Keyword Hunter - FastTrek Docs

The FastTrek STFC bot includes a special hostile hunt mode called “Keyword Hunter”. Whereas normally we hunt hostiles by ‘red triangles’ only, Keyword Hunter allows you to look for and filter by specific words or letter combinations in each hostile’s name.

Keyword Hunter Settings

Set up and features are exactly the same as the regular Hostile Hunt mode, except for the addition of a “Keyword” field in the settings and a modified system lookup.

Smart System Name filtering

If a keyword filter is specified, FastTrek will filter the system lookup to only include places with a match.

This makes it easy to locate suitable systems for your keyword grind.

Keyword Phrase

The Keyword field allows you to specify words or letters that must be present in the name of a hostile for it to be targeted by the bot. This only applies to the name of the hostile, not its faction tag.

There two types of keyword: Positive or Negative.

Positive Keyword

A positive keyword is a word or letter combination that must be present in the hostile’s name for it to be targeted. For example, if you enter “Scout” as a positive keyword, the bot will only target hostiles with “Scout” in their name, such as “Assimilated Scout” or “Federation Scout”.

Negative Keyword

A negative keyword is a word or letter combination that must not be present in the hostile’s name for it to be targeted.

Negative keywords are prefixed with an exclamation mark.

For example, if you enter ”!Sentry” as a negative keyword, the bot will target all hostiles except those with “Sentry” in their name, such as “Assimilated Scout” or “Federation Scout”, but not “Assimilated Sentry” or “Federation Sentry”.

Regular Expressions

For advanced users, the Keyword field also supports regular expressions.

To signal the use of your own regular expression, enclose the expression in forward slashes. For example: /Assimilated (Scout|Sentry)/ will target both Assimilated Scouts and Sentries.

Negative keywords are more difficult to use with regular expressions. You will want to use negative lookahead (?!...) for this.

Regex matching is case-insensitive and allows partial matches, so for example /scout/ will match “Assimilated Scout”, “Federation Scout”, and “Scout Ship”.

Partial names (off-screen or obscured)

Care must be taken to account for hostiles whose names are partially obscured or off-screen. For example:

• hostiles near the right hand edge of the screen may have the end of their name cut off, so “Assimilated Sentry” may appear as “Assimilated Sent”.
• hostiles may overlap with each other, or be obscured by planets or other objects, so only part of their name may be visible.

To account for this, combine positive and negative keywords, and use partial words where necessary. For example, to target Assimilated Scouts but not Assimilated Sentries, you could use the combination: Assimilated Scout !Sent

Keyword ordering

The order of keywords does not matter. For example, Assimilated Scout !Sent will yield the same results as !Sent Assimilated Scout.

Examples and Tips for Specific Hostiles

Capital System Traders

To target only heavy traders: Heavy Federation Transport

To target only regular traders: !Heavy Federation Transport

The presence of the full ‘Federation Transport’ should ensure reasonable accuracy, where as only using Heavy or !Heavy is more likely to result in mistakes.

Faction Scouts

If you are after FKR Messages, I highly recommend using the Voyager Bioship automation instead.

Using the Voyager ability in non-mining Delta Quadrant systems that require Borg Coordinates, such as Shal’ika, Misalup or Neala, spawns assimilated scouts that drop FKR messages in huge quantities.

This works on every summon, unlike Scouts which only spawn once in a while.

Texas Class

To avoid hitting Sentries (revenge hostiles), which could annoy other players, I recommend Texas Class !Sentry as your keyword combination.

PvE Loot Limit