The Rebel fleet is a giant armada of endless Rebel warships that hunt the player down, advancing with each jump. The fleet on the sector map appears as an area that's been shaded red, which represents the actual fleet, and arrows and the word "warning" contained by a red line, which represents where the fleet will be in one jump. If the player ends up jumping into the Rebel fleet, or the current beacon is "captured" by the fleet, a fight with a Rebel Elite Fighter will ensue.
It is not worthwhile to destroy the Elite Fighter or kill its crew, as the massive armada of other ships prevents the player from stripping the ship for scrap and resources, and the only reward for defeating an Elite Fighter is just 1 unit of fuel, and the fighter (and possibly the anti-ship batteries) is likely to deal out a lot of damage. A sound strategy is to destroy their weapons and wait for the FTL Drive to charge.
Notes[]
- The Rebel advance rate can be altered by actions, navigation and equipment:
- In events where you encounter Rebel scouts and Automated ships, which start charging their FTL Drive, letting them escape or not making your own FTL Jump from the beacon before them, will double the fleet pursue rate for 1 turn.
- Hiring a mercenary can delay the Rebel fleet advance for 2 turns.
- Certain decisions in other events can result in increasing or delaying the Rebel fleet advance by various amount of turns.
- Visiting nebula beacons in a non-nebula sector halves the Rebel advance rate for that turn.
- Visiting nebula beacons while going through a nebula sector reduces the Rebel advance rate only partially (by 1/5 of regular beacon advance rate).
- Using Distraction Buoys augmentation postpones Rebel advancement at the beginning of the sector by 1 turn.
- Beacons captured by the Rebels will appear as two exclamation marks in a red circle, and mousing over the beacon will reveal the text, "The Rebels have expanded their search here. Very dangerous."
- Whether or not Advanced Edition is enabled, the Anti Ship Battery will target and attempt to damage your ship with projectile that deals 3 hull damage in addition to hull breach. It can either be evaded, preferably with cloaking (100% evasion guarantees success), or avoided if you make FTL jump before ASB's projectile reaches your ship.
- If you are out of fuel and the Rebels capture the beacon you are at, the event text will be different, and destroying the Rebel Elite Fighter will yield 4 fuel as opposed to 1.
- There is a glitch where this beacon will never be an ion storm even on a previously nebula beacon. Revisiting the beacon repeatedly will always grant 4 fuel and the same event regardless of whether the player need the fuel. This can be exploited in order to gain absurd amounts of fuel.
- When the Rebel fleet takes a beacon, it overwrites the previous event and any environmental hazard that used to be at that beacon.
- The Rebel fleet causes all nebula beacons it takes over to get an ion storm, except for nebula exit beacons.
- Nebula beacons never have ASBs, except for being out of fuel: then an ASB will be present with no nebula environment if you are waiting at the beacon, otherwise it will be a nebula environment with no ASB. In both cases, an Elite Fighter will charge its FTL Drive from the beginning of the fight.
- ASBs will never occur at exit beacons on Easy mode.