1.1 Advantages
1.2 Disadvantages
1.3 General strategy
2. Your ships
3. The basics
3.1 The Game Setup
3.2 Host settings
3.3 Your first turn
4. And then?
4.1 The second turn...
4.2 Now I can't planet-hop anymore...
4.3 Early-game hostilities
4.4 And then what?
5. War!
6. Allies
7. Enemies
1. Introduction
The Federation, better known as the Feds, are based on the United Federation
of Planets as found in the Startrek series and movies. They have a very nice allround
fleet of ships, ready to fulfill any purpose you might think of. In the division which is
often made between 'fighter-races' and 'torpedo-races' the Feds are definitely a
torpedo-race, and a damn good one too. They have the widest array of torpedoships ranging
from the small two-tube Nocturne to the massive Nova.
This race is relatively easy to play (no dirty tricks you need to master first) and is the
race of choice for shareware players (superrefit allows you to build tech 10-everything
ships provided you find the right natives, and they have quite some useful ships below
hulltech 7). The Feds special abilities are a 200% taxrate, the ability to refit
ships with better parts, the crewbonus, the bonus fighter bays on carriers and a nice
amount of special ships.
1.1 Advantages
200% taxrate
Federal colonists collect twice the amount of taxes as colonists of any other
race. 100 Federation clans on a planet are able to collect 200 MCs per turn (400 with
Insectoid natives) at the same taxrate as any other race would need for 100 MCs. Other
races will only be able to receive one MC per clan. This allows you to get more cash than
anyone, except for the Lizards when they've devoted the bulk of their fleet to hissing
their planets. What all this easy money will do for you is give you better equipped ships
than others, and a pretty strong early game position. While other races in the early game
are struggling to get their techlevels up to build some mid- or hightech hulls with decent
weapons, you'll be able to build Nebulas and Diplomacies or even bigger ships with
hightech torpedoes early on.
Superrefit
Your second big advantage is the ability to refit your ships' hulls with higher
tech-parts. Got an early-game Diplomacy with Mark 4 torpedoes? Put it over a starbase,
make sure the base has enough torpedo-tubes of the techlevel you want (in this case: six)
and set the ship's mission to 'superrefit'. Next turn it will have the new torptubes. The
old tubes will be put into storage at the base, ready to be put on another ship. This is
also possible for engines and beams. Any torps onboard that ship, now useless because
they're the wrong type for your new tubes, will also be put into storage. When the
starbase's mission is set to "load torps onto ships" this combination will refit
your ship and put new torps of the apropriate techlevel onto the ship (assuming you've
built the torps ofcourse), all prior to movement. It is possible to tow in a completeley
lowtech ship, set it's mission to superrefit, put enough fuel onto it and give it a
waypoint and warpsetting, and it'll arrive at the waypoint fully refitted and with
torpedoes in the cargohold.
Ships need to have at least one KT of fuel onboard to perform the refit-mission, and only
"full sets of parts" can be refitted: you can't replace ten Mk4 turbes on a Nova
by three Mk7 tubes (apart from that being stupid, you simply can't do it).
In theory it is possible build a fully maxed out ship using four starbases with for
example one techlevel 10 you got from the natives living on the planet. There is one major
drawback to that method, however: the cost in extra minerals is hardly worth the money you
saved. (more details here).
Crewbonus
Because of your highly skilled crew your ships will use all their tubes and beams,
regardless of the damage the ship has. Other races lose the use of torps/fighterbays and
beams in a battle their ships enter when already damaged, you don't.
An example: a Nova fighting two Darkwings will get damaged to about 50% by the first
Darkwing. It will still use all it's beams and tubes against the second Darkwing. When two
Missouris go up against a Darkwing, the first Missouri will damage the Darkwing to about
75%. This Darkwing will then only use 25% of it's tubes and beams against the second
Missouri, which won't have any trouble with this crippled Birdman.
Furthermore, your ships will automatically repair their shields by 25% between battles (to
a maximum of shields+damage=100 and ofcourse never over 100%) and each of your ships gains
an extra 50 Kt of mass in battles, enabling it to take more hits. So a ship going up
against multiple enemy ships might come out of the first battle with shields down and 10%
damage. It will fight the second ship with 25% shields. Let's say the second enemy ship is
not that strong, and only brings your shields down to 20%. You will then enter the third
battle with 45% shields.
Your crew also gathers experience in battles they've won and even when flying in space,
especially from flying through Ion storms. Unfortunately, there's no way in telling which
ships' crew has the most experience nor how this effects battles.
Bonus fighter bays
A Fed controlled carrier gains an extra three fighter bays, allowing it to spit out it's
fighters much quicker. Combined with the above mentioned crew bonus, this makes any
carrier in Fed hands much more powerful. There has been some discussion if these extra
bays will put more than 10 bays on a carrier and you may find people saying its
impossible, but it will. A Biocide or Gorbie for example will launch it's fighters from 13
bays when owned by you. This makes the large carriers very powerful in your hands, and
turns mediocre carriers to good ones.
Loki
This nice ship will decloak enemy cloaked ships (not if theyre Birdmen or
Lizards however), so your other ships will be able to see them and destroy them. The Loki
itself, if properly equipped, can take on the smaller and medium cloakers, but it's better
to have it accompanied by another ship to do the dirty work, since the decloaking function
of the Loki fais when its damaged above 20%.
When gearing up for battle against a cloaking race, be sure to put some Lokis in your
fleet. Put the best torps on them you can afford, since they will be the primary target
for any cloaker. Cloaked ships can use their so-called "cloaked intercept" to
pick the ship they want to attack, overriding the usual friendly code battle order, and
the ship they'll attack first will be your Loki. With Mark 7 or Mark 8 torps it will toast
most smaller cloakers and damage the medium-sized cloakers enough to prevent them from
cloaking, but since it will probably get damaged badly or blown up alltogether it would be
wise to have some supplies with you to fix damages and to have a backup-Loki. Tow the
backup around without fuel, so it can't be attacked, and start using it (put fuel on it)
when the first Loki is damaged too much or destroyed. A good idea is moving fuel and
supplies back and forth between both Lokis and your other ships so your enemies can't tell
which Loki is the one without fuel. If they intercept a Loki without fuel they won't fight
it, but they will fight your other ships in the battle order you've picked yourself,
resulting in the unfortunate death of yet another cloaker....
