Strategy: The Rebellion Star Fleet

By Sharkman


Taurus Class Scout

Ship Analysis:
You start with a free one at the beginning of the game. However for a 2 engine-ship, it is very lightly armed and armored. Contrary to some other opinions on the matter, I recommend you do not build any more of these. I don’t really take a liking to ships without torpedoes or fighters, unless they have some other ability (eg. Cloak) because without aux weapons these ships cannot do anything useful (like killing things). This ship is a waste of two expensive engines. The cargo bay is reasonable but you have other more effective ships. Its large fuel tank allows towing but I prefer to use more Tranquilities – these also require 2 engines but are heavier, have a larger cargo and they can lay mines. If you haven’t got the required tech levels (perhaps at a front line, newly built base), try to build a scaled down Cygnus with X-Rays and Mk 4’s, don’t build one of these.

Roles:
Scout, Towing, Colonizing, Light interceptor


Cygnus Class Destroyer

Ship Analysis:
A very effective ship, only needs hull tech 1, cheap and just one engine required. Build bucket loads of these. Crank out a pile of mark 4 destroyers at the beginning of the game and when cash is more plentiful, switch to mark 7 or 8 destroyers. Don’t load them with too many torps (10-15 will do) because they will go down pretty easily, but they will inflict a lot of damage. Can be used for perimeter minelaying because the cargo of 50 torps is conveniently sized to lay a decent minefield in one go, but prefer to use the Tranquility for minelaying, the Cygnus is a ship designed for battle.

Additional Tactics:
The Cygnus’ weakness, and indeed one of the biggest weaknesses of the Rebel race as a whole, is susceptibility to minefields. In light of this, against an experienced player, you must feint, or at least zig-zag. Head toward his planets, then fall back, but only fall back 10-15 light years, you do not want to feint too far, or else you will be traveling through too many mines, and risk getting hit. One hit blows a Cygnus, so it is a risk that is unacceptable to take. Consider accompanying with a Tranquility, some Patriots (they’re cheap, too, so you should have these in great numbers) and of course, a Rush to protect against interceptors. With this fleet, you are more flexible, you can choose to drop mines of your own with the Tranquility (have it filled with as many torps as possible, and put near last in the battle order – except against cloakers, where you are then susceptible to cloak intercept) which, if you’re lucky, will hit enemy interceptors, or will cancel out the enemy mines. You cannot sweep very well so you have to rely on knocking out enemy mines with your own. And never try this against Robots!

Battle Tactics:
A Cygnus should almost universally be set to fight first. Make sure it fights from the right side of the VCR if the enemy ship is a carrier, you have a 60% chance of being put above a virtual mass of 320 KT, which means enemy fighters only do 1% a hit. The effect of a Cygnus as a lead in ship is not great against enemy carriers, but it is better than just going in with your carrier first. And it also safeguards against the enemy using a torp ship of his own to lead in, which a lot of players will do.

Against a torpedo based ship, if engine shield bonus is off you should use the Cygnus with caution, it will get splattered after just a couple of high-tech torpedo hits. It is still a good idea to lead in with them though, as the enemy may lead in with a weaker torpedo ship in order to spare his battleship some damage. The best way to enter battle with a Cygnus is unseen – make sure your enemy cannot predict the presence of a Cygnus when he is planning his battle fleet. The best way to do this is fly a Rush out alone in deep space, but don’t show a waypoint. Keep the Cygnus hidden at an allied or a neutral (unoccupied) planet. Next turn, switch off the Rush’s engines and have the Cygnus intercept it. Set the Rush to sweep mines just in case. Try not to have the Cygnus travel too far to meet the Rush, the enemy may just decide to drop a few mines. Your plan is based on forcing the enemy to intercept you, which he has to do because he has no idea which planet the Rush is going to strike. And he will know the Rush will not fight the planet, it will nuke it with RGA. So he sets his battleships to intercept the Rush. Hopefully his plan is based on a single Rush, so perhaps he sends 3 Vic’s or T-Rexes, or whatever. But suddenly there is a Cygnus there! This has thrown a very large spanner into the works, because now his first battleship goes into battle against the Rush with a kill under its belt, but with beams and torpedoes uncharged. That makes all the difference! Instead of going into battle with the second battleship with 10-20% hull damage and therefore only 8-9 active fighter bays, the Rush will likely start the second fight with a fragment of shield power still remaining and a full 10 bays. In most cases, you will kill the 3 battleships and just lose a Cygnus. Not bad! (of course the Rush will have really heavy damage by now so you’d better have a plan for getting it back to safety!)

