Patch basis: 9.0, post-June-2026 rebalance. Written 2026-08-16. No ship or station values are hard-coded here — you supply them from your own game, which is what keeps this correct across patches.
“Would it be enough?” is the most-asked and least-answerable question in the subreddit’s combat threads, and it gets asked with a ship list attached: nine destroyers and a carrier, is that enough for a Xenon station? Nobody can answer that, because the ship list is only half the input. The other half is the station, and the answer is not yes or no. It is a price, denominated in ships you do not get back.
X4 Xenon station fleet size, at a glance
| Situation | Estimated outcome | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| 8 destroyers vs a defended medium station, standard engagement | 0 ships lost, 56 s to clear | This is the calculator's default case — read it as the fleet size worth checking first. |
| Same station, a third of the fleet, no standoff discipline | fleet wipes, 5.0 min to clear | Do not commit this fleet size — the station kills your ships faster than you kill its modules. Add ships or fight from standoff range first. |
| Same station, fleet doubled and fighting from standoff range | 0 ships lost, 28 s to clear | Standoff range is doing as much work here as the extra hulls — hold it rather than closing to brawling distance. |
These are outputs of this site's attrition model, not values extracted from the game files — the fleet and station numbers above are illustrative, not your own scan. Use the calculator below with your own DPS and HP readouts.
The actual shape of the problem
A station fight is two clocks running against each other.
- Your clock: total module hit points divided by the damage your fleet actually delivers. That is how long you need to stay there.
- The station’s clock: its return fire multiplied by how long you stay in its range, divided by how much punishment one of your ships absorbs. That is how many ships it takes off you in the meantime.
If your clock finishes first by a wide margin, the fleet is oversized and you could have done it with fewer. If the two clocks finish close together, you win and lose half the fleet. If the station’s clock finishes first, you have fed it a fleet and the modules are still standing.
The single largest lever is not ship count at all. It is the fraction of the fight you spend outside the station’s engagement envelope, because that term multiplies the entire incoming damage figure. Doubling your standoff is worth more than adding two more hulls, and it costs nothing.
Price the assault
Scan the station first and count what you actually intend to destroy. Then read your ships’ sustained DPS and their combined shield and hull out of the Encyclopedia.
Will this fleet clear that station?
- Verdict
- Enough: 8 ships clear it losing nothing.
- Time on target
- 56 s 64,000 fleet DPS against 3,600,000 total module HP
- Expected losses
- 0 ship(s) 5,400 DPS reaches you after standoff · clean clear needs about 7 ships
Module count and turret exposure come from your own scan of the target. Ship DPS and hull/shield values come from your Encyclopedia, so the result matches whatever patch you are on.
The result is shareable through the URL, which is the format these questions should be asked in: instead of posting a ship list, post the link with your numbers in it.
Reading the verdict honestly
- “Enough, but expensive” is the normal outcome of a first attempt, and it is a fine outcome if the fleet is replaceable and the sector is not. It is a bad outcome if you built those ships by hand.
- “Not enough” almost never means buy more of the same. Look at incoming DPS first: the same fleet with a higher standoff percentage frequently flips the verdict without a single extra hull.
- Time on target above ten minutes or so is a warning independent of the verdict, because the model assumes nothing else shows up. Long fights are the ones that get reinforced.
When the same advice reverses
Two fleets with identical paper strength want opposite orders. This is the row people get wrong.
| Your fleet | Close the distance | Stay at standoff and kite |
|---|---|---|
| Few, expensive, hand-built ships | No — every second in range is a ship you cannot replace | Yes — accept a longer fight to keep the hulls |
| Many, cheap, mass-produced ships | Yes — shorten the fight, losses are a line item | No — dragging it out gives the station more total damage |
| Ships whose weapons are short-ranged anyway | Forced close; budget the losses in advance | Not available: standoff means zero DPS |
| Station with heavy long-range defence modules | Suicide unless you kill those modules first | Only workable order of operations |
The bottom two rows are the ones that decide most attempts: your standoff option is only real if your weapons reach from there, which loops straight back into the weapon time-to-kill math — a fleet that cannot land damage at range does not get to choose the cheap plan.
Where the numbers come from
- Module count and station defences: your own scan. There is no universal figure, since Xenon stations differ per station and per game state.
- Ship DPS and effective HP: your in-game Encyclopedia.
- The exchange-rate model is ours, and it is deliberately simple: it assumes return fire concentrates rather than spreading evenly, and it charges you half your losses’ worth of DPS across the fight. Both are estimates and stay labelled as estimates. It will not predict a specific battle; it will tell you which side of the line you are on, which is what the ship-list question is really asking.
- Losses are estimated, not measured. Treat the output as a go / no-go threshold rather than a casualty list.
Updated if a patch changes station defence behaviour enough to break the two-clock model.
Sources
- X4 Foundations Public Beta - Version: 9.00 Release notes — official Egosoft patch notes for the combat, AI and fleet-composition changes in 9.0 that this page’s two-clock model reasons about.
- “Has 9.0 fixed the Xenon?” — X4: Foundations General Discussions — community thread confirming Xenon station and fleet behaviour still varies significantly per save after 9.0, which is why this page refuses to hard-code station values.
- X4: Foundations 9.00 “Empire Update” Public Beta announcement — Steam News — confirms the patch line this “post-June-2026 rebalance” basis refers to.