Terraformers
You have two ships which will either cool down or heat up a planet to a climate where it
can support unlimited clans (i.e. more mines, more factories, more defense posts and more
taxes earned). This enables you to colonise planets which are virtually useless to others,
and can help natives grow faster to earn you even more money. Comes in real handy when
that nice native or good mineral planet close to your starbase or homeworld happens to be
arctic or a desert. Think of an arctic Bovinoid planet: might not support enough clans to
really profit from those free supplies (unless you want to dump a lot of clans and let
them eat the supplies or die), but after some terraforming it's a great place for a
starbase. Don't go around terraforming your borderplanets, providing nice strongholds for
your enemies. Use terraforming to be able to use ALL the planets within the heart of your
empire, while you work on securing the edges of your territory.
Allying
Your main advantages (lots and lots of cash, superrefit, special ships and your
bonus fighter bays) make you a very nice ally to just about everyone in the game. You can
trade terraformers and Lokis for good ships, and you can offer your superrefit to your
allies. Have them send a ship with crappy engines, beams and/or torps to you and you can
send it back to them after you've put better parts on it. Ofcourse you will have cloned it
first... You can let your ally supply you with the minerals and/or cash for this refit, or
upgrade a ship for him in trade of another ship.
With your crewbonus, extra fighterbays and immunity to Lokis practically any ship gains
strength in your hands. Most fighter races lack a good torpship to lay mines with or to
soften up enemy carriers with, you lack a good carrier. The best thing for you is: except
for the big battleships you might use in trades none of the ships you're giving away can
hurt you! Lokis won't decloak your ships, terraformers or a Bioscanner won't hurt you. and
all your own ships fight better in your hands than in anyone else's, except for the
Lizards ofcourse with their ability to take 150% damage.
70% mining rate
You only mine at 70% of the normal mining rate (though I've seen some hosts giving
us 75%), to protect the environment of the planets you encounter. It's lousy, but it's
some treaty signed by the Federation way back, and you'll have to live with it. And apart
from situations early in the game when youve had bad luck with the planets you find
close to your homeworld, its actually not such a big problem as its often
thought to be. The best and only way to totally nullify this disadvantage is called the Merlin.
Missing ships
Even with the wide array of torpers for all possible purposes and your fair share of
special ships, there are some ships you just dont have which would be very nice to
have. This is not a disadvantage solely for the Feds: no race has al the ships theyd
like to have in their native shiplist.
First off there are two basic ships most races have and you don't: the Small Deep Space
Freighter and the Neutronic Fuelcarrier. These are not ships you miss a lot, because you
have some ships that can do their work for you.
The Small Deep Space Freighter all the other races get as one of their initial ships has
only one real use, and that's early exploration. They're very cheap and hold 70 clans, so
can be sent out to drop one clan on each planet they encounter. This is something you can
use either your Outrider, Nocturne or terraformers for. Granted all of them have smaller
cargoholds, I have yet to see the first scout able to visit 70 uninhabited planets without
running into its neighbours. Apart from early exploration, 70 KTs of cargo is just
not enough to make the ship of any use as a freighter. So you don't actually miss this
ship. A second use for this ship to some players is to build and recycle SDSFs at bases
which can't build anything better in order to at least earn a priority buildpoint or
simply stack them all together to fill the shipqueue as fast as possible. Because of your
superrefit and small terraformers you shouldn't have to find yourself in a situation where
your base can't build anything useful, so you don't need them for this purpose either.
The Fuelcarrier is a bit more useful, but you can certainly live without it. In the early
to medium stages, when they're only used for bringing fuel to certain planets (i.e. the
homeworld), your LDSFs which are running around your territory anyway will do the trick.
Later on, when their use would be to carry fuel for your battlefleets, you could overcome
the loss of having any by either towing your fuelhungry ships, and/or including some
Nebulas or Diplomacies in the battlegroup. Both these ships can fight and have fairly
large fueltanks.If you really want a fuelcarrier you should be able to trade one very
easily for a terraformer. The Robotic Q tanker will do great as a fuelcarrier as well.
You have only one carrier, the Kittyhawk. As a so-called mopup ship to clean up the mess
after some heavy torper it will serve just fine, launching its fighters from nine
bays because of the fighterbay bonus. Too bad though it holds only 65 fighters which makes
it pretty limited to serve on its own against anything bigger than medium ships or
planets without bases. The Kittys problem when facing the large carriers or stocked
starbases is it will run out of fighters and dies.
So if you can get your hands on a bigger, better carrier, by all means do so - but keep
in mind fighters will cost you 100 MCs a piece and against the bigger ships you'll need at
least 100 to 150 fighters to be effective. You get three extra fighter bays on any
carrier, so it's defenitely worth to trade one for one of your bigger ships. Again, you
want one with lowtech engines to clone it. Worry about high-tech engines much later.
Some cloaking ships would be nice as well. Maybe not even warships (although a couple of
cloaked ships in your fleet or some cloaking minelayers can really give you the edge you
need), but a nice scout to spy on your enemies can be worth a dozen battleships too.
As Feds, you have a pretty good fleet of ships in all sorts and sizes. We'll go by them one by one.
Outrider Class Scout
As the name says: a scout. Fill the one you get at the start of the game with colonists
for early exploration. Send it out dropping one clan per planet. After that, never build
one.
Nocturne Class Destroyer
The second of your initial ships. Can be used the same way as the Outrider, has a cargo
hold of 50 KT. Good thing is: it has beams and torps. Carry 10 torps and 40 clans, and use
it for protected exploration. A nice ship to capture or kill freighters or take over
undefended planets, but apart from that useless in battle. Can be of some use if your
neighbours are very close right from the start and either you or they are not interested
in an alliance.
