Rebel Galaxy Outlaw: Best Guide Yet

First: I. LOVE. DOUBLE. DAMAGE. GAMES. Small crew of incredible folks making games we’ve all been dying to play and maybe even didn’t know it. Yeah, I’ve sunk a ton of time in the original Rebel Galaxy, so you know I was PUMPED to play the new one.

That’s right… I played and played and PLAYED the original. Loved it. Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is the prequel sequel (hah!) to the original, playing as Juno Markev (the Aunt of the character you play in the original) with a sordid past – here we see why/how. Lore/script/story aside, I’m here to talk about Rebel Galaxy Outlaw and how to get gud, son.

Let’s dive in – most guides thusfar kinda suck and don’t get you what you need to know other than what you might already grasp having played the original – this is NOT the original. I’m going to try and explore some decent ways to ACTUALLY be successful. First, let’s talk about dogfighting.

Dogfighting

Dogfighting is all about energy management. Energy controls many different aspects of your ship’s abilities and it’s split up into 3 parts: shields, engines, and weapons. Increasing one decreases the others.

Not sure what your capacity and/or recharge is and feel like you’re always out of energy? Hit start (go to the PDA) and tab over to the SHIP tab. There you’ll see at the bottom “POWER CAPACITY” and “POWER RECHARGE”.

Coyote’s specs with a lvl 4 powerplant

It’s not necessarily the best to have the biggest guns/shields/etc as it can leave you with little energy to spare. I’ve racked up enough credits to fly the Coyote equipped with a repair droid, power plant lvl 4, duratanium armor (big duh – get it now! ZERO DRAW!), and the shield generator lvl 4.

However, despite having 60GJ (is that a GigaJoule?) of power recharge, those pieces alone take up a HUGE draw which doesn’t leave much left for recouping energy or for sustained weapon fire!

This doesn’t matter when you start to add up the weapons that don’t draw energy. That’s right friends! I like to roll with 1 or 2 Photon Cannons (which DO take energy draw) – generally I only roll 1… The rest should be AUTO CANNONS!!! These things are amazing. While they do have a delay while the reload (why can’t I reload with a button press between fights?!!!), when they come back around, DAMN! Be ready. Those Jackrabbits never stood a chance.

Auto cannons don’t take draw, don’t cost anything in ordinance, and do SERIOUS hull damage (94 DPS + 200% against hulls = 188 DPS). I pair those with the Photon Cannon, because that does 200% damage to Shields and has relatively low draw.

Why Worry About Energy Draw?

Here’s why – you can double down on energy weapons and run out of energy all day OR…. you could rock those auto cannons and set your energy management for weapons all the way down, leaving the rest of your energy management to shields and engines. This means you can run to recoup, run to get your next target in range, or take some serious punishment and not GAF. Meanwhile, not having a shortage of ability to return fire.

THEN, in scenarios where your shields are getting roughed up, hit the flight menu and dump excess energy into shields.

Since your weapons aren’t using much energy, you should regularly have full energy unless you’re firing your guns and hitting the afterburners. Dump your energy into your shields whenever you need and your Duratanium Armor will never know you were in the scrap from hell! Neither will your repair bill =]

Targeting Mode

If you don’t know what this is, you’re not doing it right.

Mid dogfight, I’m always referring to this. I’ve had half a mind to hotkey it to my right shoulder button (xbox controller) because I use it so much. This gives you CRITICAL information about what’s going on in the heat of a battle and helps you prioritize your next target. Select your target and hold L to guide you towards them and fire! Scratch one! Not only does it show you each bandit (not bogey – those are unidentified opponents – targeting mode tells all!), but it shows you who they have targeted.

When you’re trying to protect a group of freighters, fire this puppy up and go for the bandits targeting the freighters first and ignore the ones focusing you. You can even taunt them to get them off their targets and either run or come at you.

Here’s why you WANT to do that: You already got the LVL 4 shields, right? Those can absorb 700 damage and if you’re rockin’ the Duratanium armor, your hull can take another 750; You can take the punishment of 3, 4, 5+ bandits… the freighters succumb to 2 or 3 QUICKLY! They’ll even go so far as to tell you they’re getting “torn apart” – help those guys out first! Take the punishment, dump your excess energy into shields (because you have auto cannons and can afford it energy-wise) when needed, and keep on firing till they’re dust!

