Harvesting with Faction 2
Everyone in the galaxy picks on the farmers. They sit there with their slow-ass cargo ships just waiting to be plundered, essentially an easy source of resources for the rest of the galaxy to build on. They fall apart almost as easily as the faction 3 Reds and their weapons seem weak. However, it can also be argued that they are the most powerful faction in the galaxy, potentially just as broken as faction 4. How is this possible you say? – Economics.
AI doesn’t really know how to use the farmers effectively. Even if you build your ships for maximum efficiency, they just don’t use them right. But things are much different with you leading the charge. Your ship and good leadership will be the engine that makes this work.
The secret to this hidden power are the seed launchers. They are the only block in the game that can grow plants, and as you’ve seen, plants are where the resources come from. Forget solar panels. Solar panels are ok for the AI, but seeds will provide oodles of R. Flowing mountains of R that cash-in like a Las Vegas slot machine hitting a million-dollar jackpot. Sounds good, right?
In the normal game the farm ships just shoot seeds out randomly, but if you assemble a container with the launcher inside, you can have a mobile greenhouse that can outproduce anything in the game. As the seeds grow and mature, you want a few harvesters in your ship to collect the resources. Seeds will also burst and produce more seeds, so once you get the cycle started, it can be a bit of a runaway train for a while.
Growing Area
When you start out, you’ll have a simple box made with some sort of plant-growing block. The bigger the box, the more seeds you can produce. But that’s noob production. To ramp things up think more about surface area. Seeds need to be attached to a surface to grow, but if you only have a giant box, there’s only so much surface area they can attach to. To make things better, consider adding shelves or some other structure within your container to maximize the available space. Seeds need about six blocks high to grow, so that should be about your target spacing. You want to maximize space, but not have it so cramped that they can’t spread to the whole container. Also, for your growing blocks, you don’t need to use large blocks. All you need is the surface area, so the scaled-down small strut pieces will save both space and weight in your ship while also giving you maximum surface for growing.
Make sure you have enough harvesters. For a large ship, you’ll probably need six to ten to grab all the resources when the plants are in full bloom, otherwise you’ll have a purple trail behind your ship. You’ll also need at least two factories, that way you can punch ships out faster, or if one is blocked for some reason the other one can still be operating. The other thing you’ll need is massive amounts of storage. A normal capital ship would be designed with enough storage space to produce another 8000P ship, but your farm ship is going to need far more space. Think like 50,000R worth of storage. This way you can comfortably contain the uneven blooms of the seeds as well as have plenty of reserves to punch out some large ships as needed.
The goal is to have a farm ship that can produce about 400-500R per second when the seeds are in bloom, a capacity of around 50,000R, and the ability to produce several capital ships at the drop of a hat. This will give you the horsepower you need to bully the competition. If you’d like a short-cut, you can download my ship here.
Weaponry
The Farmers actually have a dizzying array of weapons. Many of them are very similar, so lets break ’em down and see what we can use.
Small Turrets
The most important thing here is to figure out what your priority is. Small ship that needs range and velocity, or a large ship that needs masses of cheap weapons for point defense? Maybe you already have defense lasers, but need more damage at shorter range? Your needs will define which gun to use.
MLS Avenger: This one is the most expensive P wise and energy wise, but it’s also the most effective. The rate of fire and velocity allow it to actually hit moving targets.
MLS Anti-Missile: These are cheaper than the Avenger, and stat-wise it looks like they do a lot less damage. However, they do splash damage, so these guys can be devestating to smaller ships when used in quantity. They also act as good point defense.
Minigun, Swatter, RK-12, and Phlanx: These guns all pretty similar. The Minigun stands-out as doing the most damage per second. Almost as much as the Avenger. The Swatter would be next in-line and is a lot cheaper. It’s short range means it’s probably best in quantity on larger ships. The RK-12 is the cheapest option, but I can’t see why you wouldn’t just use one of the other guns. The Phlanx is pointless. It has the most range, but the Avenger is actually more effective at distance because of it’s higher rate of fire and velocity. If you really need range, you’re not going to be using these guns anyway.