Bohemian Class Survey Ship
Warms planets up to 50 degrees. Never do that unless the natives have a good government so
you can earn a lot of money and you dont have any other planet to heat up. On most
planets 15 degrees is fine, your clans won't die anymore, and growth will occur. Best used
in pairs or more (one degree per turn doesn't really get you anywhere). Build one with
good or intermediate (level 7) engines, have it tow another one with tech1 engines around.
Or have some towed to their destination by freighters. With x-rays they'll capture
scouting enemy freighters or probes. With bettrer beams (disruptors) they can offer
protection from Rebel Falcons jumping in for groundattacks..
Eros Class Survey Ship
Cools planets down to 50 degrees. Ofcourse 84 is low enough, unless you don't have a
better place to cool down. See Bohemian for more info. Only costs 30 MC's, 4 duranium and
3 tritanium. Using 13 Moly it's still one of your cheapest ships around, and your default
ship to build when you don't have the minerals to build a good ship. It will always have
some use, either to cool down some planets later on, as a trading object or as a tower or
moneyrunner between bases.
Medium Deep Space Freighter
Vendetta Class Frigate
Four beams, four tubes, pretty cheap and doesn't cost much minerals. Drawback is it's
weight: only 100 KT. This combined with a a crew of only 79 makes it vulnerable to be
captured. Only 30 KT of cargohold makes it final: never build one. Go for Nebulas instead.
Nebula Class Cruiser
The small/medium warship and minelayer of your fleet. Decent mass, large cargo hold, large
crew, four beams and four torptubes. Will toast any other ship in it's class, and is great
for armed transport. A nice ship to include in battlefleeets going into enemy territory:
they can carry clans and supplies to set up forward srongholds, and it's large fueltank
can carry the fuel to refuel the rest of your battlegroup in enemy territory. They're nice
all-round ships, but if you can afford it upgrade your hulltech and build Diplomacies and
Missouris instead for war.
Banshee Class Destroyer
With four beams and two tubes, a mass of 120 KT and a cargohold of 80, a mediocre
minelayer at best. Other than that, only useful against smaller ships or undefended
planets. Nebulas will do anything this ship does better. Compared to the Nebula this baby
costs only a third in $ (But money is not your problem), and about 2/3 in minerals. But
ofcourse, when you're short on minerals you're building a terraformer and not a Banshee,
awaiting your freighters to arrive with minerals. Building this ship would be a waste of a
shipslot.
Large Deep Space Freighter
If you're using a shareware version this is where your shiplist ends. Until you find a Humanoid planet. So just pay the lousy 20 bucks and register. Much more fun after that.....
Brynhild Class Escort
Not really an escort. It has a Bioscanner, which has a 20% chance of scanning planets
within 200 LYs for natives and temperature when it's mission is set to 'sensor sweep'. Not
too expensive, and only uses one engine, so at least in theory it's a nice scouting ship.
Reality: apart from my first game Ive never built one. Exploring scouts do my
scouting for me.
Arkham Class Frigate
Six beams, three tubes. Decent mass (150 KT), very cheap to build, doesn't take much
minerals either. Holds 120 KTs of fuel and 90 KTs of cargo (i.e. torps). Nice medium ship,
excellent minesweeper and a reasonable minelayer. Not one of the stronger fighting ships,
so if its firepower you need dont build this one.
Missouri Class Battleship
With the Missouri you have the best tech 8 ship around. 8 Beams, 6 tubes, high mass
and a large crew. Will kill most medium to big ships on his own, take out most starbases
(unless they're heavily defended) and will bring most of the tech 9 ships in serious
trouble. Two of them in a row will kill pretty much anything except for those large
carriers, for which you need at least two Missouris followed by a Nova or Kittyhawk. Main
drawbacks: they cost quite a lot of minerals, and it's high mass and limited fueltank
limit its range. Quite expensive, too, but that's not the problem.
Loki Class Destroyer
Don't let the 'destroyer' ranking fool you: this ship should never do any fighting for
you. It's far too valuable. It will decloak those sneaky cloakers, after which one of your
other ships can kill them. Beware of Lizards and Birdmen: their cloakers are immune to the
Loki's tachyon field. Use it with a Diplomacy or Missouri to protect precious planets from
Privateers, Fascists and whoever else has gotten his hands on a cloaker.
Thor Class Frigate
Eight torp tubes, only one beam. This is the ship to send in first against those large
carriers. It will get killed, but if used right and with a bit
of luck it will get to fire 30 torpedoes before it blows up. That's enough to take down
the shields and even do some damage to the carriers. If your game has an engine shield
bonus of 35% or more, build these guys like theres no tomorrow.
Diplomacy Class Cruiser
Six torp tubes and six beams. Holds 95 torps, weighs 180 KT and has a nice big 350 KT
fueltank. These ships usually form the majority of my fleet. Great for minelaying and
sweeping, or to be the first to fight in a battlegroup against a carrier and it can take
down any planet without a base. It's pretty cheap on minerals, will shoot down some
fighters and fire about 24 torps, taking down the shields of most carriers. Follow it up
with a Missouri and/or a Kitty and you'll only lose the cheap diplomacy while the
Missouri/Nova gets to kill the expensive enemy ship.
Kittyhawk Class Carrier
Your only carrier. Six fighterbays, holds 65 fighters, has four beams. When the ES
bonus is on, it forms a deadly combination with a Thor or a Diplomacy. Without ES bonus
it's still a very good mop up-ship: send it into battle after one or two of your torpers,
and see how it kills even the largest ships. With your three bonus fighterbays, it puts
fighters in the battle at the rate of a ship with 9 bays, only one bay less than the large
carriers. It's main drawback is it's limited cargohold: against those large carriers it
will run out of fighters relatively soon, pretty often somewhere in the middle of a fight.
Lasers or X-rays are the beams you want to put up here, to shoot down some enemy fighters.
If youre flying through or even near minefields have somebody tow this baby, you
dont want to see 6000 MCs worth of fighters get blown to bits on a lousy mine.
