Rebel Farming

[Pyronic]

Hello guys,

So one thing I'm curious about is the art of Rebel farming - that is, instead of running before they reach you, just fighting through the Rebel fleet after you've explored as much of a sector as you possibly can and exiting only when you need to or when the whole place is dead.

I've noticed that the fleet's ships count under the Ships Defeated stat and boost your score rather significantly - some of my highest scores are runs where I had no scrap recovery arms or pre-igniters or anything fancy but where my build was strong and I just fought my way back to the exit from wherever I was because I felt that I could (and, I could). But I haven't yet explicitly turned around and aggressively lashed out at the fleet. I suppose I might try it, just to see how high I can get a score for it and because of the badass feel of not running and just desolating the pursuing bastards.

So here's some things I've observed about the fleet so far:
- It seems to be composed entirely of Elite Fighters. I haven't seen any sort of Elite Riggers or AI ships in it at all. I don't know for sure though.
- In nebula sectors it seems to generate ion storms. Once I got a "reveal the whole map" reward from a random battle in a nebula sector, and all the beacons that had been overtaken by the main fleet showed ion storm hazards.
- You don't ever gain missiles or drone parts or scrap from victories, just 1 fuel, so if you keep winning you'll at least never run out of fuel. Also, there are no advantages for crew kills over hull destruction.

So while I suppose most people who have them would use the Unidentified ships for farming, simply because they're powerful and not heavily dependent on consumables, the ship I intend to try it with is the Zoltan B (Noether). With a maxed cloak and either heavier armament or Stealth Weapons and an experienced crew I think it could take the Elite Fighters on in the later sectors. The Fighters don't have a drone control room, so the Zoltan Shield won't be immediately invalidated by drone fire, and the Fighters instead often seem to use long-charge weapons like Breach Missiles or Burst Laser Mk IIIs. So the Z-B's standard cloak-shield-cloak tactic I think could work for a very consumable-independent kill strat (not needing missiles/bombs or drones much) that is relatively well defended against missiles and boarders. At least, with some luck to acquire additional weapons to bolster its already strong starting set and hopefully Stealth Weapons to keep firing through the cloak. And in case of ion storms, well, at least a partially Zoltan-powered ship is less affected, and helped by the fact that your normal shields can just be kept off or on a low setting as long as your Z-shield is up.
I might also try a Mantis B (Basilisk) boarding-oriented farming tactic just to see if that's as viable or better than the melting-Rebel-scum-with-energy-weapons approach.

What do you guys think? What ship would you prefer if you had to fight back and not run?

[966socho]

The ??? B layout seems best suited for the job, since it starts with cloaking and all. It can also completely disregard the medbay, which all the Elites have. Mantis B also works as they can just overpower the medbay if you care enough to micro your crew around, and starts with shields 2 and def drone (need drone recovery to truly take advantage of this). Both of these can also board other ships you encounter and maximize your score in scrap collection.

Just don't do it with any missile weapons.

[Teoes]

Hello there

You’ve pretty much nailed it from what I know. My two highest scores were from farming the rebels in that I hit as many normal beacons in a sector as I could, then doubled-back and hit every single beacon again after the rebels had taken it. The first time I tried this was with Unidentified B, which is easily the most overpowered boarding ship and I farmed from Sector 3 onwards. The second time was with Mantis B (second- or third-most powerful boarding ship with Rock B) and I farmed every sector from the off. Whilst, yes, it gives huge scores I’m really not going to make a habit of it; it made the game take way too long to play through and it got boring fast, fighting so many identical battles with no variety to shake things up. I’m going to stick to “normal” runs as/when I return to FTL, unless I get a mental start that’s begging for farming to see if I can break the elusive (for me) 10k score.

- Yes, it’s always Elite Fighters and they never have drones. They do sometimes have small fast weapons but because they essentially have a high item score or whatever determines the kind of layout they’ll randomly have, they tend to have the slow powerful weapons.
- You’re right that once rebels take over nebula beacons it automatically becomes an ion storm.
- I think you can only hit each rebel beacon once, so there is a limit to how much you can farm; I don’t think you can just endlessly jump back and forth between two beacons and farm rebel scum until the cows come home.

You could be on to something with the Noether but the thing to remember is that as well as being independent of consumables so you don’t run out of missiles or drones, you also need to avoid as much damage as possible as you’re going to be a long way from a store and won’t have random events for repairs. The Noether is good as you say for cloak-shield-cloak but you have to wait for the ion weapons to break through the shields and that could slow the kill down. This is why boarding ships are so good (again, Unidentified B the best with that race’s unique ability) as you don’t have to wait for any weapons – just teleport in and go to town.

So yeah, most ships could do this once they’ve got a reasonable set-up that doesn’t rely on consumables, although a drone-heavy ship with a drone recovery arm could work but then you’re dependant on the drones hitting good rooms to shut the ship down and not missing or mercilessly whacking the medbay. I’d guess the best bets would be the ones you named: Unidentified B, Mantis B, Rock B (great boarding ship, possibly too reliant on consumables for fire bombs), Zoltan B.


P.S. ..you wouldn’t be the same Pyronic I know, would you? Paladin, Azjol-Nerub, What Would Pyronic Do..? If so, hello again! Fancy meeting you in a place like this. Hope you are well.

[5thHorseman]

You *CAN* jump back and forth forever, and when you run out of fuel you'll get the 'out of fuel' rebel encounter. You could in theory run this encounter over and over for as long as you'd like. It would get really, really boring but with a fantastic layout in a late sector, you could in theory get a score of any value.

[Teoes]

You *CAN* jump back and forth forever, and when you run out of fuel you'll get the 'out of fuel' rebel encounter. You could in theory run this encounter over and over for as long as you'd like. It would get really, really boring but with a fantastic layout in a late sector, you could in theory get a score of any value.

