[X3:AP] Tips on the Shady Business 50 Xenon Capitals Task

[SSJVegeter]

Hey all, first time poster here.

I've been playing X3 since I discovered it around the launch of TC. I truly put time into playing once AP was released and preordered Rebirth (although I put maybe an hour into it and went back to X3).

I've really only had one playthrough. Started as Humble Merchant.

After a long period of playing I'm at this point:

Currently have around:
-~Sitting at around 85M credits not counting around 10M dispensed into factories
-~70 stations, mostly mines. Also a few complexes like 1MJ shield, other economically purposed stations
-~300 ships, mostly freighters and around 100 fighters
-Colossus loaded with kitted out Busters, Panther loaded with Solanos
-2 Tigers (though I'm still working on getting IBL's in every spot on both of them. One has the fronts loaded)
-Boreas
-2 TLs (Mammoth and Albatross)
-HQ
-Various other ships (small fighters, M3s, TP's, A couple M6's, and my personal Springblossom)
-Friends with all races including most/all pirates, Yaki. Would like to stay this way
-Effectively top rep rank with all main races due to long trading history

What I haven't gotten into is boarding ships, missile usage (I rarely use them on my personal ships. I've heard using Wraith missiles is good for the Xenon task).

I'm really wondering what a cost effective way to finish this plot is without losing ships. I really just want to end the war so I can continue building trade.

Is there anything glaring that I may have missed as an option or should look in to?

[RAVEN.myst]

Hi there!

Since you're goal-oriented here, I'll cut to the chase. Here are a couple of alternatives:

1. Lasertowers. You put these next to the gates where those Xenon waves spawn, and you'll want (my memory is hazy here) around 80 or so, for them to shred Xenon ships quickly while minimising their own attrition. If you do this while in-sector, you may occasionally have one LT shooting through another and damaging it, especially if they are not clumped tightly, and also, some Xenon ships carry Concussion Impulse Generators, which when they hit your LTs will scatter them around some. If you go out-of-sector, you will avoid those, but on the other hand you will take higher losses of LTs, as the combat is numerically simulated. Major downside of this approach: if you not already geared toward deploying this many LTs (by producing and/or pre-buying them throughout the game till now), this is not going to be a very quick option.

2. Missiles. Here, you can go with the simple option (M7M) or the slightly more complex but arguably slightly cheaper option (several M8s). My preferred way would be a mix of the two: a M7M carrying only Flails/Ghouls to mass-murder the Xenon fighters escorting those battleships, while M8s packed with Tommies/Phantoms hammer away the capital ships themselves. There are two approaches: in-sector and out-of-sector. To me, in-sector is more fun: I get to be present there to direct things myself, and I get to watch the fireworks; the advantage of out-of-sector is that the missiles don't miss and hit instantly (so, to me, it feels a bit cheaty - but if here you are after results over style, then this may be the better option.) With the OoS approach you'll need to figure out the necessary numbers of missiles to apply to a given target in order to have enough, without wasteful overkill. Downside: although this can certainly be done a lot faster (in terms of acquiring the necessary platforms and munitions) than acquiring LTs, it is simillar cost-wise (your ships add to that cost, too, but you get to keep those, so they don't really count), and it will still require SOME effort to collect the missiles (I recommend either a CLS2 or two going around buying up the stuff, or a CAG based at your Hub or one of your HQs, preferably one of the HQs - I favour the latter approach, but both are valid, and the CLS2 can sometimes be quicker.)

