Xenon forces apart from their space ships?

[Getsune]

While collecting ideas for my fanfiction I was wondering about this for a long time. Is it ever mentioned anywhere
that the Xenon maintain assets apart from their space fleets? For example some sort of armed droid
that defends their planetary and/or space buildings from organic boarding/invasion forces?

I've been playing X for years now, but I only remember reading about their space assets and their history.
Buuut maybe my memory is failing me and you guys know more about it?

[Annette Barret]

Nope, not a one.

[Getsune]

I feared as much. Thanks a lot for the quick answer!

[X2-Illuminatus]

Just because no one has confirmed that something like that would exist, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Even in the official X-lore big parts of the history of the Xenon are unclear. Unless they are an actual threat to someone, rarely someone took the time to actually research them. And who knows what you can find in the deep and dark Xenon home sectors!?

Still from everything I know about the Xenon, their history and their development, Droids are something I personally wouldn't expect to see. However, I could imagine that they want to do more against boarding forces. Internal Sentry Lasers, Hull Polarizing Device and Enhanced Firewall are already mentioned in X3TC/X3AP, it wouldn't be too far fetched to assume that they have other means to stop boarding parties too. So here's where the fiction part comes in. Maybe their new ships and stations have a separate AI just responsible for defending the ships against boarding parties, which is also capable of communicating with the boarding team (sending false messages etc.). A seemingly dead or inactive Xenon ship drifting through space, boarded by your main characters, who are then faced by this new AI.


Edit: typo.

[Annette Barret]

Illuminatus:

That is one scary thought.

Sort of like the worker drones/combat units controlled by a single mind, as in Enders game perhaps. Drones would certainly be something they are familiar with considering the number of traders they attack.

Actually thinking about it... it's likely they already have small autonomous drones in their shipyards. Why not combat ones in their ships. As you suggest there could be a secondary AI, with its own power source. That might explain why their ships are so difficult to capture.

[Alan Phipps]

Many consider a group of Xenon ships themselves to be drones when externally or centrally controlled by a remote AGI - or they could even be considered as droids in their own right when acting autonomously with their own AGI. No reason why droids should not use subordinate drones, or even drones carry associated droids!

I think one reason that their ships should indeed be very difficult to board and capture is that they can make the entire insides of their ships completely inimical to biological life in every available way; there is no live ship crew or defence force to risk or inconvenience by doing so.

The only probable reason that they can be boarded or claimed at all is because their ship designs (for some unexplained reason) retain human-compatible inspection, certification and maintenance access and controls dating back to their terraformer drone origins.

[JJRSC]

I think there are a few elements in the game that support the existence of smaller, "non-ship" terraformer drones/droids. The big one that comes to mind for me is the existence of EMP Rifles. I don't see those being that useful against ships... even Xenon M5s, so there has to be (or have been at one time) another, smaller AGI threat that those were used against.

I hope I'm not resurrecting an old thread... apologies if I am.