Last thing I’ll say about dogfighting is regarding technique… Holding the follow button (“L” trigger?) gets you most of the way there, even in ships that aren’t agile at all – like the Durston. Here’s a quick technique that might help though: when a ship approaches within close proximity or is going really slow (like a bomber), hold down the brake button and drift a bit. You can still hold L while you do this, allowing them to zig and zag their way through coming straight back into your sights. Sometimes they’ll even parallel your course and shooting them is like shooting fish in a barrel! Easy peasy =]

Taking Out Large Targets

In some engagements, you’ll encounter bigger ships like Destroyers, Cruisers, etc… In the original Rebel Galaxy, you could normally find a little nook in their afterburner wake to chill and fire with minimal incoming damage. In Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, you may find that even in finding that sweet spot, you’re still getting some guns or maybe got too close to their engines (ow) and it drains your front end shields — if you have mostly auto cannons (beating this one to a pulp because it’s that important), you could dump all that full energy back into shields and go about your day.

No turrets? No problems! Also, pretty sure this one is invulnerable – hell if I didn’t try though! That’s 30 minutes I’m never getting back ={

OTHERWISE, the one huge combat difference in this game is that you have the opportunity to completely shut down the offense of the larger ships. Thusfar, I’ve only encountered giant turret boats – so this is a great way to disable their ability to shell out any damage. Getting the Ranger LS Infinity targeting system will allow you to specifically target and shoot out the cannons sitting on the sides, tops, bottoms, etc… Once their turrets are out, they’re quite easy pickins’!

Lastly, one of my favorite weapons for these larger ships are the Dumbfire Rockets. The Swarm Rockets are fine – they do the most damage, but they can also be avoided with an EMP. Sit behind the large ships and chip away at them with your guns and dumbfire rockets – they’re cheap, have decent reload, and still pack a wallop! If you have the equipment bay in Bountiful Vista (more on that later), you can get an upgraded version that has a few extra capacity =]

Making Money

Who cares about this? Play the damn game already! Do quests, answer distress calls, buy new gear so you can handle bigger, more bountiful quests, and before you know it, credits don’t really matter.

Just playin’! Unlike the first one, you only get a fraction of your cash back when you sell your gear off (except for ships!), so don’t SELL your gear back. Leave it in surplus if you’re trying something out and come back to it when it’s useful again – especially mining turrets and rockets when your new ship has a downgraded turret or missile point counts.

One thing I highly recommend early on is to buy a repair droid. This guy will save you TONS of cash in the long run. Don’t shy away from spending that 30k =]

Rockfarming for the black market, Eureka for Bountiful Vista.

Oh, and before I forget, if you start accumulating less than legal goods in your hold, you can sell them at any station that has a “black market” rather than the typical “commodities” trade hub.

Not sure where to find one? Head over to Granite in the Rockfarming System where all law is taken as more of a guideline. Or, if you’re not close to Rockfarming, there’s another option towards the top of the System Map in the Medicine Hat System called “Dautry Outpost”. Lastly, there’s a black market in the Hampton System (top right corner of the section map) at a little station called Cordell – the “Black Market Boutique”.

In each place, you’ll find an Independent’s station that will gladly buy those Human Transplants and explosives off you. Hey – it’s more cash than carrying it around till you get caught with it or finally find the one off station where it’s not illegal.

OH! And also before I forget, if a dodge patrol is telling you it’s performing a scan for illegal substances, feel free to jettison those goodies out before they cut radio and complete their scan. Sure, someone else might (and probably will) tractor some of those items in, but it’s better than going hostile with the patrol if you intend to stay lawful.

Honestly making serious cash fast

Ships are the one thing you can go between without losing credits! I’ll say it again later, but the Durston is for making cash, the Coyote is for winning. If you want to make cash, go for the biggest hold you can find – this is where the Durston (one ship before the Coyote) comes in. Throw a Cargo Hold Expander lvl 3 in and you can either travel the universe and pick up all the cargo from your defeated foes from missions and distress calls, or invest in a mining turret to mine your heart out. Or both.