3. Drones. This is likely the simplest and most cost-effective approach, which I've used on a couple of occasions. Ultimately, I found it unsatisfying as to me the killing of those 50 capital ships is a challenge and a pastime in itself, but as to you they represent merely a tedious obstacle, here's a simple way to dispose of them. Load up some 500 Fighter Mark 1 drones and about 100 Fighter Mark 2 drones on your Colossus. Jump the Colossus into BHS or Segaris (whichever you are doing at the time) via another gate, not the one where the Xenon are, and move it closer, but keeping your distance. Don't fly the Colossus yourself, as the next thing you need to do is to leave the sector, and then launch the drones from the carrier and order them to Attack All, or focus them if you prefer. It is important that you do this from out-of-sector, otherwise your drones, being so numerous, will spend all their time avoiding flying into each other instead of shooting at their targets. The FD Mk.2s here do the bulk of the damage, while the Mk.1s help out but mostly help to defuse incoming fire - thus, if you lose drones, you will mostly be losing the cheaper, easier to acquire Mk.1s. Here's a way to refine it a bit, to make things go a LOT smoother: first bring in a M7M loaded with Flails/Ghouls, and shred the majority of the fighters; the M7M can then leave back to safety. This way, once you lay into the enemies with your drones, they will have fewer small fry to bother with, which also pose some threat to the drones themselves. You will be amazed at how quickly your drones make short work of those capital ships. (I may have "overcatered" the drone numbers - feel free to experiment. The fewer you use, the longer it will take and the higher proportion of losses you will incur.)

IMPORTANT: If your carrier has at least one fighter bay free, that will allow your drones to re-dock there. This is important if you want to hang onto as many of them as you can, because drones have a limited lifespan, and once it expires, so do they. So, while watching the combat from another sector (*) keep an eye on the remaining energy of your drones (it is shown as a percentage in their details view) - once it starts getting low, order them to dock at the carrier. Incidentally, keep the carrier out of the fight, I would recommend.

(*) Fighter drones don't grant you vision, so you will need some other way of keeping an eye on things. To this end, drop a few advanced satellites (regular one will do, but for this I recommend using advanced ones, for their superior sight radius.) Scatter them around the sector at overlapping intervals, making sure to drop some BEHIND the gate. If they are at the correct distance, they will not draw the Xenons' ire yet help to see what's going on. Don't forget that you are in 3D space, so you can place on above the gate and another below, too. You will likely end up losing some of them, but likely enough will remain to the end for you to be able to see what you're doing, which you need in order to direct your drones for maximumn effectiveness (I would focus fire them - this way, you most quickly erode the enemy damage being dealt at your own assets.)

Good hunting!

[delray]

I did some of the above, laser towers, drone carriers, M8 and M7M barrages.

But then I ran out of expensive stuff and had to brawl the remainder of Xenons in my 24x frontal PPC Ray and PSG bear hug Oddie - and it was much more fun. Those little moments when you take on three Qs head on and win.... It's beautiful.

I say, just man up, get a decent M2 (like Ray or Oddie) and just go at them.

If I can give any tips:
#1 Marine Repair mod helps, otherwise you'll just reload when you get hull damage - while with this mod you park the ship at HQ for repairs and hop into another to continue the fight.
#2 Mosquito Missile Defence is obligatory ever since Firestorm Barrage was introduced to the game.
#3 Don't rush it. There's plenty of loot to scavenge in war sectors (says my two dozens of PSP) and a lot of opportunity to cap gimped Terran, Argon and Xenon capital ships.

[RAVEN.myst]

Brawling has the advantage of resulting in better loot, as it then becomes proportional to the player's fight rank - which ALSO builds up through brawling (synergy, and a potential feedback loop if you end up using the looted goodies, though relying on that suggests going in underprepared.) As delray says, a combination works well. If you want to stay in-sector, then the drones' function changes somewhat - they becomes mainly a solution to swarms of smaller targets, ie. they are great at distracting and wiping out fighters, corvettes, and even Qs. This leaves you free to brawl in your Boreas, and you could even have your carriers nearby and use the fighter wings (especially them Solanos, they rock) to support you, so long as you are willing to accept the occasional loss (keeping an eye on your fighters' health is a good idea, ordering any who are starting to take hull damage to GTFO and return to homeship.)

