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.


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