Speaking of mining (the fastest way to make some cash with low effort)….

How to Mine in Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

Head out with an empty hold, equipped with a mining scanner (under components in any station that has an equipment bay) and a mining turret (you’ll only need one). A mining scanner and turret/weapon IS required – so don’t get out there and realize you don’t have one of those two!

Set a destination for one of the locations that a bartenders suggest when you ask about the latest news… if there are asteroids laying about, you’re almost guaranteed to strike gold – literally – plus many other high value items!

“Resources detected” – oh be still my beating heart!

Scan the area using the scanner from the flight menu to find resources. You’ll notice the onboard computer tells you “Resources found” – get set, cause you’re about to make some serious dough.

Use this scanner – maybe even multiple times to ensure you can (and continue to) see the good stuff!

Once you’ve scanned and detected resources, all you have to do is find one of the golden checkered areas on the resource asteroid of your choice! Switch to your mining turret or take aim with a mining laser and fire away! Feel free to relocate all energy to weapons to ensure you don’t run out, but honestly, mining in Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is NOT like farming Faces of Goyu (or w/e) and antimatter-specs in the original. It takes mere seconds with a mining turret to get the goodies. Each resource (as of this writing) gets you a few ore and a few other things as well. I’ve gotten antimatter, alien specimens, and a bunch of ore from each asteroid.

This is how we do it =]

Walking away from one mining trip netted me around +85k credits in about 20 minutes – even with having to figure everything out. I filled my entire cargo hold (44 tons) and could have gone back! You need cash?! You need the Durston equipped with mining tools, and you need to start mining.

Another Entertaining Prospect

I have also gone to pirate bases and just wrecked all the pirates, tractored their cargo, and sold it later. That was kinda fun. Bases – like the original – seem pretty indestructible, so feel free to waste some ammo on those. Ultimately, this didn’t net a ton of cash, but it was fun and I did walk off with about 17k worth of goodies for a 5ish minute dogfight. Be prepared to find a black market afterwards though!

Summary for making cash

At the end of the day, two ways get you the most: 1) your “buddies” (folks you can call upon to join you in battle like Richter, Satchel, Marla) will offer quests which are more lucrative than most, so don’t ignore them when they ask for assistance! And 2) scouring the universe for resources and mining. There doesn’t seem to be any single item that will get you rich like the original (faces of goyu and antimatter specs), so making money is all about the size of your cargo hold.

Wait. Hold the phone. What’s THIS?!!

Baryonic Catalyst?!! Well… it’s no Face of Goyu from the original, but that’s a nice chunk of change! Found a couple of these in the systems to the top right. What’s better even yet? They have a tendency to be in demand:

Huh… Alright then. That’s WAYYY better than hitting 777 in the slots!

At a max bet of 500, this is a $15k win. Nice! …but it’s no Baryonic Catalyst!

Anyways, like I said before, the Durston is for getting cash, the Coyote is for winning fights. Swap ’em at will, leave your excess gear in surplus, refit your weapons, and keep flyin’.

Bountiful Vista

If you don’t know what this is, you CLEARLY haven’t been listening to the ads on the radio and need to find it immediately. Nestled in the Eureka System (see sector map screenshot from above – right next to the Texas System) is a rock you can buy. A station of your own. A home in a galaxy of hostiles. Rumored to be a backwater mining central, it seemed to have fizzled out. As such, do yourself a favor and don’t take the first offer Spanner gives you. Play a little hardball and you can get it for a fraction of the cost – you didn’t hear that from me though! Spanner is my homie =]

Bit by bit, you can build it up to have an equipment bay, a mission station, a shipyard, and more — I haven’t gotten that far yet, but next piece for me seems to be a gambling hub.

All I know is Bountiful Vista gives perks. First, the perks are just more capacity for all of your launchers (ie: rockets and such). I gotta find out what’s next, because I’m hoping it’s amazeballs.