The Boreas is one of the faster destroyers, which gives you some flexibility, and it can mount all-round PPCs, which can be useful for kiting enemies (you then don't get to mount rear FAAs, but given that you have drones and fighters on hand, that's not a problem.) Your 2 Tigers can join you, adding considerable anti-capital fire support, given that you have them fitted with IBLs.

TIP: Choose a safe sector with a jump beacon as your retreat location, and try to go for one that is easy+quick to get to on the map. You can then order multiple ships to jump out to that location without them having to wait for each other (as they would have to, jumping to a gate.) This helps to mitigate damage - once a ship's shields start getting low, just send it out. Ideally, if your chosen sector has an equipment dock or your HQ, then you can dock the ships in order to quickly recharge its shields, so it can return to duty quickly.

[RainerPrem]

Hi,

...

-Boreas

...

That's all you need. Get a Turbo, put your front, left, right and aft towers on "attack my target" and fly away from the Xenon, keeping 6 km distance. If your shields get low, jump out, replenish your shields and jump in again to continue.

Keep 200 Mosquitoes to fight attacking missiles.

cu
Rainer

[delray]

You don't need speed when taking on enemy capital ships. Whether it's Boreas or Phoenix (another of my favourites), you will be moving at -10 m/s anyways?

[RAVEN.myst]

You don't need speed when taking on enemy capital ships. Whether it's Boreas or Phoenix (another of my favourites), you will be moving at -10 m/s anyways?

Not necessarily - you can kite with a Boreas by mounting PPCs on the rear, and then moving away matched speed with target, while dodging incoming fire. Also, with other fast M2s that can't mount in the rear, you can still kite with the PPCs/PSPs mounted on one side, by flying obliquely away, circling the target, again dodging incoming. I (almost) never fly -10m/s when "dogfighting" in a capital ship (and never in a smaller ship, heheh)

[MrFiction]

Hi,

...

-Boreas

...

That's all you need. Get a Turbo, put your front, left, right and aft towers on "attack my target" and fly away from the Xenon, keeping 6 km distance. If your shields get low, jump out, replenish your shields and jump in again to continue.

Keep 200 Mosquitoes to fight attacking missiles.

cu
Rainer

Used a similar "flying and strafing away" strategy to wipe out a few dozen Xenon sectors. Unfortunately the Xenon can respawn in the middle of a sector, but besides that you can easily dispatch entire sectors this way.

I recommend flak guns top/bottom to take out fighters and in the front left or right I like Gauss cannons to speed up the destruction of stations, shipyards or other capitals.

If feels a bit cheesy though. The AI can't or won't strafe so it's always at a huge disadvantage.

[jlehtone]

Hey all, first time poster here.

Welcome, Commander.

First a disclaimer: I'm not that far yet, saving the treat for later. Surely it is better to kill Terrans good first and then force them into peace rather than simply making a treaty with them?

#1 Marine Repair mod helps, otherwise you'll just reload when you get hull damage - while with this mod you park the ship at HQ for repairs and hop into another to continue the fight.

If you do have enough spare ships, then you can swap multiple times and anyway the nearby NPC Shipyards offer emergency repair services (at modest cost -- modest by Teladi standard).

Back in X3R (before its version 2.0) the Xenon Invasion "bug" offered "mission duplication/caching". Effectively a single mission extended to last 8 hours of almost continous attack waves (and nearly billion credits in rewards). That, of course was childs play compared to X3AP Xenon.

#3 Don't rush it. There's plenty of loot to scavenge in war sectors (says my two dozens of PSP) and a lot of opportunity to cap gimped Terran, Argon and Xenon capital ships.

Particularly the Valhalla's that get mothballed the moment the treaty is signed? Yes, there are profits in war. However, the OP lacks a boarding crew and thus "not rushing" means "a very long preparation".

Brawling has the advantage of resulting in better loot

Unless you go in with the delray's "PSG bear hug Oddie". The Holy One needs no profitsss.

Used a similar "flying and strafing away" strategy to wipe out a few dozen Xenon sectors.