Roles:
Light interceptor, light combat vessel, carrier escort


Falcon Class Escort

Ship Analysis:
This ship is the reason why the Rebels can expand faster than anyone else in the game. Build a few of these at the beginning to expand and take over territory quickly, but don’t forget to build some LDSFs for developing worlds close to the homeworld. If you find a ghipsoidal planet early, it is often a good idea to quickly post a starbase there so you can turn out a Falcon and an LDSF/warship every turn. But if there’s no ghips, any native will do, since you only need warp 6 engines at best on the Falcons.

Additional Tactics:
Their uses are wide and varied, and they are the ship of choice for ground attacking because your enemy cannot see them coming unless they have scouting ships everywhere. Simply get ready for a HYPerjump, set mission to Ground Attack and HYP right onto the planet. If the enemy has no ship in orbit with Primary Enemy set to Rebel, the planet is toast. Deploy these carefully, the low crew complement means they are easily captured, and you do not want anyone else getting a hold of this ship, it is far too valuable. I used to use normal Falcons for this HYP-RGA strategy, but now I have adopted a new tactic, to build them with stardrive 1s and no weapons, tow them into position with another ship, then HYP-RGA. The reason behind this is that after the first couple of RGA, the enemy is more likely to have fleets defending his planets. You cannot guess as to which one is defended or not so its better to play it safe. If such a Falcon is captured, its use is limited to the enemy, since it is a pain to use for colonizing (in its colonizing role, it usually has to travel in deep space at least some of the way) and it cannot be used against you because it has no weapons. Note that this tactic does not always work in PHost, because there is a RGANeedsBeams option which, if turned on, obviously means that you need beams to perform the RGA mission.

Battle Tactics:
Contrary to its name, this ship is not an escort! It is a special ops ship. Some players advise you to hyperjump this ship into enemy territory and use it to hunt down freighters. This is the absolute worst thing to do! If you’re lucky, you may get a freighter or two, but an experienced enemy will begin setting traps in order to capture the falcon. Perhaps he’ll jink with the freighter, or even worse, send the freighter out alone then suddenly intercept it with a disruptor bearing warship. So don’t take the chance. If you really want to hassle the enemy, use unarmed Falcons as long-range nukes, like I told you above.

An additional use of the Falcon is as minesweepers. Yeah, 2 beams, hell that’s gonna do a lot, you might think. Well later on in the game, when you can afford to put 2 heavy phasers on them, yes it does do a lot. With hyperjump, you can land precisely in the middle of several overlapping minefields, and sweep all of them! That is like 800 mines from multiple fields, which does quickly add up. You can use them for sweeping webmines, since they can always hyper out again the next turn.

Roles:
Scout, Colonizing, REBEL GROUND ATTACK, MC shuttling


Deep Space Scout

Ship Analysis:
Forget about these, don’t build them. Sure they have decent cargo room, good range and only cost 1 engine, but they get captured just as easily as freighters do and without torpedo banks, they cannot do much against enemy capital ships. If you must colonize a dangerous area, use Tranquilities or escort the LDSFs with some powerful cheap battle-wagons like Cygnus’s or Patriots, which really pack a punch. Again, if ships just have beams, I don’t like them.

Roles:
Scouting, Colonising, Minor freight routes


Guardian Class Destroyer

Ship Analysis:
A lot of players refer to the Patriot as a round of ammunition. This ship isn’t even that. Its a hard hitting, effective torpedo boat, that only needs 1 engine, but its life expectancy against something with high-tech torpedoes isn’t much more than 10 seconds. I would only put mark 4’s on them because the cost of 6 mark 7 or 8 tubes is far too high and they are not likely to last long without the help of engine shield bonus. Cheap to build however, and with a high crew count, it won’t get captured. Use this to take non-base planets, do not use the Iron Lady.

Battle Tactics:
With a cargo capacity of only 20, you should rarely send these out alone. You need a Tranquility or a couple of Cygnus Destroyers accompanying the Guardian in a fleet. As with the Patriot though, once engine shield bonus is on, it becomes a very damaging round of ammunition. Absolutely perfect for discharging the beams and torpedo tubes of an enemy battleship. Against a large carrier it is also good at softening it up for the Rush to finish the job, it will launch 12 mark 4’s which should be enough to bring down the enemy’s shields. If paired with Patriots, this gives the Rebels a very cheap, powerful battlegroup, nasty for the enemy to deal with. As with the Cygnus, you should be aware of the feint maneuver and consider using it should you decide to launch an invasion.

Roles:
Interceptor, light combat vessel, carrier escort


Armored Transport

Ship Analysis:
No aux weapon, no special abilities… yep, you guessed it – JUNK. Don’t build them, full stop.