Bountiful Vista Shipyard [Update]

IT IS amazeballs. So, here’s why: once you get your shipyard up and running, it offers modified versions of the Sonora, Sandhawk, Durston, and Coyote. These modified ships have a new coat of paint, generally modify speed and maneuverability, and then have different cargo hold sizes, turret counts, etc. It’s not a landslide upgrade modification – as each has a form of trade off.

With All that being said, let’s meet the new ships!

The Sequoia

Ignore the red – I snapped this while currently owning The Beluga, so it’s comparing against that!

Slightly faster than the Sonora, it adds one missile hardpoint, 4 additional ton cargo hold, loses a turret, but then grows it’s max shield, powerplant, and cargo ranks from two to three! This feels like a pretty good upgrade for the Sonora!

The Beluga

Holy cow! Errr, whale! This is a modification to the Durston. The Beluga loses a missle hardpoint, loses 4 tons for its cargo bay, but adds a turret. It’s no more or less faster or agile (hah!) than its original, but it keeps the max ranks for shields, power plant, and cargo. Ultimately, the third turret can help you get out of scraps or have more convenient mining options if you go that route. Losing 4 tons in the cargo hold is kind of a kick in your mining operation’s pants! Between the two – I might just stick with the Durston, since the turret’s have just about as bad of aim as I do D=

The Blood Eagle

Again, we’re comparing against the Beluga – don’t mind the red stats here!

The Blood Eagle is the modified version of The Sandhawk. Not gonna lie, I went straight from the Sonora to the Durston – so my thoughts on these ships as of right now are “Hey, I need to try these ships”. However, the Sandhawk and Blood Eagle share the fastest top speeds and maneuverability in the game, so if agility is a big factor for your playstyle, you’re still in good company (maybe even better)!

The Blood Eagle adds one missle point, adds one max shield rank and TWO max powerplant ranks, but loses it’s one paultry cargo rank. Wow. You have a bogey you need to catch and kill, the Blood Eagle is your bird of choice.

The Dingo

The Dingo is of course a modified version of the Coyote. It’s slower, a bit less maneuverable, and *slightly* less armed to the teeth. Top speed dives from 430 MPS down to 400 MPS and you lose 5 DPS (degrees per second – not damage) in maneuverability; ultimately, nothing to cry about. You lose 2 weapon hardpoints (hey! I needed those auto cannons!), but gain 2 missile hardpoints. This puppy is for making small work of those cruisers that always seem to pop up at the most inopportune times (am I the only one that LOVES the dumbfire missiles, btw?).

The big benefit to the Dingo though, is she’s got a bigger cargo hold – going from a 5 ton cargo hold to an 8, and the max cargo rank from 1 to 2. With the Cargo Extender 2, this gets the Dingo’s hold capacity up to a whopping 18 tons – that’s not too bad for a fighter – and if you’re out doing merchant guild quests, this is a huge enabler.

Bountiful Vista Spoiler D=

It appears Double Damage left us a little insight into what all we’ll be able to unlock at Bountiful Vista. See for yourself, the icons don’t lie:

Another cool thing is that there are perks you get from unlocking most of these pieces. For instance:

I haven’t paid much attention to how much and/or when this happens, but feel free to add it to the comments section below if you’ve been keeping score here. Regardless, that’s a nice perk =]

Last bits on Bountiful Vista

Bountiful Vista is your home in the galaxy, but it also gives you some of those component goodies that you can only find in some of the stations (I think just the ones with a merchant’s guild). Like for instance the Secret Stash and Smuggler’s Hold Cargo Extenders, upgrades to all the missile point weapons, and who could forget about Spanner?! That quirky, mildly timid, very helpful guy that sends you off into the galaxy with a shopping list and a bill for the next piece to build out.

Meet Spanner – Your one and only confidant in Bountiful Vista!

Ok, so maybe you don’t need to find it immediately, but it sure is fun to rock out the quests for good ol’ Spanner and liven up the atmosphere in Bountiful Vista. Hah! That Spanner. He’s a good droid =]

Critiques

Everyone has their opinions, right? Well… why not me? So, while I absolutely love the game thusfar, I do have some thoughts on how they went right, and how they went wrong.