Neutronic Refinery Ship
Super Transport Freighter
Nova Class Super-Dreadnought
The biggest ship in your list. Pretty good, but on it's own it still won't win from
any of the large carriers or the Annihilation. Ten beams, ten tubes. Its high mass
(650 KT) enables it to take lots of (mine)hits, and it's cargohold of 320 KT makes sure it
won't run out of torps on a long campaign. This ship costs an absurd amount of minerals,
however. For the same amount of minerals you can build two Missouris, or roughly six
Diplomacies. When facing large carriers this is the ship to fight after a Missouri/Kitty
or Thor/Kitty combo. It will toast any Lizard, Bird, Fascist, Privateer or Crystal ship
solo and Ive only once lost one against a stocked starbase so far.
Merlin Class Alchemy Ship
Your host will have informed you about the setup when asking for players. Most games are pretty default: rich homeworld, races at long distance from eachother. You can expect not to encounter other races the first couple of turns, but this depends on the settings. Homeworlds close together will force you to adjust your tactics ofcourse, and low mineral settings will have some consequences on your buildprogram as well. So you've signed up as the Federation, received your first RST file from your host, you've unpacked it and now what?
3.2 Host settingsFirst thing you'll do is read your messages, and pay close attention to the host settings. For a complete overview of all hostsettings go to the the host settings page. Right here we'll stick to the bare essentials.
First thing you do is read your messages again. There might be some messages from other
races, there might be configuration messages from addons. Then you check your ships. What
did they discover, where will you send them next? The freighter you've built last turn is
now ready to bring colonists to the worlds your initial two ships have discovered. The
planet with the most minerals and/or the highest mineral density has the highest priority,
since you'll soon run out of minerals duranium in particular. If the planet has
natives, they can provide the cash needed to colonise the planet. If not, you'll have to
send some cash with your freighter. Don't forget to put supplies on the freighter, they're
needed to build factories, mines and defenseposts. I usually start off non-native planets
with 100 clans, 200 supplies and 700 MCs so I can build 100 factories the turn I drop the
clans, supplies and money. Next turn I use the 100 supplies the factories have generated
and the remaining 400 MCs to build 100 mines, unless the amount of minerals isnt
worth it in which case Ill build 50 mines and some defenseposts. Planets with
natives ofcourse get more clans, and dont need any money. Just drop clans and
supplies, set the taxes and build the structures the next turn.
Set the starbase to build another Large Deep Space Freighter (from now on: LDSF). You'll
use this the next turn to follow up on your scouts too, colonise more planets or bring
even more clans to the planet your first LDSF is heading for. Ofcourse this freighter also
needs Transwarps. Now that you should have enough cash for a couple of turns, you can set
the taxes to 0%. You can change the planetary FC to something random, and you might want
to build some more mines and/or factories. Defenseposts can be upgraded later, right now
you still have more urgent needs for your money.
For now, you'll be concentrating on setting up your economy by
sending out LDSFs.
It might just happen you're gonna have to go out in the open from day one, since
there's no planet within 84 LY from your homeworld. If this is the case, its time to
bite the bullet and show yourself. When your homeworld has no planets within one month
flying, it means your supplying freighters will also take longer to get to and from your
homeworld so waiting to build one large group is not an option So refit both your scouts,
and send them out just like youd normally do. If your homeworld is at an isolated
location youll want to head for a nice cluster of planets, using a freighter inside
that cluster to build your second starbase very
soon, after which further expansion will originate from your new cluster.
When flying into open space make sure you set a waypoint just short of the maximum range
at your warpspeed. This way your ships dont reveal their heading, though itll
be pretty obvious youre not flying from that cluster to that isolated planet but in
fact are flying from your isolated homeworld to that nice cluster.
Ofcourse, when you've got nasty neighbours nearby, you can't just keep on sending out
LDSFs, or at least not unprotected. You will then have to think more in terms of warships
and protecting your new planets. Lucky for you most other races don't like to start
fighting rightaway, and most of them (depending who's playing them) are much interested in
a treaty or an alliance. When close to other races you suspect to be hostile it's best to
build some Nebulas to join in the colonization process. They have a nice big cargohold to
carry some clans and supplies, and are strong enough in battle to protect your turf and
freighters from enemy ships. Ofcourse any money you're moving between planets goes onboard
a Nebula, not a freighter.
At your starbase youll have to upgrade your torplevels. Level 5 for torps gives you the
mark4 torpedo, which in most cases is sufficient in the early stages of the game. It isn't
necessary to upgrade beamtech yet, the level 1 x-ray is nice for capturing freighters and
low-mass low-crew ships. It might actually be a good idea to build a cheap Nocturne or two
to hunt down his freighters and take out his newly colonized, lowly defended planets. Have
a look at the scores and his shiplist to form an idea of how your neighbour is doing. Does
he have a lot of warships, which warships can you expect to face? If you're facing the
Borg for instance you can expect a nice part of his warships to be probes, he won't very
likely have any cubes yet and all his other ships are toast against any of your ships.
Depending on what kind of game you've joined (one with a lot of relatively new players, or
have you taken the challenge of taking on veteran players etc. etc.) you can expect your
neighbours to roughly have the same amount of resources as you have, so if you're cranking
out Missouris already you can expect your Fascist neighbour for example to be building
Victorious'. Keep such things in mind when planning your attack.
You should concentrate in your first turns on building a Merlin
and a second starbase. It will be hard because of
the mining disadvantage and the duranium drain from building LDSFs with transwarps, but it
can be done. The problem you'll face when you want to build a Merlin, is that you won't
have enough Duranium. It is very important to colonise a planet with a good supply and
density of duranium, and build a lot of mines there. Bring the minerals back home and
build that Merlin. It will pay itself back immediately.
Cloaking races tend to be agressive or irritating at least early in the game, because the
ability to cloak comes with the disadvantage of having relatively weak ships. To keep
those cloaking scouts from stealing the ships from your base right after you've built
them, don't forget to build a Loki within the first six or seven turns. It doesn't need
good engines rightaway, because it's main duty is keeping your base safe from cloaking
spies or thieves.