Roles:
Scouting, colonizing


Sage Class Frigate

Ship Analysis:
Yet another pile of junk. Yes it does have torpedo tubes but that’s just about all it has. Useless cargo bay, small fuel tanks, skeleton crew. Anything this ship can do, the Tranquility can do better.

Roles:
Light combat, perimeter defense


Sagittarius Class Transport

Ship Analysis:
Not terribly much harm in building these if you really think the Sagittarius graphic is better than the Gemini graphic, because that’s the only reason you’d ever want to choose this ship over the Gemini. The Gemini only costs slightly more credits and minerals but it gives a 33% increase in cargo capacity over the Sagittarius. But as I said, if you want to build them, fine, they will still be able to produce fighters at a decent rate.

Roles:
Fighter factory, light freighter, fleet support/resupply vessel


Tranquility Class Cruiser

Ship Analysis:
A very versatile ship. You need a few of these, not too many because their primary role is NOT combat, although they can defend themselves. Use as an escort or as a resupply vessel in a fleet. I like to use these for towing, because I usually build my Rushes with Novas or HeavyNova engines only. They have a nice cargo bay (380 KT) so they can hold supplies for rebuilding fighters or enough torps to lay quite a few minefields. Their excellent minelaying ability comes in handy when fighting cloakers. My standard armament is Disruptors with mark 7 torps. This allows them to catch freighters with the NTP Fcode and provides what I believe to be the most efficient minefield. One of the best armed freighters in the game.

Additional Tactics:
This ship is not a fighting ship! The two tubes are not enough to do much damage to the enemy. They are good for bringing along supplies to repair Rushes, and clans to repopulate conquered worlds. But during the consolidation phase of an invasion, park these in the grav wells of planets (along with Geminis) to safeguard them from attack.

Roles:
Medium combat vessel, fleet support, carrier escort


Patriot Class Light Carrier

Ship Analysis:
The classic “round of ammunition” warship, capable of taking down most torp ships with < 5 beams and inflicting rather nasty damage on most other ships with few beams. It is only hampered by the tiny cargo capacity therefore must be refilled with fighters after each combat if it is to survive for long. On perimeter defense/patrol missions it can travel alone since it isn’t too hard to quickly hop back to a starbase to refill its fighters from the Gemini(s) in orbit. But on campaigns, a Gemini/loaded Rush should be present to refill fighters and rebuild more if needed. Overall a very effective ship, extremely cheap and I usually build loads and loads of these at the beginning of the game. Later on, keep pumping a few out but you should really be focussing on Rushes by that time.

Battle Tactics:
Its best to put these behind your Cygnus’s (or Cygni? The plural of fungus is fungi is it not??) or Guardians when taking on a torpedo based fleet. Since they are light, yet potentially very destructive, especially in numbers, you must use the feint strategy detailed above under the section on the Cygnus against an experienced opponent if you do not want to see half your force get blown up in mines. I do not need to remind you that one mine hit will splatter these ships. Surprisingly, with engine shield bonus, a patriot is often enough to destroy one of the smaller battleships (Missouri, T-Rex, Victorious, Diamond Flame) if it follows after a mark 7 Cygnus. Because the Cygnus has done damage to the shields of the battleship, that has saved you 10 fighters straight off. The 30 aboard your ship are enough to finish off the hull provided the battleship’s shields are almost down. Therefore for insurance, use 2 Cygnus to lead in or a Cygnus + Guardian combo. An alternate battle order which covers for the enemy using a lead-in ship himself is 2 Cygnus-Patriot-Guardian. The Guardian must be equipped with mark 7 or 8 in this case, because it will need to finish off the enemy’s battleship if the Patriot hasn’t been able to do the job. You will only get a couple of salvo’s before the enemy recharges his torpedo banks and splatters the Guardian, so you might as well make them count!

Once you’re committed to a campaign, in great numbers, use these ships to overload the enemy’s defenses and divide his fleet. Don’t let on that you’ve a Rush fleet waiting to invade, keep this hidden at a planet. Wait until the Patriots shoot out and scatter. You will lose a few, but you’ll soften up the defenses at the enemy’s core, ready for a Rush invasion.

A word of caution: do not use these against Empire or Colonies, unless you can see lead-in ships! The 10 beams on their main battlecarriers will wipe out your 30 fighters really fast, and you will do no damage. They are okay against Robots due to the Bots’ lack of beams.