First, I love the addition of Bountiful Vista. What a great aspect of the game the original didn’t feature. Who doesn’t want a home? Who doesn’t wanna upgrade all the things and see what goodies come next? Love this!

Next, I think the “Autopilot” was a mistake. I really loved upgrading my ship’s capability in the first Rebel Galaxy to go from putzing through a galaxy, to SCREAMING through it. Then being able to turn as you go to avoid the next asteroid belt or w/e… Autopilot in Rebel Galaxy Outlaw kinda cheapens the vastness of space in the game. Then it feels like to “liven it up”, they created interruptions like ships in close proximity, hostiles, and distress signals to make it feel less one-dimensional. These can get rather annoying when trying to get where you’re going… And I know, you’re going to say “but Ryan – hit your sublight and stop crying about it”.

And sure, you wouldn’t be wrong, but you can’t steer it, it doesn’t get faster by upgrading your ship, and it’s a terrible waste of time compared to autopilot.

Now that autopilot is a thing, is there a way to go back? Nah… Which is why it’s kinda borked the experience of space travel. Boo.

Next, I really wish they’d elaborate on the comms with other ships! Holy smokes! How fun is it to taunt an opponent right before you smoke them?!!! Then, each time I come across a trader in the area, a quick little “How y’all doing?” is definitely in order. It’s a bit skin deep though – but it seems like there is a ton of room here to build upon and grow the game. Potential quests, trades, etc… Each time getting a “The board is green and the flying is easy!” is a little monotonous, but I still check in =]

How great would it be to trade some of those components or robot modules rather than having to tell them to drop their cargo so you can keep building out Bountiful Vista? Hey, I may be lawful(-ish), but in this galaxy, sometimes these materials are few and far between!

Best Bug Ever

I found a bug (that I haven’t exactly reported yet….. wink wink) that led me through some pretty entertaining times. At first meeting Sharky, I started the mission, flew off the wrong way b/c I wasn’t paying attention, and did something else for a while. I got the ol’ “Mission Failed” text.

Not sure if that was what kicked it off, but when I went back to restart the mission, I could talk to Sharky time and time again about this mission (where she challenges you to a game of 8-ball).

Here’s where this gets awesome:

6 Instances of the same quest all at once – what fresh hell is this?! Wait. Nope – they’re stocked full of gold ore. Nevermind – nothing to see here… Move along, people!

While going through the quest line 6 times did get mildly annoying at times, it kinda paid off here. You eventually run into an Irish sounding scoundrel nicknamed “The Chaplin” (IIRC). He’s off to raid some cargo vessels for their gold.

I have to say, this was one of my favorite moments of gameplay thusfar – totally by accident. It felt like one of the star battles straight out of a Star Wars movie. TONS of action, dodging other craft, threading between cargo vessels, locking on to your next target, taking TONS of fire… holy shit that was exhilarating!!! Then to top it all off, I had to go swap out to a Durston to take everything home – still took 2 trips! I sold over 60 gold ore to a nearby station who must have been in incredibly short gold ore supply!

Do yourself a favor – talk to Sharky a shitton, fail this mission repeatedly, fight for your life and have a blast doing it!

Lastly

I’m compiling a list of all the systems, stations and what they produce vs. what they demand… I’ll go ahead and post that somewhere here soon (please visit again soon as this guide is evolving!), although it’ll lack the pirate stations since I’m all lawful(-ish) and whatnot. If you have the pirate station data, feel free to hit me up! I know Double Damage loves their RNG (random number generator), but IIRC (if I remember correctly), they shy’d away from it this time, so hopefully the stations share similar needs through each play through. [Update – they seem to evolve over time OR I goofed when I jotted the data down the first time]

If you’re wondering where the screenshots are stored, they’re in your documents folder under Documents\My Games\Double Damage Games\RebelGalaxyOutlaw\screenshots

Anyways, suffice to say I’m having a great time playing the game and hope you are as well! Maybe this guide even helped you a bit! As the mercs say “Stay frosty” =]

Helpful Hacky Skyrim Tools

Dragons fly in Skyrim's sky!

Enter the Skyrim Alchemy Sage

Skyrim Alchemists know that potent poisons come in small doses!

