E's Against the Odds: Asymmetric AI Combat in X4 7.0

In this video, Captain Snuggles tests the limits of the synergy between E and Shih in brutal fights against gargantuan opponents!
00:00 Intro & Setup
03:02 Behemoth E vs K
05:29 Phoenix E vs K
09:24 Odysseus E vs K
12:42 Results & Bonus Clip
14:27 Behemoth E vs I
20:05 Conclusion

[@jollyjep]

Guess i should give my destroyers a fighter wing...

[@gr8whiteza]

recently picked up X4 again and your videos are really helping me a lot, thank you for the content sir and look forward to your next vid o7

[@adryld25]

Cool video. My favorite tactic is still Wyvern (mineral) with 8 fighters and a rattlesnake. I defended Fires of defeat from 5 Ks one after the other with no losses. Relatively early in the game too. The Wyvern can easily bait in the K while being swarmed by fighters casually turn around and fly away with its very respectable normal speed. Meanwhile the rattlesnake positions itself from behind (slightly above) and charges from travel drive about 20 seconds is all it takes for a rattlesnake to destroy a K from full.

[@HALO3SC0UT07]

Thank you for the testing Captain. Really helps i recently started a new save and i'm using alot of behemoths and phoenixs.

[@floundericiouswa5694]

I’m beginning to steal E models from SCA

[@halloweentimemachine]

Impressive to see that Behemoth’s performance! How do you know the optimal fire angles on ships? Is there something in-game for that?

[@CptSnuggles07]

Yep, if you look at the information tab of the ship there's a "burst weapon output" section showing the damage output fore, aft, port, starboard, aloft, and below. I don't think you can access that level of detail in the loadout screen, you need to actually have the completed ship, but usually you can guess based on the turret layout and then confirm with the info tab later.

[@khugansixtyeight]

Thank you, and I hope you continue. Great voice and interesting commentary.

[@Roman_S86]

Love it I about to capture scale behemoth and already did phoenix Guess gonna keep them Behemoth design one of my favourite, so beautiful Nice to hear that it's actually worth keeping

[@TroaBarton]

I usually play with VRO, it’s so weird playing for hours and the galaxy not burning down around me. The split existing, hatikva not losing half its stations, the void devoid of xenon, and any of the base game destroyers feeling relatively powerful.

[@Xeoah]

VRO sucks, makes the player experience in flying ships much worse. and ruins balance. Hard pass.

[@TroaBarton]

@@Xeoah that’s like, your opinion man.

[@Killzad]

@@TroaBarton That's what the creators of VRO state on there page make the combat more RTS/fleet focus and less Arcadey so player piloting a ship is way off and worst. The only ships a player can fly reliably in VRO is the battleships.

[@TikoPiko]

I played almost a thousand hours of X4 and always thought of S ships as useless. I never realised just how much of a difference they make as escort!

[@Hardwaregeekx]

Helpful Video!

[@isaacdoggart4879]

One thing I do wonder is if the destroyer + fighter combo is better then just using pairs of less fancily outfitted destroyers. You can get 2 budget behemoths for the price of the destroyer + escort setups you were using and that pair should rip a k to pieces pretty handily.

[@CptSnuggles07]

This video is meant to highlight the way that fighter escorts increase the efficiency of destroyers, not to test the absolute cheapest K killing option. I'd guess that one budget Behemoth escorted by budget Novas would be more cost-effective than two budget Behemoths, but I don't know for sure.

[@darkgix6326]

Was totally overwhelmed today. 6 destroyers vs 1 k and one destro died. My zeus with 22 crap figters with pulse mk1 and bad gear were beating a k twice in a few minutes. Without a single loss..lol. but is they go down super fast xD my bad i forgot about dangerous Environment in tharkas cascade. They fought about 15 fighters and 1 k. Got the k to 0% hull but couldnt finish it because constant retreating because no shield on them anymore. Slowly started to loose more and more while the k regenerated its shield to full

[@Thaumogenesis]

Your voice is way to good for only 606 subs.

[@gr8whiteza]

proud to be no 607 hehe...and yea man i agree with you

[@DrowChyld]

Wow. I need to outfit my destroyers with some dumb fire turrets!

[@CptSnuggles07]

They are extremely powerful! Pretty much any destroyer can solo a K if it's completely packed with dumbfires. But because of the way ammo capacity works, the more turrets you have, the fewer salvos you can fire before needing to rearm. So I like to just equip a couple.

[@shietinghd3020]

Did you test the new sapporo in new beta 7.10?

[@CptSnuggles07]

Not yet. I actually only played Timelines for the lore and haven't even bothered to pick up any of the ships yet. But the missile batteries sound extremely cool, so I'll probably go find mine soon.

[@MrGhosthacked]

Sorry, I missed the standing orders for the fighter escort - attack, defend, bombard, etc?

[@CptSnuggles07]

It varies by ship. Always either Attack or Defend. Details are at the start of each destroyer's section.

[@felixzuge4594]

can you maybe show, how coordinated Attacks look like?

[@felixzuge4594]

is it with other fighters possible as well?

[@CptSnuggles07]

The first three clips are all Coordinated Attacks. You can use them with any fleet composition by selecting the fleet commander and right-clicking the target. There are a few settings you can adjust in the fleet commander's Behavior tab. Coordinated Attacks allow the fleet commander to use their "judgement" to assign tasks to ships, which can make different attacks look very different from one another.

[@williamm.3612]

why not full bomber wing? 10 torpedo bombers = instant pop of a k and even an I

[@CptSnuggles07]

I explain in the ship loadout section. tl;dw: because we already know that works, so I wanted to test the performance of "normal" patrol groups, which have historically suffered against K's.

