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X4 Modding Wiki

Scout-Saboteur (shared mechanic)

Vanilla X4 NPCs do many things, but they don’t deploy mines. Turret grids, patrols, blockades — yes. Sacrificial mine-layers — no. So a mod that adds NPC-driven mine deployment is adding a tactical primitive that the vanilla galaxy doesn’t have.

The Scout-Saboteur is exactly that. It’s not a separate archetype (no lineage, no career, no XP). It’s a shared combat decision that a Raider, Coordinator, or Hive Lord can execute — a way to spend RP for an asymmetric tactical effect in an enemy sector.

The mechanic

Section titled “The mechanic”

A saboteur is a one-way ship. The dispatching hero:

  1. Picks a target sector (enemy trade waypoint, enemy-facing gate, enemy fleet’s likely path)
  2. Spends ~30 RP (variable per ship class / dispatcher)
  3. Spawns a cheap S-class fighter (from the hero’s fleet template $tier1.$s_macro) loaded with mines in its ammostorage
  4. Sends the saboteur to the target position via cross-sector orders (vanilla move + deployobjectatposition chain)
  5. On arrival, saboteur deploys 2-10 mines (dynamic — determined by the ship’s ammostorage.{mine}.count after the add_ammo call; vanilla silently caps at deployable storage)
  6. Once all mines are deployed, saboteur self-destructs — either via move.random triggered destroy pattern, OR by flying into own minefield → chain reaction → maximum coverage

Total time per saboteur dispatch: 3-5 game-minutes including travel.

Three tactical use cases

Section titled “Three tactical use cases”

A. Offensive minelaying — sabotage deep in enemy territory

Section titled “A. Offensive minelaying — sabotage deep in enemy territory”
  • Target: enemy trade route waypoint, deep inside a hostile faction’s own space
  • Cargo: FF mines (targets enemy faction ships)
  • Effect: enemy trade freighters start losing hulls on their normal routes → economic drag on the target faction
  • Best for: a Coordinator who lacks force superiority for a proper invasion, but can afford asymmetric disruption

B. Defensive minelaying — drop-and-forget at your own gate

Section titled “B. Defensive minelaying — drop-and-forget at your own gate”
  • Target: an enemy-facing gate in your OWN faction’s border sector
  • Cargo: FF mines (friend-or-foe — protects you AND your allies from anyone hostile passing through)
  • Effect: enemy invasion attempts through this gate lose escorts BEFORE they engage → attackers arrive at combat weakened
  • Recurring pattern: ★2 Coordinator dispatches saboteur → mines used up by an enemy incursion → 30 min later, dispatch a new saboteur
  • Cheaper than a static 100-turret grid (vanilla-scale defence grids are usually 5-30 objects anyway — mines fit that range while being consumable)

C. Counter-mine clearance — sacrificial run through enemy field

Section titled “C. Counter-mine clearance — sacrificial run through enemy field”
  • Target: an enemy-mined gate that blocks your main fleet’s offensive
  • Cargo: ZERO mines (the saboteur’s job here is to trigger, not to lay)
  • Effect: saboteur flies INTO the enemy mine field → chain reaction clears the field → main fleet proceeds without hitting mines
  • Least common — requires prior knowledge of enemy mines, which is rare

Who can dispatch

Section titled “Who can dispatch”

The Scout-Saboteur is a shared decision available to specific archetypes:

  • Pirate Raider — as of iter 21 (build_018), Raiders auto-dispatch saboteurs when their eval identifies a hot enemy trade waypoint. Fits pirate playstyle (asymmetric harass, low investment, high disruption).
  • Military Coordinator — from ★2. Coordinators use saboteurs both offensively (harass enemy economy) and defensively (own-space minefield maintenance).
  • Kha’ak Hive Lord — from ★2. Fits Kha’ak swarm-suicide aesthetic perfectly. Kha’ak already have “throw fighters at problems” as their identity; saboteur is a formalized version.