Practice. Practice is a key to handling any ship/situation. The Xenon sectors are an ideal training ground, for the cannon fodder there is remarcably similar to the anticipated enemies in the mission.

Practice flying Destroyer. Practice running the Bomber Command HQ. Practice Carrier OPs. While you do practice, your industry should churn out/accumulate ammo for the Operation.

put your front, left, right and aft towers on "attack my target"

The X3AP allows you to define three Custom Turret Commands (nicknamed Aplha, Beta, Gamma). In them you can prioritize multiple targets/actions, just like the "Missile Defence" command has incoming Missiles as first priority, but does shoot at aggressor ships as secondary target.

I have a Python (Split M2). Its anti-fighter armament isn't what it used to be (i.e. it was a hands down winner in X3R). I had PPC turrets on "Attack my target" and the rest on "Missile defence". That was not aggressive enough. A change to more aggressive custom priorities really improved Python's effectiveness in a Xenon (or Terran) sector. The Boreas has enviable hardware, but I'm sure a training course and pep talk to its turret crews won't hurt.

[delray]

On M2s I mostly set turrets to either attack capital ships (m6 is capital ship btw) or attack fighters (for FAA turret).... If your turret is firing at a missile, you ran out of mosquitos and are dead anyways.

[RAVEN.myst]

FAA/CFA turrets are GREAT for Missile Defense mode - this way, they also shoot at attacking fighters (and other ships), while bolstering missile defense - MDMs are NOT 100%. Having "too much" missile defense is... well, you can't ever have too much ^^ MDMs don't always keep up with fast missile spam, so having those anti-fighter turrets pitch in is handy. (Unfortunately, though, this won't help save on MDMs, as those tend to fire first in any case.) Alternatively, as pointed out by jlehtone, custom turret commands can be created - I do this to make a variant of "Missile Defense" for those FAAs which attack fighters, ignore capitals, and defend from missiles.

Limiting PPCs/PSPs to capitals only is good practice, as it stops those turrets trying to track fighters, and if they actually open fire on a fighter the most likely outcome is a "friendly" fire incident. Too bad that in this mode they ignore stations (Note to self: check to see whether stations can be specified, and customise an "attack capitals + enemy stations" mode if possible.)

[Triaxx2]

Something that works in TC and presumably still does in AP, is to park destroyers just behind the gate, and out to the side, so when the Xenon arrive through the gate, the destroyers can fire on them before the Q's can bring their forward guns to bear. Useless out of sector, but if you know the Xenon are coming, it turns the fight into a much less difficult one.

Then again, I've never had much issue with Xenon, but haven't played AP yet.

[delray]

They don't arrive through the gate, they spawn all around it.

[Bill Huntington]

Shady Business

I enjoy killing the Xenon capitals. I like to do it hands on with my own guns. I start in BHS but the strategy is the same in the other. I'll hang out in the middle of the sector at altitude 10. If I have a Cobra and missiles I have a clear field of fire. I let the Xenon close on me, take out what I can safely, then jump to the North Gate and catch the tail end of the Xenon wave. I jump out when my shields are getting low. If I have an extra ship I jump right back and continue.

I like the Terran Tyr as my personal ship. It has 6 x 2 shields, good speed for an M2, and the PSP is great anti-capital weapon. The speed and Turbo2 helps to close with your target quickly, and get away quickly if you need to. I also use the SSC in the up and down turrets and they do very well against the Xenon small ships. I'll cap the Tyr if I can but if I have money I can buy it in AP. I use a Kestral to get past the War Sectors. I make it to Neptune, then jump my ships to Neptune and go about the business of making it to the top Terran rank. Then I can buy the Tyr and Terran weapons. You can get Terran weapons by capping ships that have them too. I get good Terran missions once I'm past the War Sectors. The hardest is the first step, when I raise rep by percentage points by killing Argon ships in the Terran War sectors. If you're lucky you might get a Terran mission of some kind. I'll take it whatever it is. Once you've raised your Terran rep a rank or two it goes up quickly.