You can expect to meet other races before turn 10, so you'd perhaps better re-read the
above about what to do when under early attack again. And from now on there are no
clearcut rules on how to play. A lot depends on who you find, how agressive they are, if
you have any luck finding good planets and things like that. Basically you'll have to pay
close attention to your economy to keep the shipbuilding going and destroy all the other
races. Simple, eh?
Even though you have always made it clear you're a peaceloving race, some might decide to wage war against you. Heck, you're better off killing some of them before they can grow too so you might have started a war of your own. Among others, here are some things to consider:
-You've got one of the best fleets of ships around, if properly equipped
-The best wars are surprise-attacks. Large surprise-attacks
-You don't want to fight a war on two or more fronts, make sure you're only fighting one
other race
Especially this last point is very important. Let's say the Borg are your neighbours,
and you've decided it's best to get rid of them now, before they can really get lots and
lots of cubes into play. Fighting the Borg should be pretty easy for you, since he doesn't
have any good ships besides his cubes. He will have some fancy tricks, though, which we'll
discuss later. You start preparing for war, thinking ahead, where you need your ships to
be, which clusters you'll attack, and you're moving most of your ships to the Fed-Borg
border. Ofcourse you ARE leaving a decent fleet of ships behind to guard your territory,
and while you're attacking your starbases are building battleships, but most efforts are
used to be sure you wipe out those pesty Cyborgs. You've thought it all through, and you
make your first strike. All goes well, you're suffering minor losses, Borg only has half
his planets left, you're about to make the kill, when all of a sudden your neighbour at
the other side, the Robots, are crushing your planets and your backup fleet. Stupid! You
should have made sure the Robots were friendly to you before starting war with the Borg.
That's the importance of diplomacy.
You could also use your diplomatic skills to try and find out what's the situation between
the Borg and his other neighbour. Ofcourse you've been friendly to the Borg when you first
met them (as said, you're not advertising your wars, you want surprise-attacks), and asked
him about his situation. After all, you do want to know about his situation. If he's at
war on the other side he might just decide your part of the cluster is a good place to run
to, while kicking you out. And you'd like to know of any wars going on between the Borg
and his other neighbour. Might be a nice time for you to jump in and finish him off. You
could try and contact the Borg's neighbour on the other side, and set up something of a
combined attack. But keep in mind he might be totally allied to the Borg, so he might be
doublecrossing you. Same goes for your neighbour on the other side. Maybe he and the Borg
decided it would be good for the both of them to crush you. (ofcourse both the Borg and
the Robots are only example-races here)
So no more mister Nice Guy, it's time for war. It's pretty important where exactly this war is occurring: is it somewhere in your territory, or are you the one invading someone else? It doesn't really matter for your use of ships (although wars in your own territory make it easier for you to refuel, repair etcetera), but it makes a lot of difference for the tactics you want to use.
A first word on being forced into defending against an incoming attack: you don't want
this.
With the Fed shiplist it's not that hard to defend your territory and kick out invaders
unless they come in real large numbers, but you really don't want to have to fight in your
own territory, losing planets you've just started to develop and using precious resources
for immediate war instead of building a very large fleet. You don't want to have to burn
extra fuel because you have to accompany your freighters with capital ships, and you don't
want to lose unprotected planets to small enemy warships.
When being invaded you want to make sure to protect your key planets first. This should be
pretty easy, since you (should) have been protecting them from day one anyway. Then
remember not to leave fuel laying around for whoever is attacking you to beam up from the
planets, and to strip all undefended planets of minerals. If you can't take all the
minerals from it, take at least all of one sort molybdenum being the first choice.
With the ships you have you should be able to kick anyone invading you out again pretty
fast. Your supply lines are short while they have to travel al the way over to you, and
you're owning all the planets there. Needless to say your starbases will be set to build
extra warships each turn if you need them (don't go building warships when you have enough
of those but really need some freighters). Don't worry too much about beamtype, make sure
you've got good (mark7, mark4 when low on cash/minerals) torpedoes on your ships. You can
skimp on engines here and there by using one ship with transwarps to tow another ship with
medium engines. Ships set to defend the base they're built at can be equipped with tech 1
engines, but always keep in mind they won't be able to do anything other than defending a
planet until you refit them or have another ship tow them.
A nice way of ripping apart an incoming fleet is laying some surprise minefields. You can
probably predict the course of his fleet, and a nice minefield dropped in it's way (layed
by a ship orbiting a planet) will result in the different ships suffering different
amounts of damage, ending up moving in different speeds. Smaller ships will blow up, and
needless to say fighting scattered damaged ships is easier than fighting an entirely
intact enemy battlegtoup
Being on the offensive as a Fed requires different tactics. Novas and Missouris are hard to use because of their limited reach, but in combination with a Nebula or Diplomacy to tow one or two around or carry extra fuel they make quite an impressive strikeforce. Most of the offensive moves are handled in the enemies section, and unfortunately there is no guaranteed way to success. Your entire tactic in attacking depends on your own resources, which enemy you're fighting and which of his ships you will be fighting. That last point depends a lot on how early in the game you're attacking. The Colonials, for example, are not that hard to beat in the early to medium stages of the game, because they don't have the kind of medium-sized ships you have. But once theyve had the time to build some Virgos and the fighters to fill them with, they'll be quite hard to defeat. So in order to be successful in this game it is once again of vital importance to know the other races, so you can make a better guess to what youll be facing. Always assume the worst: maybe they've been really lucky with the planets they colonised so far, maybe you're facing a very good player and maybe he has a really friendly neighbour who has supplied him with some nice ships. The point is: attack with the proper fleet. If you want to attack the Rebels in turn 15, don't decide not to because you don't have any Novas yet, and don't expect to beat him with a couple of Nebulas in turn 40 or so.
