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X4 Modding Wiki

XP and star progression

Every hero has an XP counter and a star rank (★ → ★★★★★). XP goes up when the hero’s fleet kills something meaningful. Higher stars mean a tougher flagship, a bigger escort screen, and access to the perks that gate on rank.

What counts as a kill

Section titled “What counts as a kill”

XP is awarded when either the hero’s flagship or any escort ship subordinate to the flagship deals the final blow to a valid target. The event is registered by the mod’s MlogHeroesKillWorker watcher and credited to the hero’s $xp register cell.

Not counted:

  • Self-destruction (collision, suicide) — the vanilla event_object_killed_object fires with killer == victim, and the mod’s watcher filters it out.
  • Kills by other factions — if an Argon fleet in the same sector kills the same Xenon capital, only whichever hero’s fleet dealt the last hit gets the credit.
  • Boarding captures — a different event (event_object_boarded); deliberately excluded (capture ≠ heroic kill).
  • Damage without kill credit — assist is not implemented; only the final kill matters.
  • Drones and mass-traffic NPCs — filtered out (see weights below).

Kill weights per class

Section titled “Kill weights per class”
Target classXPCredits to the hero
class.ship_xs (drones, escape pods)00
Mass-traffic NPCs (taxis, civilian filler)00
class.ship_s (fighters, Xenon N)110 000
class.ship_m (corvettes, Xenon P)225 000
class.ship_l (destroyers, Xenon Terraformer)8125 000
class.ship_xl (capitals, Xenon K)16500 000
class.station201 000 000
class.module / class.buildmodule210 000

Every kill also pays the hero personally. That second column is not decoration: a hero’s private balance is what buys perks, and the tier prices run to tens of millions. Cracking stations is how a hero affords an epic perk; shooting fighters is not.

The weights were cut, hard

Section titled “The weights were cut, hard”

An earlier build used S 1, M 5, L 25, XL 100, station 200, module 25 and progression was far too fast — a single admiral reached ★★★, a thousand XP, inside three hours of play. Everything above S was divided down until the third star was a milestone again.

If you have read those older numbers somewhere, that is what they were. They are not the mod’s numbers now.

Archetype changes what a kill is worth

Section titled “Archetype changes what a kill is worth”
ArchetypeXP from its fleet’s kills
Admiral, coordinator, engineer, hive lordclass weight × 1.0
Pirate raiderclass weight × 0.5, floored at 1
Kha’ak seeder0 from this path

The raider is halved because kills are not what a raider is for — plunder is, and that pays separately.

The seeder is zeroed here deliberately. Its XP comes from a separate watcher awarding +1 per Kha’ak ship killed anywhere, so crediting its fleet kills too would count the same event twice. One consciousness, one XP path.

Perks scale it again

Section titled “Perks scale it again”

XP gain is multiplied by the hero’s own perks — Attentive +50%, Dedicated Hunter +100% — so two heroes in the same battle do not bank the same number.

Star rank thresholds

Section titled “Star rank thresholds”
RankXP threshold
★0 (starting)
★★100 XP
★★★1,000 XP
★★★★10,000 XP
★★★★★100,000 XP

Those thresholds are also per-hero. Two rare and epic perks lower them: Quick Learner −25% and Tactical Genius −50% XP needed for the next star. A Tactical Genius reaches ★★★ at 500 XP, not 1 000.

Two more perks skip the bottom of the ladder outright at spawn: Veteran grants +200 XP, which is ★★ immediately, and the epic Legendary Veteran grants +1 000, which is ★★★ from the first tick.

Progression is logarithmic — each rank takes ~10× more XP than the previous. Practical implications:

  • ★★ is achievable in one-two combats. Early engagement hook — the player sees “the mod is working” quickly.
  • ★★★ takes several hours of active hero life. A memorable veteran.
  • ★★★★ takes dozens of hours or a high kill-rate in hot zones. Legendary status for one faction.
  • ★★★★★ is the identity tier — reached only through very long, active service. Each faction gives its ★★★★★ heroes a distinctive flagship or fleet identity (see C-029 fleet rework).

What unlocks per rank

Section titled “What unlocks per rank”

Flagship and escort composition auto-scale with rank. Details are per-archetype (see Admiral, Pirate Raider, Coordinator, Engineer, etc.). The default admiral scaling used as a baseline:

RankFlagshipSMLAuxNotes
★L destroyer400—Starting fleet
★★L destroyer840—Add frigate wing
★★★XL carrier1641—Carrier promotion
★★★★XL carrier3282resupplierVeteran fleet — and the first rank with a support ship
★★★★★XL carrier48168resupplierThe L wing quadruples: eight destroyers, not two

★5 is a real tier with real numbers, not a placeholder. The step that matters is the L column going 2 → 8 — a ★★★★★ admiral fields a destroyer squadron in its own right, on top of the carrier.

The auxiliary ship arrives at ★4 and is easy to miss because it is not an escort: it is a resupply vessel that follows the fleet.