Welcome fellow Skyrim alchemists – interested in brewing the most potent of poisons?! The most proverbial of potions?!! The most electrifying of elixirs?!!! …perhaps with a touch of alliteration? Hrmph! I have a scroll called the Skyrim Alchemy Helper that will help you craft the finest concoctions – far beyond the skills of mere mortals… In a land where everything’s for sale, this one is free…

Back to Reality

Whew! Ok, now that the RP’er in me has had a chance, the developer in me has a question for you: have you ever been doing something where you just wished you could tie a few things together quickly? Make sense of large amounts of data in no time? Then call me Mr. Rinse & Repeat, ’cause I can’t stop! heh ok… I’ll calm down.

Anyway, as a developer, I have the advantage of being able to put data together and display it in a fashion that makes sense to me. This is a story about one such helper that I made to assist in all my alchemy endeavors in Skyrim – one that I thought I would use as an example (and advertisement) of code that’s good enough for now and why that too can be ok.

The Pain Point of Inspiration

Recently (well, recent to me), Bethesda Game Studios came out with a freshly revamped Skyrim – Special Edition – full of high res textures, bug fixes, and many improvements. Cool! I’ve sunk a few hours in that game, but it’s been a minute and I wouldn’t mind returning to Skyrim to slay some dragons once more!

I get started and it dawns on me: “Geez, I wish I could get back to crafting my alchemy stuff.” I used to have those recipes memorized! What parts for my paralysis poisons? What’s good for restoring health? What’s the other thing I used to craft for those times when I need that thing?!! Blah! It’s too much to get started all over again!

So what’s the solution you might be asking? The new hotness in web frameworks, CI/CD pipelines, and the latest, most feature rich, spanky IDE?! Huh huh huh?!! =D

Hell no! I ain’t got time for that! I made a few hacky scripts to make sure my alchemy prowess was better than ever so I could get back to the game! Pshhh.. what, is this your first rodeo with Skyrim?

Enter the Lazy Dev Sage

So why is this article under filed under “Code”? I realize the quality of the code in these is more or less not ideal… Not a great start for the Code category. Yet, if there’s one thing I know, it’s the tendency of developers (especially jr. devs) to be paralyzed by the quality of their code to the point where progress is painfully slow. This is my effort to say “Heck with it! I need this now!” and to show that even when you write mediocre, unreadable, and/or unmaintainable code… there’s a place for that too.

Going back to one of my favorite rules of the dev process: “Make it work; Make it right; Make it fast”. Right now, we’re at stage 1… I might not ever need to come back to this code, so while it works, it’s fine as it is – and now I can focus on the next task at hand way sooner than perfection would allow for.

Can improvements be made? Hell yes.
Can features be added? Sure – might have to start thinking about the overall architecture if we’re working on this a lot.
Is it fast? Probably not as fast as it could be yet not unbearably slow. Does the trick, I guess scratches head.

Resultant Results and a Few Caveats

For now – it IS… which is way better than “it is not”. I think that counts for something too. Sure: take feedback from code reviews with respect and perspective. Sure: this isn’t how you should be writing code for mission critical applications (sidenote: if your mission critical software doesn’t already have a CI/CD pipeline to prevent this – HOW ARE YOU LIVING YOUR LIFE RN?!! IS IT BROKE? ARE YOU SURE? ASK GARY AND MAKE SURE! I DON’T CARE – ASK HIM AGAIN! WELL WAKE HIM UP!!!)

heh. I’m a dork.

…and sure: is this the standard I want all my code to sink to? Nahh… but for what it is – it’s just right and that’s ok.

If Source Code Wore Underpants

As it turns out, I even went as far as to make a script that allows you to look at the files and their source code! Yeesh! What was I thinking?! Eh… I was having fun banging out something I wanted to make and not thinking twice about it.

So, without further adieu, if you’d like to see London and you’d like to see France – here’s the Skyrim Helper Scripts underpants. They’re hacky and look like hell, but it’s way better than having to relearn all the different alchemy recipes from scratch again!

I hope it helps and I hope you enjoy!

Cheers!
Ryan

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