The Dreadlord Battlemanual has a section about battlegroups: groups of ships,
complementing eachother, able to take out most ships they encounter and wreak havoc on
your enemies. It mentions the Nebula and the Vendetta as good all-purpose ships: ships
that are useful in almost any situation. Personally I disagree about the Vendetta, because
it's far to vulnerable to being captured. It's a nice ship to take out undefended planets,
but I'd rather send out two Nebulas than three Vendettas. Diplomacies make very good ships
for battlegroups as well. Both the Diplomacy as the Nebula have nice large fueltanks, a
decent amount of beams and enough room for cargo. A Loki is a nice ship to have along in
case you run in to some cloakers, but if you know you're heading for a cloaking race you
should bring along at least two Lokis (one fuelless). Missouris should only be put in
battlegroups of which you know theyre heading for hostile space, their high
fuel-consumption and small tanks make them worthless for "scouting"
battlegroups. Kittyhawks are great too, as long as you have enough money to put some
fighters on them. A Fed battlegroup would then consist of some torpedoships, a decloaker
and a carrier. Always remember to bring along some supplies to repair minor damage, some
clans to drop on unowned planets as lookout points and enough cash to build new torpedoes
with the minerals you find on conquered or unowned planets. Its probably a good idea
to bring 100 clans, 100 supplies and some cash to set up a small colony somewhere, but
remember everything you bring along makes the ships use more fuel. To keep your
battlegroup nicely in a convoy use the fleet order in Winplan. Set a waypoint
with one ship, and copy that to the other ships.
Depending on which ships you're facing you arrange the battle-order through your friendly
codes. If you're facing a ship with a lot of beams you'll ofcourse make sure the Kittyhawk
doesn't fight first, that would cost you a lot of fighters while the Nebula or Diplomacy
would kill it with just a couple of torps. Ships with a rather large mass but not that
many beams are best fought by the Kittyhawk. Lokis should always be set to fight last
(high FC) because their only job is decloaking. Remember 20% damage will disable their
decloak-function. In general, if you dont know what youll be flying in to have
a Nebula or Diplomacy set to fight first.
Personally I think allying is both fun and vital. Nobody can win the game solely on his own and even if youre planning to youll probably want to form a temporary peace-treaty with someone or exchange some ships. Detailed descriptions of the benefits each race can offer you are given on the alliance page, here well suffice with a short overview of the different races, without mentioning the most obvious things you have to offer to every race like Lokis, terraforming and supperrefit.
The Lizards
You and the Lizards combined should be able to earn excessive amounts of money from the
natives, and his 200% mining can solve your mineral shortage. Diplomacies are just what he
needs to fill the gap between his cloaking LCCs and his tech 10 T-rex, Missouris and Novas
which wont blow up before theyre 150% damaged are really nasty and a
Madonzilla in Federal hands is a killer.
The Birds
The Birdmen, masters of cloaking, have one big problem: money. Their cloaking
ships are great for superspying and raids on freighters and lowly defended planets, but in
order to be successfull he needs to build Darkwings and Resolutes which are both pretty
costy. Diplomacies fight much better than Resolutes, and together with your bigger ships
they can offer the Birds the protection they need against head-on attacks. Cloaked ships
are great to have as scouts, armed freighters or ofcourse battleships with
cloaked-intercept capability, and Birdmen on superspy controlling minefield friendly codes
allow for raids deep into enemy territory.
The Fascists
The Fascists are a torpedoe-race just like you, but have some cloakers and their
Glory-device ships to detect cloakers or be used as a weapon. Their ships have a lot of
beams, so one or two as minesweepers can be a real help. Fascists can also pillage a
planet a couple of turns before you or they attack it, or pillage one of your own planets
for a turn to give it a jumpstart. With the ability to pillage natives for money or pop
Amorphs the Fascists arent likely to be short on money, so itll be exchanging
warships here. Though equipped with a lot of beams Fascist ships often have less tubes
than your ships.
The Privateers
The Privateers are everybodys most hated enemy and most beloved ally. If
youre sure you can trust them that is. You wouldnt be the first ally to open
up his RST in the morning and find the bulk of your fleet stolen right from under your
nose. Having said that, the Privateers can indeed make a very good ally to you and
vice-versa. The Privateer robs, you clone and refit. His gravitonic ships move your
battlegroups around at double speed, and your battleships are what keeps him from being
overrun by enemies. Youre just what he needs to get to the Lizard, since your
Loki-immunity allows you to tow out the Lizards Lokis so the Privs can go in and rob
his pants off.
The Cyborg
The Borg, often hated as an enemy, can also be a great ally. If you work together well you
can use his assimilation as an advantage to turn low-government natives into monarcy
colonists. His assimilation can provide you with enough clans anywhere to get the best out
of the natives, and your terraforming comes in real handy when he starts assimilating 8
million natives on an arctic world. The Fireclouds chunnel is a very nice way to
move your fleets around the map, and your shiplists complement eachother perfectly. You
have the small, medium and large battleships and he has the massive ones. The Borg are
vulnerable early in the game, so if you can them a planet with natives safe behind
Federation lines you make sure they survive long enough for the both of you to become
unstoppable in the end.
The Crystal People
The Crystals can provide you with the perfect defense: webmines. They also have a
very nice carrier, the Crystal Thunder which in Federation hands becomes quite impressive.
The Crystals are equipped with a nice array of torpers, though most seem to be designed
for minelaying and sweeping: large cargoholds and large tanks, more beams than tubes.
Their top of the line torpedoship has six tubes, so some Diplomacies as "cheap"
battleships might be welcome. You can provide the Crystals with money to keep the webbing
up and/or build fighters, and they can save you the trouble of cooling down boiling hot
planets since they like em that way.
The Evil Empire
The Empire and you can form a very strong alliance. He supplies the information
through his Dark Sense, you supply the medium and heavy warships and he throws in some
Gorbies which in Federation hands will kill anything. You can even turn the Super Star
Destroyer in to a decent carrier, though its use will ofcourse be to take bases
alive. The five free fighters per Emperial base help filling the carriers, your money make
sure those bases can also build something useful besides sitting there making fighters.
Access to superrefit enables the Empire to build Gorbies with lowtech engines, so he might
be able to crank out some extra before the shiplimit. Once the two of you are underway,
theres not much anybody can do about it.
