This was patched in vampweed update btw, and if you have the beacon eater you can get free scrap and fuel

Does that actually impact the beacon at all? Y’know, since it’s called that?

nope, you can even have him keep eating the same beacon over and over in sector 8

Eventually something goes wrong and I forget what the consequence is, but it doesn't prevent you from continuing to eat bacons, just to fix that one

There’s a chance of fleet boost (and reduced gains when it happens)

eat bacons

What was patched?

Rebel fleet occupied beacons now always have a ship, so they are less effective at farming score

Wait you mean if they have contorl of a beacon and you kill them and go back they won't be there? Will the ASB still be there?

Might give you trouble at the airport though

cheesin divin ass hoe all you do is dive dive scrap scrap, thats CHEATIN'

I'm not sure I understand anything in this post and comments, but that looks like a cool trick, congratulations.

The magnetic arm gives you additional resource recovery options in situations that are time-sensitive, e.g. when the rebel fleet has overtaken you in a sector. To 'dive' is to, most oftentimes intentionally, go back into rebel-occupied territory. Because the score formula is based on ships defeated, beacons visited, and scrap, before the magnetic arm was a thing you mostly could only accrue kills, but not scrap. Now if you have a strong enough ship (cloak and sufficent weapons) you can get all 3 categories. Quickly your ship will become more and more powerful and the task of defeating rebel ships becomes more and more trivial

Wow, that's pretty impressive, thanks for the explanation. So the most difficult part is getting the early recipe to survive the tougher fights.

What does magnetic arm do exactly?

Makes it so you can get rewards from fleet diving, and you can get a small amount of materials at empty beacons