The Special Abilities of the Rebel Alliance

The Rebel Confederation has developed three special abilities that help them to spread peace and love throughout the Echo Cluster. These abilities are the immunity to dark sense, building fighters in space and the Rebel Ground Attack .

Immunity to The Dark Sense

Over time, the Rebel Confederation has discovered people in their population that exhibit psionic abilities that are similar to those of the Evil Empire citizens. Rather than use them to command starships the Rebel Confederation has trained these people to guard their planets.

Several of these citizens are placed on all Rebel Confederation planets. These people use their mental powers to await a probe by the Evil Empire starship captain(s) and they use their abilities to “cloak” the planet from these Evil Empire Scans. The captain(s) receive a mental picture of the planet that shows no presence of Rebel Confederation clans. This tactic is very effective in screening Rebel Confederation planets from the notice of the Evil Empire.

Building Fighters in Space

The Rebel Confederation has the ability to construct fighters in space by using free space in their carrier starships cargo holds. To do this the starship needs at least 3 Tritanium , 2 Molybdenum and 5 supply units for each fighter you wish to build. Once you have these resources onboard the starship; the starship will automatically build fighters, no friendly code or mission is needed. The small robot droids will convert these resources into fighters. The next turn the resources will be replaced with fighters.

The Rebel Ground Attack

This mission causes a small team of saboteurs to land on the planet surface and wreak all kinds of havoc. The trouble caused is listed in the table. The results of this mission will anger the colonists and make native life happy.

The Rebels can be made immune to the
“ ATT ” and “ NUK ” planetary friendly codes. This is set in the HCONFIG.EXE program. It is recommended that the Rebels remain immune to the planetary attack codes, if they are not immune it severely inhibits their ability to be competitive.

How to Initiate The Rebel Ground Attack

To select the Rebel Ground Attack mission you must go to the main starship screen. To do this press the [F1] key from anywhere in the game. Toggle through the choice of starships until you find the starship you wish to Rebel Ground Attack with and then press [ENTER]. This will take you to the main starship screen.

At the main starship screen, press the [M] key to bring up the primary mission menu. From here press the key that corresponds with the Rebel Ground Attack mission ( [9] ). Now the Rebel Ground Attack mission is selected. Remember that cloaking starships will not remain cloaked while doing the Rebel Ground Attack mission, if the Rebels have somehow stolen or captured a cloaking starship.

The Rebel Confederation Fleet

The Rebel Confederation’s fleet depends heavily on fighters for low cost offensive fire power. Their starships follow no standard design pattern. The fleet is comprised, mostly, of converted freighters or armored transports. These starships may not be very pretty but they can get the job done. It is important to note that many of the Rebel Confederation starships have very few beam weapon banks.

Other Special Abilities of The Rebel Confederation

Raceplus

The Rebels now have the ability to place a booby-trap on planets. This booby-trap is a transwarp sensitive tractor beam. This ability is inherent only to the Rebels.

The ability has two configurable parts to it. The configurations are the amount of fuel required to ‘crash’ a ship on a per engine basis. The range is 75 – 150 KT of fuel per engine on a ship. The next configuration is the maximum number of planets that can have a booby-trap active at one time. This range is 5-10 planets.

To perform this mission you need a ship (any one will do, as long as it has enough cargo space to hold the components). The components need to set a booby-trap is clans (any number) and fifty supplies. Then you drop clans on an unowned planet and the fifty supplies. The next turn that you own the planet (provided you wish to perform this mission) you set the planets friendly code to BBT and beam up ALL of your clans. This will cause the planets friendly code to randomize and the booby-trap will become active. The booby-trap is dependent on fuel (Neutronium) to function. So make sure you have fuel available on the planet when you take your clans off. The trap requires the configured amount of fuel per engine of the target ship you might destroy.

When the trap is activated it scans its planetary orbit for transwarp signatures. (This will even sense cloaked ships due to their Transwarp subspace eddies disturbing the planets atmosphere). When the planets senses transwarp signatures it will lock onto the ship with transwarp engines and attempt to pull its engines off. To do this the planet must have sufficient fuel to do this (number of engines times the fuel per engine cost). (i.e., 2 engine ship (configuration says 100 KT of fuel per engine) = 200 KT of fuel required to pull the engines off and destroy the ship. If a ship is destroyed it will deposit all of its fuel onto the planets surface, thus fueling the device for more turns and ships. If there is more than one ship with transwarp engines the planet will attack the ship with the MOST engines. In the event of an equal number of engines the planet will take the heaviest ship, with the most engines.