The Robots
The Robots are a perfect ally to the Feds. You have torpers in all sorts and
sizes, he has carriers in all sorts and sizes. His Instrumentality is a great mop-up ship,
and he can build the fighters to fill them for free. Missouris to go in first before an
Instrumentality, Automa or Golem will make sure the two of you can take on any ship in the
game. Your money make sure he can lay enormous minefields, and you can superrefit the
four, six or eight engines on his carriers so he can worry about quantity, not quality.
Yes, it is a sad day when the Feds and the Robots unite.
The Rebels
The Rebels are another race with a shiplist that greatly complements yours. He has small
carriers, s good hyperjumper and a large carriers, but actually misses some ships
inbetween. And those are what you have. A second weakness of the Rebels is that they only
have two ships with a reasonable amount of beams to sweep mines with, one of which is his
tech 10-carrier. In exchange for some good torpedoships and help in minesweeping Federal
Patriots and Rushes enter the field. Federal taxes help the Rebellion economy, and the
Rebel builds free fighters for the alliance. Furthermore, the Rebels immunity to ATT
and NUK can be exploited and the Rebel Ground Attack can be used for offensive as well as
economic purposes.
The Colonies
The Colonials are another great ally to you. Much alike the Rebels they lack some
good torpedoships to fill the gap in their sihplist between the small Patriot and the
large Virgo. Your many torpers fill that gap perfectly. Their Cobols generate all the fuel
the two of you need, their fighters sweep all mines within 100 lightyears and they build
free fighters. The Feds optimise the economy in this alliance, offer early-game
protection, give the Colonials torpers to lead their Virgo and supply them with hightech
beams to sweep webmines. In exchange, you get Patriots (very cheap, nine bays) and Virgos
which under Federal command become the best carrier in the game with 11 bays and 10 beams.
What would a game be without enemies to shoot at? Below a short summary of things do watch out for and things to do against the different enemies this game has to offer, more detailed descriptions can be found on the enemies page.
The Lizards
The Lizards have two strengths: their groundpounding and their ability to take 150% damage
on their ships and planets. Groundpounding will happen from cloaked ships, and since your
Lokis cannot decloak Lizards you will have to lay lots and lots of minefields. Small
overlapping fields often serve better than one big one, ofcourse small overlapping fields
overlapped by a big one are better. The Lizards are very strong in the early game with
their easy access to minerals and cash, and since their main ship used for groundpounding
only has a hulltech level of 3 you can expect them even before you have the resources to
lay minefields. In fact the only thing you can do in situations like that is to
counterattack and take out his supporting planets, while trying to gather resources to lay
some minefields. Later in the game you should be the one attacking him, since you have the
better ships.
The Birdmen
The Birdman has a fine range of cloaking ships and some nice tricks to go with
them. He can pick his fights, stay cloaked if he doesnt think hell win, hunt
down your freighters and use the cloaked-intercept to fight the freighters before the
accompanying battleship. Using his superspy he can gather enough information to know
exactly where to attack, and with the ability to control a planets friendly code he
can make the planet beam up all its money to his ships or control the friendly codes
of your minefields. That last abilty is one you shouldnt underestimate, since with
the recent Loki-immunity for the Birds minefields are the only way to keep his cloakers
away from your important planets and your freighters. The answer to your Birdman problem
sounds simple: attack him. He simply doesnt have the ships to fight you with, apart
from his tech 10 Darkwing and ofcourse a starbase or a battlegroup he has nothing that
will beat a Diplomacy. The Birds need some time early on to earn taxes and build up their
empire so they can crank out Darkwings, and where the Bird has no Darkwing the Bird is
vulnerable.
The Fascists
The third of the cloaking races, the Fascists use their cloaking ships mainly to
sneak up on planets undetected. One of their main weapons is the pillage-mission, with
which they can plunder a planet for supplies and money. To make sure their ships
dont get blown to bits by the planets they pillage Fascist ships are immune to NUK
and ATT, so make sure you have a ship capable of taking out the Fascist cloakers defending
your better planets. Luckily the Fascists are the first of the cloaking races you can use
your Loki against. As described earlier, Lokis protect your most important planets and
accompany battlegroups. The second Fascist weapon is the groundattack. Though not as
strong as the Lizards, 15 Fascists kill one Federal clan If there are too many Federal
clans to kill and no defending ships the Fascists can ofcourse pillage the planet somewhat
first, and then drop their clans. Fascist clans are preferably dropped from cloaked ships,
so here too mines and Lokis are the answer. The third and most underestimated Fascist
weapon are the Glory Devices. These ships can explode, causing one minehit of damage to
all ships in the same spot. They are often used to soften up big ships after which the
Fascist fleet comes in for the kill. Carrying supplies to repair damages and your
crewbonus (remember, all weapons work regardless of damage) give you a chance against the
Fascists.
The Privateers
The Orion Pirates have the most feared special ability in the game: they can rob
ships of their fuel and cargo and take over fuelless ships with a boarding party. The Nova
which was so proudly defending your empire this turn might just be theirs the next. But,
too bad for the Privateers, youre one of the races best-equipped to handle them.
Lokis decloak cloaked privateer ships, your other ships kill it and he doesnt get a
chance to rob. None of his cloakers can stand a minehit, and as long as he hasnt
robbed his way to some powerful enemy ships theres no way for him to stop an
incoming attack. As long as you make sure he doesnt rob the incoming fleet blind,
that is. The keyword here is Loki. Multiple Lokis, actually. Istrongly advise you to read
up on Privateer tactics and anti-Privateer tactics, since this has only been the short
version, not guaranteed to keep you from being robbed.
The Cyborgs
The Borg are a peculiar enemy. You can walk all over them early in the game, trash
the entire Cyborg empire, find out one lousy probe has escaped and get killed by the
rebuilt Cyborg fleet later on. Assimilation of natives does have its pros, and that
is what the Borg will be concentrating on throughout the game. If you spot a Cyborg probe,
get there fast an clear those planets of the Borg. If possible ofcourse kill the probe.