I operate solo because it's too easy to lose a second ship. I'll jump out any helper when it's time for close combat. A second ship probably won't respond to jump commands in time when they're engaged in combat. Your own ship does.

I'll jump out before I take hull damage unless I'm very close to killing the last Xenon. It's expensive to repair and means taking the time to go a SY.

A note: Lasertowers might kill Xenon but you don't get credit for doing it. Sometimes you don't get credit for killing the capital yourself for some strange reason. You usually get credit if you kill the one that's highlighted but sometimes I got cheated on that one too. The only real answer is to keep killing them. And the Q is considered a capital ship.

Good Hunting!

[RAVEN.myst]

A note: Lasertowers might kill Xenon but you don't get credit for doing it.

Actually, LTs get the same sort of (inconsistent) credit as personal kills, or any other method - I've done this lot on one character using nothing but lasertowers (arrays of around 60-80 of them, give or take.) The same as with any other method, it's just a matter of killing them and killing them and letting the mission count the ones it (apparently arbitrarily) chooses to. Lasertowers are, however, arguably a rather boring method of doing this The time/s I did use them were proofs of concept (and sometimes merely one ingredient in the recipe ^^)

A second ship probably won't respond to jump commands in time when they're engaged in combat. Your own ship does.

This is almost always a result of destination gate congestion - that's why I recommended picking out a fall-back location with a jump beacon - these are infallible, and the ship (whether personal or delegated) will respond every time in the shortest time possible (assuming it hasn't/doesn't lose its jumpdrive - but then, the order was issued much too late already.)

Additional Note: When doing the Black Hole Sun half of all this, check for a Xenon invasion mission at the Military Outpost there (I've never seen Terrans offer this type of mission.) If there is one, here is the potential for considerable profit, as the plot Xenons will count toward the invasion mission. This also means that you have to clear ALL the Xenon from BHS for the mission to end and pay you - no leaving the sector for repairs/breather, so for this multiple ships are called for if you plan to jump any out for shield recharge etc - jump into an alternative ship before sending out the other one. (Leaving the sector aborts and fails a Xenon invasion mission.) Completing the mission in these circumstances can be quite challenging (not to mention tiring - you may be in it for hours, literally!), unless you bring enough firepower to the party to clear out one wave before the next one spawns. Alternatively, you could stay the course and go all the way: kill all 25 (+ the ones that don't get counted, as Bill pointed out, which tends to be around the same number again!), and collect a massive paycheque at the end of it.

[jorganos]

FAA/CFA turrets are GREAT for Missile Defense mode - this way, they also shoot at attacking fighters (and other ships), while bolstering missile defense - MDMs are NOT 100%.

I have been thinking about a MDM-C variant with a few well-shielded, otherwise passive counter-missile ships tailing the fleet to launch additional moscitoes against incoming missiles. Does this have a snowball's chance in hell to succeed? I don't expect to reach 100% effectivity with any method other than area-suppression fire (shockwave, PSG, ID) anyway, but I'd like to tweak the probabilities.

[RAVEN.myst]

FAA/CFA turrets are GREAT for Missile Defense mode - this way, they also shoot at attacking fighters (and other ships), while bolstering missile defense - MDMs are NOT 100%.

I have been thinking about a MDM-C variant with a few well-shielded, otherwise passive counter-missile ships tailing the fleet to launch additional moscitoes against incoming missiles. Does this have a snowball's chance in hell to succeed? I don't expect to reach 100% effectivity with any method other than area-suppression fire (shockwave, PSG, ID) anyway, but I'd like to tweak the probabilities.

I tried out the MDM Convoy command, but I found the results inconclusive (partly because I didn't run them long enough, I suspect.) Also, I'm not convinced that a ship running MDM-C protects itself, so in the end I just use MDM in an every-man-for-himself manner.