So is the Firefly ship just a meme?

[Nemesis]

The very first time I came across this ship, I thought, "No way, there's no way someone can use this ship," and I happily passed it up... somewhat confused, mostly annoyed.

Months later, after I'd become more familiar with the game, I was like "Eh what the heck, let's try it." Since the ship is mobile, I just flew forward until I found a new ship to board, reasoning that, sadly, that must be its only purpose.

Then, even more time (months) later, I came back to the game. Somehow I found Symbiotic Extension very early. I'd actually never found this tech on any of my playthroughs in the past, ever. Eager to try it, I started mining rock planets to look for 5 Pt to make it. Somehow, none of the rock planets I mined had any Pt. On my seventh or so rock planet, I finally found some and installed it, and it added four bonus slots onto the back of the ship, which seemed really useful.

Later, in the same run, the first ship I found was... the FIREFLY! I thought back to my prior opinions about this ship (basically: "this thing is dumb"), and, willing to reevaluate and keep an open mind, I actually gave it a second thought.

"Wait a minute. I have Symbiotic Extension... And I still have left-over Pt..."

Looking at the Firefly ship, it has Space Folder, which you need, and the Reactor, which you need to jump to planets in a solar system... and Tau Stasis for farther jumps. Well, the only one I can possibly replace is Tau Stasis. The goal being to install Symbiotic Extension on the ship, which will enable probing AND mining on the Firefly! If I ever want to mine, I can destroy the Reactor and make a drill or probe. Recreate the Reactor afterward every time, since it's just iron. As long as I have extra iron, I should be safe. In this run, I actually had TWO Omegas as well, from stopping at garden planets in the starter ship. I was golden. Finally, could this be the way that the devs intended the Firefly ship to be played "for reals"?

Well, without Tau Stasis or a Telescope, you can't jump very far, and sometimes you run into dead-ends because the next star is just barely out of reach. But that's OK, because this is the Firefly, you can backtrack pretty easily and look for a new path. And that's what I did when I ran into a dead-end. I just backtracked and found another way around. This is awesome, my first "real" Firefly run. Things were going great --

Until ...

Can you guess?

The Hostile Fleet event. This event basically destroys 90% of your systems. In my case, my Space Folder was broken. But that's no big deal, because I happen to have 2 Omegas and a stack of 20 iron. ... Except, the event also broke Symbiotic Extension, so now my 2 Omegas, my 20 iron, and my 3 stacks of He are gone. I'm not sure if the items are actually gone for real, or if they're just inaccessible until you repair the module... but I couldn't find out because the iron to repair the module was in the inventory slots that the module itself created in the first place.

As far as I know, there is no way to avoid the hostile fleet event. So I guess this means there really is no way to play this ship, aside from just a desperate search to find a new ship..?

Am I wrong? Is there some viable way to play as this ship or were the devs just memeing?

[Ryuu]

Originally posted by Nemesis:

Since the ship is mobile, I just flew forward until I found a new ship to board, reasoning that, sadly, that must be its only purpose.

Yeah, i think it's the only intended purpose really — escape capsule.

Mind that Symbiotic Extension was added quite later to the game and it still makes the ship barely useful. Back then to learn what element is uses for slot repair to fill wikia page i had to do it the hard way — drilling for full depth until the slot breaks.

So yeap, it's mostly a meme :) Well, you can use it after getting through Hostile Fleet event i guess.

Also can be used to recon together with Stellar Embryo built on a different ship, though don't really see the point of that.

BTW wikia says contents get lost if S-Extension gets damaged: https://out-there.wikia.com/wiki/Technologies#Symbiotic_Extension
Though it's a very rare event except for Hostile Fleet.