Large Turrets
Similar to the smaller turrets, there are a lot of options and they all look the same.
HC3, HC2: The projectile speed and fire rates are slow, but these are the longest range turret guns in the game. You want these in your fleet in good numbers to deal damage at distance.
MC3: Doesn’t have the range of the HC guns, but has a better fire rate. The best of the mid-range cannons. It has the most damage per second and is accurate.
Station Battery: Might not look like it’s very good, but it deals splash damage. So it’s good, but it’s not better than the MC3. The MC3 is cheaper and fires faster.
A-75 Spitter: Does the same damage as the MC3, but because of the burst-fire it can’t hit targets at any distance. Better suited to short-range point defense.
Heavy Turrets / Bolsheviks / Scatterguns
The Heavy Turrets are easily the most powerful weapon the Farmers have. High splash damage, but with slow projectiles. If you look at the stats, it looks like they have good range, but because the projectiles are slow, they’re easy to dodge. But get in close, and they will tear-through armor surprisingly fast. Equip them on your capital, and front-line armored ships. You want the enemy to either be running, or getting hammered with splash damage. Bolsheviks produce a bit less damage than the Heavy Turrets, but they’re a lot easier to build into your ships. Especially the smaller ones.
Scatterguns have very short range and are only effective when an enemy is directly in front, but they’re very cheap for their damage output and can potentially do as much damage as the Heavy Turrets. Build them into the fronts of your armored blockers to pound through armor and shields.
Lasers
One of the best blocks the farmers have are the Station Defense Lasers. Similar to the faction 4 lasers, these are great at eliminating incoming missiles and drones, thus preventing a lot of damage to your generally weak ships. Although the P cost is a little high, I can’t see why you wouldn’t want them on all your ships. Then you have three different sizes of attacking lasers. These are good at providing damage at short range for minimal energy cost, preferably against smaller or lightly armored targets. Small, maneuverable ships can’t dodge lasers. However, they don’t have the brute strength needed to cut through heavily armored opponents.
One thing to note with the Arkas Lasers that may not be apparent – the small ones have the best range at 1,000. It might be better to use bunches of those rather than the big versions. Your total energy and P costs will go up, but the extra range and overall damage can be a big factor. For example; you could use one Arkas-3 for 77P, 17 energy per second, 250 dps, and a range of 800, OR use nine Arkas-1’s for 153P, 54 energy per second, 675 dps, and a range of 1,000.
Sniper Guns
If it wasn’t for faction 4, these would be the best range guns in the game. With ranges at 5,000 and 6,000 they beat pretty much everything except missiles and drones. The main problem is the projectiles are slow. In most cases you can’t really take advantage of the range because the enemy simply dodges. Instead, think of these as high damage fixed-guns. The Longbows have higher damage, but the Railguns are ridiculously cheap at 29P. Equip multiple guns to make up for the lack of velocity.
Missiles
These are your best long-range option. They are a little expensive, and they’re a little slow, but they’re guided and they’re actually the most powerful missiles outside of nukes. They can wreck opponents when used in quantity. Don’t bother with the small Sparrow missiles. Their health is so tiny that they get shot down by the slightest thing. Use the medium or large missiles.
However, the Sparrows will come in handy if you face nukes. Set them to point-defense and they will be more effective at detonating nukes than your other PD weapons.
Shields / Armor
This faction is structurally weak, but not because it doesn’t have enough defense.
The best defense are the shields. You have three different sizes, so they can be easily equipped on any size ship. The largest one can shrug-off 4,000 damage.
The armor blocks are good. add a layer to your ship and you can sustain more hits. The problem is, it’s heavy, and the pieces don’t really fit well with the other blocks.
You also have unobtanium, which is arguably the strongest armor in the game. Sections of unbotanium can have an enormous amount of health. The down-side is the blocks are small. Although they don’t break easily, the connections tend to fall apart with splash-damage and you end-up with pieces flying off. A staple rule for Reassembly is that bigger blocks are better because they hold together. So having small pieces is a bit of a down-side. The solution is to encase unobtanium in strategic places, like the front of a ship, or around the command module.