That's interesting - is there a specific way of getting it to work or not to work then? In both my high scoring runs I ended up re-visiting the odd beacon I'd already hit for rebel farming and it was empty.

[5thHorseman]

You *CAN* jump back and forth forever, and when you run out of fuel you'll get the 'out of fuel' rebel encounter. You could in theory run this encounter over and over for as long as you'd like. It would get really, really boring but with a fantastic layout in a late sector, you could in theory get a score of any value.

That's interesting - is there a specific way of getting it to work or not to work then? In both my high scoring runs I ended up re-visiting the odd beacon I'd already hit for rebel farming and it was empty.

No specific way. Just run out of fuel. The use up all the fuel you get when you defeat them so you run out again. Just jump back and forth forever.

It's EXTREMELY boring, worse even than doing the sector sweep to pick up all the rebel beacons because between each battle you have to use up the 4 or so fuel you gained.

[Pyronic]

Whilst, yes, it gives huge scores I’m really not going to make a habit of it; it made the game take way too long to play through and it got boring fast, fighting so many identical battles with no variety to shake things up. I’m going to stick to “normal” runs as/when I return to FTL, unless I get a mental start that’s begging for farming to see if I can break the elusive (for me) 10k score.

This. So I did my first farming run on the Noether, and for a while it did feel badass. After that it got tedious. I got my highest ever score, starting farming from the point after I got my cloak and regular backup shields (sector 3) and farming up increasing amounts through sector 7.

I followed a "ring farming" path so that I wouldn't have to backtrack through any dead beacons and spend any actual fuel, just fly in a ring of connected nodes killing Rebels until I came around to the exit. Early on I was being cautious and the rings were tight but by sector 6 they were spanning most of the sector. But just because it takes so long, I don't suppose I'll be trying this again soon.

You could be on to something with the Noether but the thing to remember is that as well as being independent of consumables so you don’t run out of missiles or drones, you also need to avoid as much damage as possible as you’re going to be a long way from a store and won’t have random events for repairs. The Noether is good as you say for cloak-shield-cloak but you have to wait for the ion weapons to break through the shields and that could slow the kill down. This is why boarding ships are so good (again, Unidentified B the best with that race’s unique ability) as you don’t have to wait for any weapons – just teleport in and go to town.

So yeah, most ships could do this once they’ve got a reasonable set-up that doesn’t rely on consumables, although a drone-heavy ship with a drone recovery arm could work but then you’re dependant on the drones hitting good rooms to shut the ship down and not missing or mercilessly whacking the medbay. I’d guess the best bets would be the ones you named: Unidentified B, Mantis B, Rock B (great boarding ship, possibly too reliant on consumables for fire bombs), Zoltan B.

The Noether worked like a charm. No teleporter ever, just energy weapons and cloak-shield-cloak, with a drone bay housing an attack drone and a defense drone, which was used sparingly. No stealth weapons, unfortunately, but I did have long-range scanners and a scrap recovery arm. Ran default weapons up until about sector 5 when I added a third Ion Blast that I bought, and then some Federation loyalists gave me a Heavy Laser II which I used to replace my Pike Beam from sector 6 onwards. Even though the HLII had a longer kill time, it had more shutdown power than the Pike Beam and was great for taking out enemy weapons after the triple ions had shattered their shields. It often seemed to either ignite a fire or cause a breach when it got a good hit, which really screwed up the poor Rebs' efforts to bring their weapons online.

The Z-shields and cloak did a good job of preventing the teleporter-equipped fighters from trying to board, but they did make it through a few times and got suffocated - while I had an extremely combat-incapable crew (3 Zoltans, 2 Engi, 1 Human), I did have upgraded blast doors, and the room which would have contained a teleporter for my ship if I had bought one instead contained a long-dead boarding drone from sector 4 or so, and the hull breach which it had created basically gave me an extra airlock.

I did take a little bit of damage in the earlier sectors before getting strong shutdown abilities, and indeed, in sector 6 I got Rock Homeworlds and played the Rock Cruiser Quest just so that they'd have a full repair ready for me in sector 7, and I wouldn't have to worry about repair costs while farming that sector. Then sector 7 went rather successfully and I took no damage. And finally, sector 8 felt like a breath of fresh air and the boss got destroyed without ever managing to inflict a single point of damage either, in any stage.

So yeah, no-boarding farming -can- work.
I suppose the Basilisk could board-farm pretty nicely if you micro well enough, yeah, and, of course, if you get the full 4-Mantis party relatively early on. I'm not so sure about the Shivan - while I love that ship and it is consistently my best ship on normal runs, it does tend to spend at least 1 fire bomb per enemy ship, which is not sustainable for long farming cruises. Among other ships, I suppose a Torus with a drone recovery arm, an additional ion weapon, and an extra attack drone could work - even if you don't have targeted shutdown power, the sheer DPS of multiple attack drones could just shred enemies, and you'd just use normal shields, cloaking, and a defense drone to hold out until then.

[Pyronic]

P.S. ..you wouldn’t be the same Pyronic I know, would you? Paladin, Azjol-Nerub, What Would Pyronic Do..? If so, hello again! Fancy meeting you in a place like this. Hope you are well.

Nope. Different person. Just made up the name, but not surprised that someone had used it before.
Nice to meet you!

[Dontmindme]

There is one big problem with the run out of fuel strategy and that's the fact one will be out of fuel starting the next sector. This may very well screw up your score (and scrap and extras) gained from the next sector. Granted, one could conceivably outscore any losses with enough out of fuel kills and hopefully one doesn't end up gimping oneself too much with lost "fresh" beacons.

[966socho]

Of course, you would do that in Sector 7 which would get you 10 fuel at the start of the next sector.