The Farmers are a quiet, docile faction in the campaign. They only attack when attacked and are generally easy to pick-on. The unique feature of the Farmers is that plants will actually grow on ship hulls. The vanilla ships are very weak. Players will do well starting a game to raid the Farmers and steal their resources.
Once a player has killed 1000P worth of Farmer ships, the faction will be unlocked and they can start a new game as a Farmer.
Blocks
The Farmers have the largest collection of blocks, offering a wide array of options rivaling the Terrans. Unlike the Terrans however, the Farmers suffer from sub-par stats in several areas, making their ships very weak by comparison. The one resounding feature Farmers do offer is the ability to Farm seeds. This ability means Farmer players never need worry about resources. They can effectively out-resource any other faction.
Armor
Farmer armor is sub-par compared to most other factions. Their durability is always a problem. To make things worse, a lot of their modules use a lot of energy. This makes durability an even greater issue because generators blow up when damaged.
Hull: For their size hull blocks are pretty weak. They can soak up a bit of damage, but don’t expect them to hold up very well for the amount of weight they add.
Armor: The armor blocks are a better than the hull blocks. Still not a great option, but it’s the best option the Farmers have.
Unobtanium: These are the most durable blocks in the game. Unfortunately, they are tiny and add a massive amount of weight. The small blocks also have trouble dealing with splash damage. It’s best to set them up in a grid to avoid splash problems. On top of these issues, they are also ‘environmental’ blocks, which means plants will grow on them. Plants can weigh your ship down and fracture it if they grow on the inside.
Environmental: As noted above, environmental blocks will grow plants. It’s important to keep this in mind so you don’t have seeds trying to grow inside your ship and breaking the internal modules. You can destroy your ship if seeds grow where they’re not supposed to. …. On the plus side, a properly constructed ship using seed launchers can grow seeds and harvest resources at a massive rate.
Thrusters
Farmer thruster are probably the worst aspect of the faction. Thrust-wise they are similar to other factions, but the mass of the blocks weighs them down, making the Farmer ships sluggish.
Shields
Farmer shields are great. The smallest shields are small enough to protect tiny ships, and the largest one can deflet 4000 damage. The problem is not Farmer shields themselves, its that armor is more efficient than shields in general.
Cannons
Farmer have more guns than any other faction. They have such a ridiculous variety of guns that many of them are pointless and rarely used.
Small Turrets
MLS Avenger: This is the most expensive small turret gun, but it’s also the best. It provides excellent dps at reasonable range. Most importantly is the velocity of the shots allows it to hit faster targets than the lesser guns.
MLS Anti-Missile: This cheap little gun provides splash damage, a valuable attribute verse small ships.
Minigun, Phlanx, Swatter, RK-12: The Minigun comes closest to the MLS Avenger, but falls short. The Swatter and Rk-12 are cheap short-range options of limited viability, and the Phlanx is of no real use at all.
Medium Turrets
MC3: For Farmers, this provides the best value for dps. Decent range, accurate, and ok velocity.
Bolshevik: This cannon deals a heavy punch of splash damage. Not as powerful as the Heavy Turret, but a lot smaller and cheaper. The main down-side is the slowness of the projectiles.
HC3, HC2: These turrets have longer range than any other turret in the game. The main problem is their slow velocity. Moving targets will be gone before the bullets ever hit them.
Station Battery: Does splash damage, but the MC3 is cheaper and more effective.
A-75 Spitter: This is a cheap turret that fires burst-shots. The shots are slow and inaccurate, thus making other options almost always a better choice.
Other Cannons
Heavy Turret: The largest and most powerful of the Farmer turrets. This is much more powerful than the Bolshevik, but is also heavier and more expensive. The shots have the same problem of being very slow.
Longbow: More expensive than the Railgun, but a more effective sniper rifle. Good dps and decent splash radius as well as a much longer range than the Terran Anti-matter Cannon.
Scattergun: A small fixed shotgun. This does high-damage at close range. The main problem being that Farmer doesn’t survive well at close range.
ELR-1 Railgun: An extremely cheap fixed cannon with a very long range. It looks good on paper, but fires slowly, is quite heavy, and uses a good chunk of energy.
Lasers
Arkas PRP-1, Arkas PRP-2, Arkas PRP-3: It may look like there’s multiple options here, but you’re only ever going to use the Arkas PRP-1. The smallest size offers the best efficiency and the longest range.
Station Defense Laser: More expensive, lower damage, and range than the smallest Arkas. The benefit of this laser is a very fast turret speed, which can be useful on small fast ships.
Missiles
HM1 Missiles: Even larger and slower than the MM1 missiles. These have a large splash radius. The only weapon with a larger splash radius are the Sentinel Nukes.
MM1 Missile: Heavy, but slow missiles. These are some of the Farmers most efficient damage dealers.
Sparrow Missiles: Small and fast, they are also expensive, use a lot of energy and are easy to shoot down.
Solar Panels
Farmer Solar Panels can provide consistent resource generation with no effort. It takes a lot of them to have a significant impact, and they’re large an bulky, but you can make solar panel arrays that generate enough resources to earn your initial credits. Be aware however, that the game will chose to build your cheapest ships most often. It’s a good idea to keep your solar panel arrays expensive so the game doesn’t just fill your regions up with worthless ships.
Seed Launcher
The Farmers are the only faction to have a Seed Launcher, and it’s the main reason you’d want to play them. Trigger the launcher and a seed will fly out an connect with an environmental block.
In normal play, A.I. ships will just shoot single seeds out at an asteroid and slowly grow new plants. But, a player can control a farm ship (basically a big box that’s lined with environmental blocks) and trigger seed blooms within a mothership, creating limitless resources.
A seed ship can fuel the construction of large Farmer fleets to tackle even the toughest enemies through shear force of numbers.
Farmer Tricks
Use Seed Launchers to generate vast quantities of resources, and thus large fleets. Only tackle Agents with massive numbers of minions.
Bases: Feel free to construct massive bases to defend your territory. Use your resource generation to spam weapon platforms everywhere. You can also line those platforms with environmental blocks to grow more plants.
Super Thrusters: Farmers have a block in their palette that does not appear in the campaign game. You have to get it in the Sandbox. Super Thrusters make Farmer (and any other ship) vastly more mobile, and have OP durability.
To get Super Thrusters, …