Addons from a Federal perspective
A topic of many discussions about this games are the addons that are available. They are said to disturb the balance of the game, helping some races more than others. This is not the place to dive into that discussion, but merely a chapter that tells you what the various addons can do for you. Before you start in a game with one or more addons, be sure to read it's entire documentation, understand what the addon can mean for you but also be very much aware of how it helps the other races. Right now we'll just stick to the Feds.
Starbase plus
Starbase+ is one of the more balanced addons since it simply extends the use of
all starbases, equally for every race. It enables starbases to lay mines, scan for mines
and sweep them, or scoop up your own minefields. Laying a field with your base can be
useful when you're stupid enough not to have a ship capable of laying a nice minefield
there to protect it. Scanning for mines never hurts ofcourse, but when you have to use
your base to sweep an enemy field that's covering it, you're already in deep trouble. This
comes in especially handy when the Crystals have been able to lay a web covering your
planet, or some huge Robot field prevents your ships from flying to and from your base.
Ofcourse you have some nice ship guarding your base, ready to sweep those mines (remember:
a Diplomacy or even an Arkham hull with warp 1 engines, no tubes and good beams will do
this very well), but the base sweeping along with it never hurts.
Starbase+ can also be used for transporting ship components using MDSF's. Two reasons not
to do this: you'd better build better ships than MDSFs, and you can reach the same
objective using superrefit. The only way this option can be useful for you would be to
transport some transwarp-engines to a starbase over a humanoid planet which doesn't have
the proper techlevels yet. But moving around shipparts, using a ship you normally wouldn't
build or could at least be used better for moving around minerals is probably more of a
hassle than raising some cash on that humanoid base. Or simply tow the tech1-engined ship
from the humanoid base to one where you can put transwarps on it.
The most useful option of the Starbase+ addon is the electronic money transfer: you can
transfer money from one base to another. This comes in very handy when you have one or
more bases with a lot of money (close to Avians or Insects) and other bases in need of
money. Too bad bases need at least 20 techpoints (total techlevels) to be able to send or
receive money. So don't forget to ship some money to your newly built bases and raise some
techlevels before you can transfer it from other bases. The default limit to what one base
can send per turn is 3000 MCs, but a base can receive an unlimited amount of cash per
turn. So it is possible to have twelve bases each send 3000 MCs to one base, giving it a
great jumpstart.
Race plus
Race+ gives all races different new advantages. It is not my intention to tell
you what all the other races gain from this, but I'd say most of them benefit far more
than you do. Your new capability is yet another economic advantage: you can now 'educate'
the natives, improving their government level. For a price ofcourse, which is
host-configurable. Each upgrade costs you a certain amount of money and supplies. The
higher the government-type, the higher the price.
Ofcourse here even more than with terraforming, only use this new ability on safe planets
well within your empire.
A couple of things to keep in mind here are:
-government type influences taxes earned and happiness change, and happiness change
influences growth
-taxes earned are probably limited by the number of clans you have on that planet.
Personally I usually don't go around and improve any government type better than Fuedal,
only maybe if it were Bovinoids (better growth, more natives, more supplies to be
converted to minerals).
With natives other than Bovinoids better government only gives you more cash. So unless
you're in a serious money-problem it would be useless (and if you were in moneyproblems
you wouldn't have the $$ to improve that government anyway). Whatever use you make of it,
when you're playing a game with this addon be sure to read it's docs and see what the
other races gain. And think long on how this will strengthen them, and especially how they
can use it against you.
Nemesis
This is another addon which gives each race new abilities. From reading the
Docs I'd say this addon helps the Feds a lot, but not directly in battle.
You have two new features: The Genesis Device and the ability to Sweettalk.
The Genesis Device allows the Feds to build up an empire fast and easy. Within
host-configurable temperature-settings (default: between 25 and 75 degrees), unowned
planets without natives already on them can be transformed into perfect planets: they get
a temperature of 50, natives of your choice are put on it (number of natives and
government type are random), and one large meteor worth of minerals are put into the
planet to be mined. In addittion all mineral densities are set to 100% and 50 structures
of your choice (mines, factories or defenseposts) are built. The only condition to be able
to do this is the ships you're using the Genesis device from has to have more than 49
clans onboard.
This is a great way to set up some really powerful clusters of planets. Where you'd
normally have some planet with a decent temperature but lousy minerals and no natives, you
can now make this planet 50 degrees, put bovinoids on them -or other natives for free
techlevels, reptiles for quicker mining of that large meteor worth of minerals or
Avians/Insectoids for cash- and start out with fifty structures to get you going. Mines
for instant mining, factories for supplies to build mines etc. (if you haven't put
bovinoids on them anyway) or fifty defenseposts to save you 500 MCs.
A couple of these planets in the proximity of a starbase should enable you to produce a
lot of ships very quickly, so that you'll stand a chance when it comes down to an all-out
war. Think of the possibility to start a base or two in a remote cluster somewhere: with
this device you can bring the right natives to the cluster, put enough minerals in there
and make the planets very suitable for clan-breeding.