Apart from his Cubes you can take out his ships very easily, and though probibly filled
with a lot of colonists and a lot of defenseposts non-starbase planets can be taken out
without too much trouble too. The Borg live by their Fireclouds, which they need to
chunnel their groups of cubes around. Make sure you kill the Fireclouds and youve
won half the battle. The next step is taking out the Borg planets. The Borg need those
planets to earn them money and supplies, and mine a lot of minerals so they can build
their expensive cubes and fill them with fighters. If you cut off the supply-lines
(Fireclouds and planets) production will stop or at least slow down severely. Remember he
can use his Firecloud network to get a lot of ships in one place fast, so attack on at
least two different locations.
As for the defense: make sure you spot and kill his Fireclouds a long way before they come
anywhere near your important planets, because where you see one Firecloud this turn you
might see a dozen cubes the next. And killing cubes is a hard thing to do.
The Crystal People
So feared for their webmines, the Crystalline warfleet is often underrated. Their
Emerald, Diamond Flame and Crystal Thunder can put up quite a fight, and what they cannot
beat they suck dry of fuel. Like the Privateers the Crystals can enter fuelless ships with
boarding parties and take them over.
Ships caught in their webmines lose 25 Kt of fuel per turn, and a minimum of 25 Kt per
minehit too. If youre going up against the Crystals superrefit becomes yor best
friend: dont even bother sending in ships with less than six beams or less than
heavy disruptors. Make sure you have enough fuel standing by, and carry some supplies to
fix minehit-damage.
The Crystals weaknes lies in their high need of molybdenum and their need of cash to
keep the webbing up and the carriers filled. So probably more than most other races
theyll need a lot of supporting planets. The solution would be to take them out, but
if he knows what hes doing hell have your butt covered in webs before you can
say Enterprise. Bottom line: use large battlegroups with lots of hightech beams
(Diplomacies work very well here, throw in the odd cheap Arkham for cheap beams), be
patient and keep sweeping. In the long run you will win this cat and mouse game, since
youre sweeping away his resources.
The Evil Empire
The Empire combines power with unlimited information, in potention a very dangerous
combination. All he needs is shoot in a probe set to Dark Sense, and hell know the
strength of all your planets, hell know what resources you have and hell know
where your bases are. And once he knows where your bases are, he can send out his Super
Star Destroyer. 10 Clans dropped from one of those will take over any planet including the
base, regardless of the number of colonists and defenseposts you have there. And if the
combination of those two isnt enough: he has the biggest ship in the game, the
Gorbie, to back them up.
Now for the good side: apart from a Gorbie no Emperial ship stands a chance against a
Missouri. So the key to defeating the Empire is attacking him. Battlefleets consisting of
Diplomacies and some Missouris come a long way, include a Kittyhawk or two as mop-ups
against Gorbies you might run into (Missouri-Missouri-Kittyhawk does it every time) and
make sure he doesnt even get to use all his information.
The Robots
The Robots are one of the better fighter-races, and also have a quadruple
minelaying advantage. They can build free fighters in space, using only minerals and
supplies. The key to fighting the Robots is, as with the Crystals, beams. Lots of them to
shoot down fighters, and hightech to sweep their minefields. Make sure its a long
way from them to your important planets, since the Robotic baseships are the biggest
fuelhogs in the game. Attacking the Robots will most likely be quite costy, since
youll need lots of Missouri-Kitty combos to take out his carriers. As with most
enemies, taking out his supporting planets will severy cripple his ability to build more
carriers, minefields and free fighters but most likely youll have to plough your way
through some serious minefields to reach his important planets, only to find out that
theyre heavily defended.
The Rebels
Like most carrier-races, the Rebels dont have a lot of worthwile mediumsized
ships. They have their small and cheap Patriot, which if preceeded by an equally cheap
Guardian can take out anything smaller than a Missouri. After that the next Rebel ship
worth mentioning for battle is the tech 10 Rush. The Guardian/Patriot combination die fast
in minefields but make a great defending combination. The way to hurt the Rebels is to
cover their territory with minefields and disrupt their supply lanes. They have eight
beams on the Iron Lady and five on the Rush, and thats about it when it comes to
sweeping. On the offensive the Rebels are much stronger, it will take multiple Federal
ships to take out one Rush. To make sure you cant jsut concentrate all your forces
to deal with his Rushes, a good Rebel player will shoot out some Falcons to RGA your
planets. Since the Rebels are also immune to ATT and NUK youll need to leave some
ships behind to take care of them. Lucky for you terraformers, Lokis and alchemy ships can
do a nice job at that.
The Colonies
The last race in the game, but certainly not the least, the Colonials have a
combination of unlimited fuel, long-distance minesweeping, a very nice carrier and some
small Patriots at their disposal. Using their Cobols to tow their Virgos they can fly on
indefenitely. Minefields wont stop them, and to get to the Cobol youll have to
go through the Virgo. Missouri-Kitty or Nova-Nova (lose the first one, the second kills
the Virgo) combinations are the only way to stop his Virgos.
The key is this should be starting to soud familiar by now- to take the war to his
space, and take out his supporting planets. A Diplomacy in Colonial space can only be
stopped by minefields, multiple smaller ships, a Virgo or a Starbase. So go and take out
the planets he earns his money and mines his minerals on, this will slow down his carrier-
and fighterproduction. Be sure to bring a lot of fuel, because a very effective Colonial
defense is to strip a rather large neutral zone of all fuel, to make sure you dont
get to his important planets anytime soon. So the trek to the Colonial heartlands will be
a long and patient one.
I'd like to mention once again that ofcourse not every tactic and idea in this guide is
my own. I used to keep a list of people who had mentioned or published specific important
subjects, but I've decided to drop that. The list would be severely incomplete anyway, and
most of the tactics which were new at the time I heard of them (or at least they were new
to me) are now considered common knowledge.
After ploughing through this basic guide (really, I've tried to keep it somewhat brief) it
might be worth the trouble to go back to the main page and read the separate pages with
detailed descriptions of among others the Federal economy, allies and enemies.
This version was (re)written on august 29th of 1998, the most recent version of this guide
can always be found at http://www.xs4all.nl/~donovan.