The mock rock unlock

[Sparksol]

Four times I failed to unlock the rock ship despite making it to the Rock Homeworlds. This tale is the one where I did things almost as I was supposed to, but still failed due to some unfortunate luck.

I found the ship that talked to us so early, the rebel fleet wasn't even on the map yet. I followed the ship to a beacon near a star, and made a few shots to disable their weapon system.

For some reason, two of the rockmen boarded me. I took them out eventually, and then looked at the state of the rock ship.

Quite a lot was on fire.

At first I thought it was no trouble, because rockmen aren't hurt by fire, right? What could happen?

Then I looked at the hull and systems of the rock ship. It was awfully close, but there was enough hull points on it that it should be fine even if the fire burned off everything.

Then I saw what was actually happening. The few remaining rockmen would put out a fire in a systems room, and one would start to repair it while the other two went to a different system room. By the time the second room was put out, a bar would be repaired in the first room just in time to catch fire again.

It was getting close.

Then life support went out. I watched as their oxygen levels slowly drained away, but they didn't die from that.

At the end, one was repairing the engine and the other two were fixing up the piloting station when the engine caught fire again and burned it out one last time.

I've only got two more ships to unlock, rock and ???

If I ever get to this encounter again, I'm not even going to take out their weapons, I'll just wait and see how it goes.

[UltraMantis]

Don't attack them. Just vent as much of your ship as you dare and pump everything into shields and engines. If you have a defense drone, yay, if not, doesnt matter much. Just prove you have what it takes to get a mean suntan and the Rocks will respect you.

[Sparksol]

Oh trust me, if I find it again all weapons will be turned off. I just hope they don't board me for some reason and leave their ship under-crewed.

[UltraMantis]

I stupidly skimmed through the blah blah blah and boarded them right away. ... the ship jumped. with 4 Mantis on it.

At least i got the durn cruiser...