I Don't know if this is possible or not, but strictly judging from the docs it should be:
the use of the genesis device is restricted by three things: there can't be natives
already living on the planet, the planet has to be within a certain temperature range and
unowned. It should be possible to overcome the temperature-limitation by terraforming a
couple of turns, and then using the Genesis Device.
The Sweettalk option lets your ships' captains persuade the other races' captains not to
fight. Actually they don't do anything related to fighting when your sweettalk is
successful. They don't build fighters, they don't build torpedoes and they don't use the
abilities they get through the Nemesis-addon. The successrate of this sweettalk is
host-configurable, and 25% by default: you'd need four ships to succesfully sweettalk
enemy captains. Diplomacies however get four times that rate (so by default 100% - but
don't count on Diplomacies being 100% effective, check the settings first). The Diplomacy
gains greatly in value when this addon is used. It can kill most small to medium ships,
and it can sweettalk the ships it cannot beat. One exception are the Borg: they cannot be
sweettalked. So you're still screwed once you're facing those cubes. The number of
torpedotubes on the ship and the amount of torpedoes you're carrying on it have a negative
impact on the sweettalk-proces. One thing to remember is sweettalk only protects the ships
set to sweettalk. Don't expect one Diplomacy to protect your entire battlegroup, but give
the entire group the SWT friendly code. Once you've had a look who are there, decide which
ships you want to fight for you and in which order. Give them friendly codes to match that
order, and leave smaller/weaker ships set to SWT just to be sure.
Since sweettalk is activated by a friendly-code it is possible to keep intercepting a ship
while sweettalking, or towing it over to some of your bigger ships or well-defended
starbase while you're sweettalking it.
Asteroids
This addon adds asteroids to the echo-cluster. They appear out of nowhere,
using the UFO-interface (Winplan required) and can be towed to planets. If you're planning
on towing them with one-engined ships (Outrider, Nocturne, Brynhild, MDSF) you'd better
check the host-settings if that is enabled.
Asteroids can only be seen from a configurable distance, so don't be surprised if you
don't see any of them for a very long time. You can intercept asteroids and tow them (both
using friendly codes) while you're also performing other missions like minesweeping,
sensorsweeping or -if you have a cloaking ship- cloaking.
The trick is where you decide to tow them. You can tow them to your own planets so you can
mine the minerals in them (be picky about the mineral density-rates to decide where you
tow it to), but the impact of the asteroid will damage the structures (how much of them is
configurable, check out the settings before you decide to drop one on a largely populated
planet or you will end up hurting) on the planets, kill off a percentage of the natives
and colonists and bring down their happiness by fifty points. Which brings us to option
number two: tow an asteroid over to an enemy planet to crush some structures (less
defenseposts are always nice) and bring down their happiness. If you're lucky he was
taxing his natives down to 70 happiness points that turn, so they'll now drop to 20 -
instant riots! One thing to thoroughly keep in mind when towing an asteroid onto an enemy
planet: if he doesn't lose the planet you just gave him a LOT of minerals, so if you're
trying to use an asteroid as a weapon make sure it's on a planet you'll be taking over the
next turn or so anyway.
Asteroids also carry Quadbenium, a new mineral which allows you -under certain conditions,
read the doc- to perform a socalled Q-jump, to a distance anywhere between 10 and 100 LY.
This jump happens before normal hostrun, so before robbing, towing and all others. This
jump will burn only Quadbenium, no fuel. Nice way to move LDSFs. Assuming it has Transwarp
engines a ship can hold 5 jumps worth of Quadbenium, equaling 500 LY of movement. It is
also possible to move a Superfreighter this way, but to gather Quadbenium you need to tow
an Asteroid first, and Superfreighters wouldn't be my first choice to go and hunt down
asteroids. Q-jumps are also a nice way to surprise your enemies by moving those 96 or so
LYs between you and them in one turn instead of two.
Jumpgate/Portal/Wormhole
These addons come down to the same thing. They enable you to build openings in
the space-time continuum or whatever you want to call it, and allow you to travel from one
point to another without burning fuel. I'm just starting in my first game with the
Jumpgate addon, but from reading the docs I doubt I'll be building one before the
shiplimit is reached. Jumpgates or portals require a superfreighter worth of minerals. And
the Feds have mineral-trouble enough as it is. If you have minerals to spare, build either
an extra base to build more ships per turn or build a Nova or two.
These addons can be very useful later on, though. Once your empire starts growing and
growing 'all' you need is a superfreighter with the appropriate resources at one end of
your empire and another one deep in the hart of it, where the major shipbuilding bases
are, and you can get your ships to where the action is very easily very fast. This also
makes it easier to send all ships over to a base for refitting, and then back the next
turn instead of having to fly back and forth for eight turns or more. This addon can
really help you overcome your fuelproblem.