NOT available to Admirals. Admirals are survival-first: they command from safety, subordinates take the risks — but subordinate suicide is a bridge too far. Admirals delegate risk to escorts, not sacrifice them.

NOT available to Engineers or Seeders — different roles entirely.

Mine count is dynamic (design deviation from concept)

Section titled “Mine count is dynamic (design deviation from concept)”

Original C-012 spec called for “10-20 mines per dispatch”. Actual shipped behaviour: 2-10 mines.

Why: X4 9.x silently caps ammostorage.{weapon_gen_mine_03_macro}.count at the ship’s own deployable-mine capacity. An S-class fighter’s ammostorage is small. Loading 20 mines via add_ammo results in 2-10 actually loaded (rest discarded).

For higher mine counts, a future variant would need a bigger ship class (M frigate saboteur → 20+ mines) or a create_object MD bypass (spawn mines directly, skip ammostorage).

RP cost & cooldown

Section titled “RP cost & cooldown”
  • Cost: ~30 RP per dispatch (baseline; can be modified by archetype-specific perks)
  • No per-hero cooldown enforced — the RP cost is the natural throttle. A ★★ Coordinator with 10 RP/tick can dispatch a saboteur every 15 game-minutes if they choose to spend everything on it.
  • In practice: Coordinators tend to dispatch 1 saboteur per HeroManager tick when they have a target; Raiders dispatch opportunistically when their eval finds a hot trade waypoint.

Behaviour example — Coordinator defensive mine drop

Section titled “Behaviour example — Coordinator defensive mine drop”

Argon Coordinator Vasquez (★★★, 4,200 XP) sees an enemy Xenon L destroyer in Silent Witness IV — Argon’s northern buffer sector. The Xenon is likely to pass through the Argon Prime gate next.

  • HMW eval identifies Argon Prime gate as a critical defence point.
  • Vasquez commits to a saboteur dispatch side-effect (parallel to their primary faction_defense decision).
  • Spawns an Argon S-class fighter loaded with FF mines. RP -30.
  • Saboteur flies to Argon Prime gate (2 sectors, ~3 minutes travel), deploys 5 mines around the gate mouth.
  • Self-destructs.
  • Ten minutes later, the Xenon L destroyer approaches the gate, hits the mine field, chain reaction takes out the destroyer’s engine array + shields.
  • Argon patrols engage the crippled Xenon and finish it off.
  • The saboteur cost 30 RP + one S-fighter’s build cost (paid by faction job pool, not by Vasquez). The kill went to whichever patrol dealt the last hit.

Design intent

Section titled “Design intent”
  • NPC access to a player-tier tactic. Mines are a valid X4 tactic; before Heroes, only players used them. Now Kha’ak, pirates, and disciplined faction militaries do too.
  • Cheap risk-transfer. The saboteur costs a single S-fighter + 30 RP. If the enemy doesn’t hit the mines, you lose nothing consequential. If they do, you kill above your investment.
  • Discrete-cost tactical primitive. RP is a discrete resource; saboteur is a discrete action. Compared to admiral “commit fleet to sector” which is expensive and reversible slowly, saboteur is fast, cheap, deniable.
  • Archetype fit-to-role. Raiders sabotage (fits piracy). Coordinators sabotage (fits strategic warfare). Kha’ak sabotage (fits swarm-suicide). Admirals do not (fits survival-first). Every archetype gets access to the primitives that fit their role.

What’s next

Section titled “What’s next”
  • Bigger ship saboteurs — for larger mine payloads, use M-class instead of S-class. Requires modding fleet templates to include a “saboteur variant” per faction.
  • Specialized saboteurs — variations by cargo: EMP-only, hull-damage-only, trap-only. Currently all use standard mines.
  • Coordinated waves — multiple saboteurs from multiple archetypes converging on the same target for maximum coverage. Currently each dispatches independently.
  • Player counter-saboteur — a “sweep gate” mission or ability for the player to clear enemy-laid mines. Not implemented; would fit a player counter-hero role.
Section titled “Related pages”