If there is insufficient fuel to take all of the ship’s engines, the planet will damage that ship in a proportion equal to the number of engines that CAN be effected divided by the total number of engines. (i.e., A planet with 750 units of fuel attempts to destroy a Virgo. The planet burns up 700 units of fuel {only fires what is needed for what it can effect} and locks onto the Virgo’s engines. It will be unable to destroy the ships since it has to be able to pull off all of the ship’s engines. Since it is short of fuel, the beam spreads out its 700 KT of power over eight engines but only has seven engine destructive power. This will cause 87% damage to the ship. Since its power (number of engines effected divided by the total 7 / 8 = .87) is not high enough to take all of the engines it damages struts, structural integrity, and hull integrity.

DAMAGE % = Number of Engines That Could be Fully Effected by Available Fuel / Engine Total

The boobytrap ignores ships equipped with less than transwarp engines. For a trap to be deactivated all you (or your enemy) needs to do is drop at least one clan onto the planet. This will immediately deactivate the trap. Rebel ships will be effected by the booby-trap when they enter orbit, unless they have their friendly code set to BBT. Enemy ships with BBT friendly code are not so protected.

Gryphon & Jupiter

Hyper-Sage.

Sage class Frigate ship had had a hyperdrive installed. Just like default hyper ships, the Sage will burn 50 units of fuel and jump (350) light years in the direction of the waypoint. Just set the “HYP” FC and warp factor to greater than 0.

NOTE: Because of the size of the ship (it is much larger than the probes) there MIGHT be a small inaccuracy in targeting (1-3 ly, at random) so do not count on exact results every time. Note: Sage-class ships will NOT hyperjump if towed. Races that the Rebels are allied with will also be able to hyper-jump their Sage class starships.

Starbase Sabotage.

Rebel saboteurs can infiltrate the starbases of enemy races and reduce their hull, engine, and tech levels. Any Rebel ship with more than 10 crew, at warp 0 and not towed, with FC “SBx”, where x is any character, can beam in a few saboteurs and if there is an area that has a tech level above 1, it will be reduced by 1 level. The area is chosen randomly among those that are above 1.

NOTE: If there is a native race on that planet that originally helped to develop that technology, they will help to upgrade it back to level 10 and the mission will have no effect. For example, if there are ghipsoidal natives on a planet and the Rebel ship sabotages engines, the Ghipsoids will push the engine tech level back up to 10. If that happens, the host will have a message about it in the log file, but the Rebel player will NOT receive a mail message. The Rebel ship may not be cloaked. The Rebel ship will sustain some crew casualties during this mission. The ship must return to a “real” Rebel base (not one of the DSBs, see below) and be “fixed” before it can do a Sabotage mission again.

Rebel Deep Space Bases.

Rebel ships can construct and maintain Deep Space Bases on asteroids floating in deep space. They cost 10*(5) units of each mineral, supplies and money. Any Rebel ship with FC of “DSB” and the required minerals on board can build a base at any point in space, not necessarily in Rebel space. At least 1 clan of colonists must be inside the ship; they will build the base and then transfer over to administer it and work on it once built. The base cannot be built at the same location as a planet, because a sun’s gravity makes the asteroids there too unstable. The builder-ship must not be cloaked, but it may be moving. The base, once built, will repair any Rebel or allied ship at the same location instantly and at no cost and will provide 1 free torpedo per turn to every ship stationed over that base, built from materials collected from nearby asteroids.

If an enemy ship starts its turn within (25) ly from the base, it will send a subspace message to the ship’s owner informing him about the base. The radar/subspace intercept technicians on the base will also inform the Rebels of the base’s detection.

Any enemy ship with mission kill or primary enemy Rebels and possessing beam weapons can destroy the base by moving to it. The base is not armed and is unable to offer any resistance.

A maximum of 100 bases can exist at any one time.

Honor Device.

The Sage class and the Deep Space Scout ships have Honor device installed in their hulls. See the Universal abilities section on the Honor Device for details.

Nemesis & Jupiter

Rebel Support Mission.

A Rebel ship can do a Rebel Support Mission when orbiting an enemy planet. Just set the FC to “RSM”, and some public speakers from the ship will land on planet’s surface and persuade colonists to support the Rebel cause. Many of the colonists will defect to Rebels, beaming up to the ship and becoming Rebel colonists. Many others will also do monetary contributions, supplying the orbiting Rebel ship with money. The amount of money the ship can get is directly proportional to the population and then colonist level of happiness; if they are unhappy the ship can easily collect 10,000 MC in a single turn. The ship is also completely fixed by the Rebel sympathizers. The planetary taxes are set to 0, and some of the money from the treasury is stolen and turned over to the Rebels as a contribution.

However, the informants from the planet will send a message to the government telling information about the ship’s armament, number and tech level of beams, torpedoes or fighters.

The ship may not be cloaked. RSM may not be given away in a team game.

Rebel defenses.

Any planet that belongs to the Rebellion will get 21 defense outposts for free and automatically. The defenses will also regenerate; for example, if some are destroyed by a Colonial KDP mission, they will regenerate back up to 21.