The Rebel Confederation

Rebel portrait from Planets Nu

The Rebel Confederation race icon from VGA Planets Nu

Race Characteristics

True to its sci-fi inspiration, The Rebel Confederation specializes in effective small ships. However, they do have the ability to build fighters in space to fill their Rush Class Heavy Carrier fleet.

Racial Abilities

• Build fighters in space: Carriers can easily build fighters with the cost of 3 Trit, 2 Moly, and 5 Supplies, using their cargo holds. Shared with the Colonies and the Robots.
• 90,000 clans on ice planets: Rebels are the only race that really can exploit ice planets. Your colonists won't grow on ice planets but they don't die either.
• Rebel Ground Attack: Maybe the Rebels' most powerful feature. This will cause great havoc on enemy planets. It is even useful against own planets sometimes.
• Planet Immunity: Rebel ships cannot be attacked by planets.
• Cannot be detected by Imperial Dark Sense.
• Bioscan reports bypass the Imperial's faking ability.

Ship List

See The master ship list for a list of The Rebel Confederation ships.

Important Ships

• Falcon Class Escort: The Falcon is one of just 3 ships that can Hyperjump and the one with the biggest cargo room. This allows it to travel between 340 and 360 ly in just one turn. Since the Falcon has fuel for 3 jumps in a row it is extremely useful as a transporter for small amounts of cargo or Megacredits. The Falcon allows the Rebels to expand extremely fast in the early game phase and lets you find out who your neighbours are very early.

• Cygnus Class Destroyer: This is a small and cheap torpedo ship. It has not much use but in conjunction with a Patriot it is a strong weapon.

• Tranquility Class Cruiser: This ship is a Mine Laying Fiend, and extremely cheap for what its worth. A 460 Fuel tank and 380 Cargo space make this ship freighter useful when need be as well. And since laying mine fields across enemy non-web mines will destroy them, it can be a useful tool for getting rid of enemy mine fields quickly.

• Patriot Class Light Carrier: Don't laugh at this very tiny ship. The patriot is extremely cheap and with its 6 fighterbays it can definitely be a threat for your enemies. Combine this with a cheap torpedo ship (e.g. the Cygnus) that takes down the shields of your enemy first.

• Gemini Class Transport: This is the ship you build fighters on! You can build 40 free fighters (costing just minerals and supplies) in one turn. Build some of these to fill your bases with fighters and to arm your Rushs.

• Iron Lady Class Frigate: This ship is partially useful. It has small cargo and it has only two tubes and is very easily captured. However it is your capital ship with the highest amount of beam weapons, so put Heavy Phasers on it and use it for sweeping mines.

• Rush Class Heavy Carrier: Fear the Rush! With 10 fighterbays nobody can ignore this ship. Since it is relatively cheap (just 6 engines) you can build several of these.

Strategy

Early Game

Expand fast

Be quick! In the starting phase build many Falcons and colonise distant planets before your neighbours even realise you're there. Build many starbases so you can fill more slots and build more ships (at least Falcons with low-tech engines) than others. These Falcons will let you settle more planets in less time. Exploring more planets also rises the probability to find the good planets faster giving you an advantage in the long term.

Be offensive

It is risky, but you might want to set your Falcons missions to Rebel Ground Attack. Since the distance of homeworld is sometimes around 350 ly there is a chance to "accidentally" hit your neighbours homeworld. If you RGA him right in the first turns he will not be prepared for that attack and it will give you a major advantage over him. However he will be angry at you ...

Notes

Self-RGA

Even though Rebel Ground Attack is mainly a weapon against your enemies you can use it against yourself. It has two interesting effects that you can profit from:

• it makes your natives happy
• it destroys factories and mines (which make natives unhappy)

So if you find a good cash cow you might overtax the natives (letting their happiness drop down) and build many factories and mines (which you would normally not do in order to not annoy the natives). Then get a few LDSFs , beam up most of your clans and RGA your own planet. After the planet is cleared, let down the colonists again and send your LDSFs to the next planet and repeat the whole thing.

Alliances

Overall

Ally with cloaking races

Get cloakers! They're extremely useful for you just to check for enemy planets without capital ships in the orbit. Find these planets and hyperjump there with a Falcon and RGA.