Roles:
Medium interceptor, medium combat vessel


Gemini Class Transport

Ship Analysis:
As with the majority of your ships as Rebel, in battle the Gemini has a life expectancy of around 10 seconds (if you run the VCR at fast speed on anything better than a Pentium, you may interpret the last sentence literally). But its not supposed to fight. As the ultimate fighter factory, it can build up to 40 fighters a turn for your Patriots/Rushes, and you should transfer off those fighters as soon as possible. You need to look after this ship carefully. If you need to pause your invasion to restock, then either have something guarding these, or just sit in the grav well while you wait for more reinforcements to arrive.

Additional Tactics:
At the beginning of the game, you should build them, but don’t have them building fighters full tilt, you’ll run out of moly in no time. Unless the situation demands it, you should be building ships instead of fighters to claim valuable ship slots and only building fighters as spare resources allow. Once the ship limit is close you can really crank up the fighter production.

Roles:
Fighter factory, fleet support/resupply vessel, armed freighter


Iron Lady Class Frigate

Ship Analysis:
You will rarely have the need to use this ship. True, it has the most beams out of the whole Rebel fleet, but it is tech 9. And in the Rebels case, the only reason for upgrading hulls to tech 9 is that its a necessary stepping stone on the way to tech 10! I rarely have any of these in my fleet, perhaps if I were to fight the Crystals, they may be necessary. But the safest way of sweeping a web field is a bunch of Falcons with 2 heavy phasers. If its a normal field, just sweep it with your normal ships or just stock a Rush with supplies and drive right through the field (you’ll repair up to 3 minehits).

Battle Tactics:
The uses of this ship for battle purposes are limited, but not totally non-existent. They are useful to use when you want to destroy a base, for example if you don’t have enough time to RGA it into oblivion. Equip it with 8 x-ray lasers and stardrive 1s, tow it with the Rush and have it fight the starbase first. The 16-24 fighters eliminated will give the Rush the advantage. The starbase’s weak point is the limited number of fighters it holds. A fully loaded starbase will often take down a Rush because it has so few beams, but wipe out a few of them and the Rush wins handsomely. Try not to use this ship against enemy ships, they do tend to get captured a lot.

Roles:
Medium interceptor, light combat, carrier escort


Mon Calamari / Rush Class Heavy Carrier

Ship Analysis:
This is the mighty Rebel flagship. You can’t conquer the galaxy without any of these, the Rebel fleet aside from the Rush is very weak. IMHO this is the best supercarrier in the game. Relatively cheap on minerals, 6 rather than 8 engines, but the important feature is the huge 390 KT cargo bay which gives enough room to rebuild fighters very quickly, or if you bring along a fighter building escort like a Gemini, they can carry supplies to instantly repair any damage. With a 140 fighter ordnance that leaves room for 250 supplies, enough to repair 50% damage or more than 3 mine-hits/glory devices.

Additional Tactics:
Depending on the mineral richness of the galaxy, you may wish to change your payloads. Against a torpedo race, about 100-140 fighters is enough, you can always make more after the battle using Geminis. It is always a wise idea to fill your remaining cargo space with supplies so that repairs can be made instantly. If you have the minerals to burn, increase this payload to about 180-200 fighters against another carrier race. There’s only one thing worse than losing a ship with 100 fighters in the hangar, and that’s losing a battle you would have won, if only you did not run clean out of fighters. With 180-200, you are prepared to enter a second battle fully equipped. Even better if you get a turn in between to use supplies for repairs. You have the advantage in carrier fights because you can always claim the left side of the VCR hence gain better odds. The reason the Rebels have the advantage in carrier battles is that they don’t have to “order” an attack. Whoever has the lowest battle order gets the right side and the disadvantage in carrier battles. If you are being invaded (try not to let this happen!) he will have his PE set or his mission KILL! (otherwise why is he invading!) If you’re invading, simply leave the PE blank and set mission to RGA. He then has to initiate the attack to kick you out of his territory (otherwise the RGA will nuke his planets) and therefore, he gets the right side.

Battle Tactics:
As mentioned under the entry for the Cygnus, it is good to have a lead-in torp ship but this is only effective if your enemy does not foresee and account for it. Sending in fleets of just Rushes isn’t very cost effective because if that’s all you have, the enemy will be able to come up with more cost-efficient fleets capable of destroying yours (best example: Feds with Thors, Kittys and Diplomacies when E/S bonus is on). Therefore you should throw a few Cygnus, Patriots and Guardians in to mix it up a little. Always go for the right side of the VCR against torp races; against another fighter race, the lead-in ships should go for the right; every ship after the first Rush must go for the left.

Roles:
Rebel flagship, heavy combat, fighter factory

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