that you cant set a fleet in a efficient "Search an Destroy" Mode.
Because I just destroyed the Xenon Shipyard. But it took me only 10 Destroyers (Odysseus), 1 Zeus and 50 Nemesis Fighter.

After the fight I lost 20 Fighters. But not even one Destroyer.

But I destroyed nearly every K and I before I attacked the Shipyard.