You also want to be careful with unobtanium and other ‘growable’ blocks. If it can grow plants and you have plants inside your ship, the plant seeds can fracture the structure of the ship. If you use unobtanium, you should encase it inside normal blocks to avoid this.
So let’s review. We have a lot of shield and armor options for the Farmers, so why are they so weak?
1. The Command Module is weak. It will shatter with even minimal splash damage. You either need to keep it well shielded, or place it as far from danger as possible behind lots of armor. If a generator explodes, it can kill your Command Module as well.
2. Heavy thrusters. You’ll immediately notice that the farmers are not as fast as ships from other factions. The thrusters have more mass, so even though they have comparable thrust, the added weight slows them down. There’s no real solution to this except to add more thrusters. This means a farm ship of a certain P cost, when compared to an equal ship of almost any other faction will be the slower or more expensive ship. Build for reasonable speed and maneuverability, but be aware that you’re going to be a little sluggish compared to other factions.
Tactics
Build lots of smaller ships that will dodge reasonably well, but still do measurable damage to larger battleships. The AI on smaller ships has a natural tendency to avoid contact with large enemies, which means they tend to stand-back in a conflict with Agents. Take advantage of this by equipping your smaller (4,000P or less) ships with your long-range weapons; missiles, Rail Guns and Longbows, and HC2 and HC3 turret guns. The Farmers have an advantage against most opponents in range, so use it with many smaller gunboats that can create a wall of firepower from a distance.
Your also want some heavy armored meat-heads to act as blockers or decoys. These guys will do good damage against heavily armored Agents and keep the rest of your fleet from getting overwhelmed. Heavy armor, big shields, use Heavy turrets, Bolsheviks, and Scatterguns to pack a big short-range punch. These guys are not as useful against Faction 4 or Nukes, but you should have a few to at least slow the enemy down.
Together, these two should make a reasonable fleet that can deal damage against Agents. Your smaller ships hanging back shooting with range weapons, and your armored core slowing up the enemy and hammering away with splash damage. You won’t have to worry much about smaller ships and opposing drones because your defensive lasers will make short work of them. Your main concern is taking out larger Agent ships before they cause havok with your fleet and reduce your numbers.
Your ship however, should be the generator. The engine of the fleet if you will. Your allied ships will still die fairly quickly even if well designed, so it’s your job to replace them at a consistent rate. An enemy killed one of your ships? Your greenhouse should be generating R, and your factories punch-out a fresh batch of allies. One down – two new ones in place. Keep the numbers in your favor and your ships will compensate for their weaknesses. Target the enemy, but keep your flagship away from the conflict. Use that reverse button so your allies stay in front of you.
If you lose most of your fleet, retreat immediately. Your greenhouse ship is likely to be overrun on it’s own without allies, and if you have a hold full of seeds, you’ll be giving it to the enemy Agent when you’re killed. Retreat, build up your fleet again and return with an army at your back.
Build Many Many Bases
Your general mobility is not great. But it’s not hard to build heavily armored and shielded bases. They’re great at holding territory. Against difficult Agents like (Faction 4 or Nukes), you can hide behind them and fire at range. And, since you have unlimited resources, it’s not hard to plop-down giant battle stations on a regular basis. You can even use the big hex blocks to make your own weaponized asteroids.
Multiplying
Factories are heavy, but if you put them on small, cheap ships, they will act as collectors, and reproduce more of their kind, depriving any other factions from collecting in that area. The bases produce factory ships and the factory ships produce factory ships, thus multiplying the multiplication. You can maximize this by making sure your cheapest factory ship is the cheapest ship design in your inventory. This design will be preferred whenever something gets built. It’s also nice to have a seed launcher on this ship. That way your territories will always have plenty of plants and easy R.
There you go. This faction is not strong by default. But, by harnessing their strengths they can be a powerhouse. … or bulldozer, …. or wood chipper, … maybe a lawn tractor?