[@lookitsrain9552]

Is it just me are Xenon Ks in general just never a threat in the first place, the AI on them just seems to never actually try to close the distance to get the gravitons in range so it just does nothing and dies, ive watched dozens of them suicide into a HAT adv electronics factory in hatikvahs faith... Edit: Should add, only time K's win is when the AI is braindead and flies right into their range then sits there and tries to trade damage for zero reason.

[@CptSnuggles07]

They used to be a serious threat when L ship AI was way worse. But now...yeah. Their AI is dramatically inferior to destroyers', and there's been some power creep with the introduction of the E model destroyers. The Xenon are definitely getting weaker and weaker, relatively speaking.

[@lookitsrain9552]

@@CptSnuggles07 Yea i really think the xenon need some buffs, or maybe im just use to K's and I's from my modded X3 play throughs rampaging through multiple sectors..

[@Xamluz]

Hows boron vessels compare i started a pure boron ship game

[@CptSnuggles07]

They are very strong. Best defense in the game, and good utility effects on their weapons. Their anti-capital damage tends to be a little low, but you can fix that with missiles.

[@octahedron2064]

Would love a video about fleet composition

[@CptSnuggles07]

It's on my short list!

[@shietinghd3020]

Abo and like is in

[@halloweentimemachine]

Why TEL L shields and ARG M shields?

[@CptSnuggles07]

ARG tech is the easiest to mass-produce because it can be made with Closed Loop, and it's generally pretty decent, so I put it in all "non-essential" slots. As for the main shields, although the low recharge causes problems in longer fights, TEL outperforms the other Commonwealth shields in short-to-average engagements. Obviously TER mk3 is better, but it's very expensive, and for this test I wanted to field ships that were reasonably priced and reasonably powerful without being completely min-maxed.

[@mattronin2647]

Funny you posted this as I just finished the end-game crisis and I didn't notice these improvements during the fights... I would constantly have destroyers charge in trying to tank a K or I, so dumb... A large wing of fighters is still much better and faster to deploy and replace than a destroyer + escort. The only use i have for destroyers in the AI's hands is versus stations, in low attention mode or as an AA battery. In fact, you can see just how much better the AI is versus using destroyers when you go and fight the VIG with their large fighter numbers that use torpedoes. I had a crisis fleet spawn in one of their sectors and they obliterated the Khaak and Xenon fleets so fast, I barely managed to help out. Unlike the other races which can't manage either fleets 🙄 I'm still testing out M variants like the dragon, hydra and odachi to see if they can add some value, just so i don't always have Shihs, Makos and Barracudas everywhere. But against capitals they seem to derp around quite a lot and die just as much as the Shihs, invalidating that use case.

[@CptSnuggles07]

It's so funny how different the game is for different people. Some folks post about how they never use S/M ships, others post about how they only use S/M ships. And in my game, the final crisis wave actually completely wiped out VIG. Their fighters got absolutely demolished by the constant Ravager spawns. Not a single combat ship left in any of their systems afterwards.

[@mattronin2647]

@@CptSnuggles07 Hahaha really? I guess that's what makes the game replayable - every new game can be quite different. The VIG in mine are absolute beasts! I thought the Ravagers would decimate their swarms but VIG bombed the crap out of both of them and the 4 Xenon capitals... I would love it if VIG would engage outside of their mini cluster... Back to fighters vs capital ships... Usually, one well-equipped destroyer costs around 20 million, and a good fighter like the Shih with 10 torps costs around 1.6 million. So for every destroyer, you can get around 12 fighters. Before, I was mainly using capital ships because I could easily capture them and field them without the need to replace them. Easy to manage. Because yes, fighters will die and need replacing more often. But when money is of no concern anymore, you have your shipyards etc... Nothing beats the firepower, deployment speed and versatility of fighters in my opinion. You also get to train lots of captains at once and rescue them if they die :D! On destroyers, crew usually die when the ship subsequently blows up... I just got fed up having to wait forever for my destroyers to get from one place to another... Now, those fast response fleets are actually fast AF :D

[@araulius2132]

do you have a video on boron fleet tactics?

[@CptSnuggles07]

I'm not even sure I fully understand Boron fleet tactics per se. I love including Boron ships in my mixed fleet compositions, but I've never tried to assemble a full functional fleet using only Boron tech.

[@araulius2132]

@@CptSnuggles07 I’m trying to do that as my first proper play through while I’m learning the game, it’s quite fun

[@ragnos28]

@@CptSnuggles07 1 Shark + 40 Mako on intercept + 40 torpedo Irukandji on bombard = Boron fleet tactics for anything outside station demolition. 😉 And I should add Kha'ak Ravagers (for those that did not opt out of Crisis) as a no go for that fleet composition , as those would require destroyers. But, for anything else, you would be covered.

[@MoeLeicester]

Is that a new sector your fighting in?

[@CptSnuggles07]

Nope, it's just Zyarth's Dominion that was renamed after a series of decisions in one of the Split plots.

[@Miithrandir]

Plasma turrets are soo bad and terribly slow. I hope one day Ego returns back to X Rebirth plasma weapons.

[@mattronin2647]

You're not using plasma as intended then... If they were like the gravitons, they would be way too OP. As it stands, I think it's one of the better-balanced weapons out there 😊. I just wish turret tracking was better, but that goes for all turrets.

[@Miithrandir]

@@mattronin2647 I mean, i dislike Plasma L turrets because of the feeling it offers. I would rather have less shooting rate but faster and heavely bullets. When there is a lot of thoses turrets shooting, it cost a lot of DPS and i understand nothing in the battle. This is one of the reason i use VRO mod btw

[@mattronin2647]

@@Miithrandir ah yeah I get you, it does end up looking very messy and can lead to some pretty nasty friendly fire too...

[@Miithrandir]

@@mattronin2647 exactly!