Counts here are the base. A hero’s perks add to them — Squad Commander is +2 S from the first star, Capital Ship Commander +1 L, Heavy Squad Expert +4 M — which is why a ★★ admiral in game may show 10 S escorts where this table says 8.

Faction-flavour applies: the flagship macro is drawn from the faction’s own catalog, so an Argon admiral gets a Behemoth-line destroyer; a Teladi admiral gets an Osaka-line; a Paranid admiral gets a Zeus-line. This is why the same “L destroyer” row looks different for different admirals in the roster.

Sub-factions inherit parent-race templates by design (Antigone uses Argon templates, Hatikvah uses Argon, Holy Order uses Paranid, etc.). This is intentional, not a gap — sub-faction ships come from the parent race’s shipyards, and per-sub-faction templates would be identical duplicates.

Per-archetype divergence from the default

Section titled “Per-archetype divergence from the default”
  • Pirate Raider starts on M corvette + S fighter, promotes to L destroyer + M frigate at ★3, XL Erlking-tier at ★4-5. Smaller and more mobile than admiral.
  • Engineer is M-miner-flagship only across all ranks (no capital promotion) — a small S-fighter escort scales 0→4 at ★1-★4. See Engineer archetype.
  • Coordinator has no personal escort — its flagship is stationary at HQ. What scales with rank is how many whole faction fleets it may hold at once: one per star. See Coordinator archetype.
  • Kha’ak Hive Lord parallels the Coordinator but for scattered Kha’ak, and has no per-star cap at all: each ship commandeered costs RP, and one flat ceiling of 100 ships applies. See Hive Lord archetype.
  • Kha’ak Seeder flagship stays M Kha’ak across all ranks; escort screen grows ★2=2S → ★3=2M+4S → ★4=4M+8S. Fleet is small because seeder power is in the network (hives + outposts), not in the flagship. See Seeder archetype.

Perks — the personality layer on top of stars

Section titled “Perks — the personality layer on top of stars”

Star ranks give fleet strength. Perks give personality. Both live on the hero: two ★★★ Argon admirals with the same fleet composition can play very differently if one has Lucky (−10% KIA chance) + Master Logistic (+100% RP accrual) and the other has Dedicated Hunter (+100% XP from combat) + Capital Ship Expert (+2 L escorts).

Perks are authored on pool templates, unlock on cash milestones or via LEARN purchase, and are preserved across clone respawns — a lineage’s accumulated perks are the lineage’s reputation. See Perks system for the full model.

Perks catalog — Tier: common (Attentive +50% XP from combat, Capital Ship Commander +1 L-class escort, Heavy Squad Commander +2 M-class corvettes/frigates, Leader +1 faction hero cap when hero reaches ★4, Logistic +50% RP accrual, Long Lasting Buff +50% engineer duration, Lucky Leader ★3 cap raise, Khaak Seed +1 RP per Khaak ship lost, Prepared +200 RP at spawn, Quartermaster -25% RP cost when rebuilding, Second in Line, Squad Commander +2 S-class fighters from first star, Third in Line, Veteran +200 XP at spawn, Volunteer 10× more likely to be picked). Tier: rare (Capital Ship Expert +2 L destroyers from ★3, Dedicated Hunter +100% XP from combat, Efficient Service 30 min cooldown, Heavy Squad Expert +4 M corvettes, Lucky -10% KIA chance, Master Logistic +100% RP accrual, Master Quartermaster -50% RP cost, Master Technician +20% buff potency, Quick Learner -25% XP needed, Reduced Cost 50 RP service, Squad Expert +4 S fighters from ★). Tier: epic (Legendary Veteran +1000 XP at spawn → ★3 immediately, Tactical Genius -50% XP needed)

Perks unlock via one of three paths: conditional (kills / stars / age / quest triggers), automatic at 10M cr accumulation, or learn at tier-based cost (common 20M cr / rare 50M cr / epic 100M cr). Learned + unlocked perks are preserved across clone respawns.

Memorial preservation

Section titled “Memorial preservation”

When a hero loses their flagship (see Death cycle), XP does not reset. The hero keeps:

  • Total XP
  • Star rank
  • Kill count
  • Last kill record

Rationale: the career belongs to the hero, not the ship. Walter Korkov with 5,000 XP stays a 3★ admiral after losing his first Vanguard. The successor bearer under lineage succession (see Lineage) is a different person and starts fresh, but the memorial hero keeps every achievement they earned in life.

Result: heroes who survive many battles become progressively more powerful; heroes who die young leave a shorter legacy on the wall. No XP grinding through deliberate deaths.

UI

Section titled “UI”

Kha'ak Hive Lord Manifold-of-Spires — Hive consciousness shard, ★★ (2/5), 278 XP, 72 kills, last kill ship_m (+1 XP) in Pious Mists IV, active perks Khaak Seed / Prepared / Second in Line / Veteran, locked perk Leader auto-unlocks at ★★★★

The hero detail page shows:

  • Current stars, as a filled/unfilled bar out of five (**--- (2/5))
  • XP total
  • Progress bar to next rank
  • Kill count
  • Last kill (target class + faction + sector)