When built in friendly sectors, stations generally do not need to be concerned with large-scale defenses. Stations can often get by with no defenses at all, relying instead on the ability to send a response ship to deal with any problems (small attack ships can only damage something as large as a station very slowly).

Stations built in hostile sectors or next to gates to Xenon sectors do need substantial defenses to survive. Stations built in neutral sectors may also need defenses, if enemy factions regularly have ships passing through.

Turret mount points

All factory modules and storage modules have turret mounting points for M size turrets and M size shield generators (which protect the turret, not the station).

To add turrets, select the module, right click and choose “Loadout” option. You now add turrets and shield generators as if you were configuring them on a ship.

In addition, there are defense “disk” and “bridge” modules that can be built like any other station module. These modules produce nothing, but have mount points in the their Loadout configuration to add a number of both L size and M size turrets and shields.

Disk and Bridge modules perform the same function. They differ only in the connectors they have (for other station modules) and the number and size of turret mount points.

Defense blueprints

To build defense modules, you need to have the associated blueprint. You can either buy or steal these.

To add turrets and shield generators, you also need the associated blueprints. Weapon and shield blueprints can only be purchased from faction representatives. You cannot steal these blueprints or acquire them by any other means.

Most game starts do not give you any station defense blueprints for free, so when creating your first station consider the location and whether you might need to add defense turrets. (As mentioned, most stations in friendly areas can get by with no defenses.)

Friendly sectors

The faction that owns the sector will have military and police forces providing sector-wide defense response.

Stations do, though, need to be concerned with the possibility that pirates like SCA will come to the station and start threatening trade ships.

Stations in sectors with mining activity also need to be concerned with the likely appearance of Ka’ak ships that may follow mining ships back to the station.

Against these enemies, light defenses (M size turrets) are generally sufficient.

Hostile areas

You may choose to build a station in areas where ships belonging to hostile factions regularly appear. These stations need significant defenses, but the extent of this varies considerably with the type of opposition you expect to see. A station that needs to deal with an occasional fighter patrol doesn’t need nearly the firepower that a station would if it expects to regularly see hostile destroyers.

Hostile areas are best served by dedicated Defense Stations / Defense Platforms. These are common names used in X4 discussions but both mean “stations made up primarily of defense modules.” These stations act as “gatekeepers” to protect a sector from hostile invasion (usually Xenon).

How close to the gate(s) these stations should be built, what modules they should contain, what types of turrets you should use, etc… are debatable. Ask three players and you’ll get five answers.

A very rough “ballpark” starting point is to build something around 15-20 km from the gate, and include 3-5 defense disks.

Most all available M-size turrets will deal effectively with fighters, as long as they don’t have slow projectile speed or slow tracking speeds.

The more difficult consideration is what type of L turrets to use for anti-capital-ship firepower. Again, three people will offer five opinions on this, but long-ranged plasma turrets are a good starting point (for range and damage). Large ships move slowly, so these types of “slow but high damage at long distance” weapons are effective against Xenon destroyers.

Defense drones

Defense drones can be very effective in augmenting station defenses, against both small and large ships.

Defense drones need to be assembled by the station from components, so if you intend to make use of defense drones you must:

• make sure the station has a container storage module (S size is fine)
• set the drone level in the station’s Logical Overview
• the the needed components delivered to station storage

Defense drones will launch and re-dock as needed, and any losses will be automatically replaced as long as the station has the needed parts.

10 drones can help protect a station from most attack by a few fighters.

100 drones can take down a Xenon destroyer with little trouble.

Note: defense drones are launched from the station’s S-size docking pads. If you have a “1M6S” dock then there are 6 S-ship pads and the station can launch drones 6 at a time. If you’re depending on large numbers of drones for defense, you may need more docks to launch drones quickly enough to swarm attackers (vs being swatted down as they arrive one by one).