The Federation: A basic guide to playing the Feds


1. Introduction

2. Your ships

3. The basics

4. And then?

5. War!

6. Allies

7. Enemies

8. Closing words


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 it’s 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 they’re 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 it’s 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.

1.2 Disadvantages

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 you’ve had bad luck with the planets you find close to your homeworld, it’s actually not such a big problem as it’s 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 don’t have which would be very nice to have. This is not a disadvantage solely for the Feds: no race has al the ships they’d 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 it’s 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 it’s 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 it’s own against anything bigger than medium ships or planets without bases. The Kitty’s 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.

1.3 General strategy
Obviously, you'll have to "make maximum use of your advantages and try to overcome your disadvantages".
In a nutshell that means making sure you've got a very strong economy and use that and your superrefit to outbuild everybody before the shiplimit hits. By that time you'll have to have a lot (as in: 100 or so) of ships in order to keep up with the carrier races. Against them you'll often lose two ships in order to destroy one of their large carriers, so you'll need superiority in numbers. It would certainly help you to be agressive early on, especially if you have one of the large carrier-races as a neighbour. Races like the Borg, the Rebels and the Evil Empire and to a lesser extent the Crystals, Robots and Colonials need time to build and fill their big carriers and/or lay their (web)minefields, while you can build great medium-sized ships from the beginning of the game. Have a look at their shiplists and discover that apart from their large carriers not much of their ships match up to for example a Diplomacy, let alone something heavier. So find out who your neighbours are fast and try to take out at least one of the heavy carrier-races before turn 40. That will gives you more room to build your economy and one opponent less to take out in the later stages of the game. Ofcourse I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to become buddies with one of them, free fighter and the beforementioned carrier in Federal hands are very useful too.

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2. Your ships

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 don’t 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
A fairly useless ship, since it only holds 200 cargo. It cannot tow because it only has one engine, which gives you two reasons not to build these things. Large freighters are much better, more cost-effective and use up less shipslots to move your minerals around.

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
One of the most important ships in your fleet, this baby is responsible for keeping your empire running. Has enough cargoroom to move all the minerals needed to build a base, and one of these to shuttle between a base and it's supporting planets will make sure the base stays operational. Has two engines, so it can tow around a small armed ship for protection, a warp 1-terraformer to it’s planet or some big hull with lousy engines to a base for refitting.

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 I’ve 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 it’s firepower you need don’t 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 it’s 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 there’s 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 you’re flying through or even near minefields have somebody tow this baby, you don’t want to see 6000 MCs worth of fighters get blown to bits on a lousy mine.

Neutronic Refinery Ship
Another very important ship, though like most important ships not a battleship. This ship converts one supply-unit plus one mineral into fuel. You'll certainly need a couple of these to make sure your ships can even get to the battlefield, especially in the later stages of the game when your planets have been mined dry. A bonus use for this ship is that equipped with x-rays or disruptors it does a great job at capturing those nasty probes, Falcons and small recon ships.

Super Transport Freighter
I rarely build this ship, as the Feds don't need to ship that many minerals to one place at once, and pretty often don't even HAVE that much minerals to move around. Four engines and sligtly more than double the cargospace as the LDSF, though it's empty mass is only slighty higher than the LDSF. Theoretically one superfreighter is more economical than two LDSFs, but two LDSFs can each move in seperate directions which is far more of a benefit.

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. It’s 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 I’ve only once lost one against a stocked starbase so far.

Merlin Class Alchemy Ship
After the LDSF, your second-most important ship. This ship will convert three supplies into one unit of mineral. Using the alt, alm and ald friendly code you can have this ship produce the mineral you need most. Don't think this ship is useless unless you find some nice Bovinoids, this ship is vital even without Bovinoids. As the Neutronic Refinery, this ship can also protect the planet/starbase it's orbiting from probes and other small, annoying ships.

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3. The basics

3.1 The Game setup

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 settings

First 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.

3.3 Your first turn

Assuming the game has started you with most commonly used settings of a rich homeworld, a starbase with level 7 enginetech, two starting ships and 15,000 starting MCs you’ll find yourself owning one planet with a starbase in orbit, an Outrider and a Nocturne. You'll want to stay invisible as long as possible, to build your empire in peace. As long as your ships start and end a turn orbiting a planet, nobody can see them. All planets 84 lightyears or less apart are good: you can fly a maximum of 81 LY, give or take some rounding. Any planet (you've checked this in the hostsettings) has a warpwell around it, sucking all ships within 3 LYs into orbit. This way you're able to travel 84 lightyears in one turn. If you're really lucky you've got quite some planets at about 50 LYs apart, in which case you can go with the Heavynova engines currently on the ships. If not, You'll want to replace them with transwarps. Go to your starbase screen and upgrade the engine tech to level 10. While you're here upgrade the hulltech to level 6, so you can build your first of many Large Deep Space Freighters. These ships will carry your colonists and minerals around, and must always be equipped with transwarp engines. Don't worry about upgrading weapon or torpedo techlevels yet. Change the planetary/starbase friendly code to anything you like, but don't leave it at AAA. It might be a good idea te set the friendly code to 'con' so you'll receive the configuration of the host setup and any used addons next turn. Set the starbase's primary order to 'force a surrender'.

On the planet, go to the mining menu. You'd better max out the number of factories, because you will need supplies to colonise planets or to be put through Merlins later on. Don't build more defenseposts yet, you've got better things to do with your money. In order to keep the production going, you need to build lots of mines, without them you'll run out of minerals very soon.
This first turn set the taxes to 20%, this will cause happiness amongst your colonists to drop to around 70% and will provide you with some money to build your first freighters, after which you should get a good native planet going to provide you with cash.

Then for your ships: Load them up with clans, set it to superrefit to put transwarps on it if necessary (if so, dont’t forget to build a transwarp engine too or they’ll use the ones meant for your LDSF) and say goodbye to them. Send them out in different directions, going from planet to planet, dropping one clan only and moving on. This is a vital part in setting up your economy and marking your territory. Set theirs mission to 'sensor sweep' to scan for enemy activity on planets. When in need of fuel set the mission to 'beam up fuel' and they’ll will get theirs fuel from the planets they’re orbiting. Unless you just want to start a fight with the first neighbour you meet you won't set a primary enemy. Change the ships’ friendly codes away from AAA so they won't surrender to a starbase one might accidentally fly into. If your first two ships don't get killed somewhere during their explorations, try to get them back to your starbase to be recycled. That way you get the transwarps, tubes and beams back, as well as 75% of the minerals in the hulls.
You might want to send out some messages to the other players, saying you want there to be peace, wish everybody a nice time in this cluster and things like that. Or, if you've decided to play agressive, send out something nasty. One of the nicest parts about this game is the fact that it's played against other humans, not a computer. So be a human, communicate.

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4. And then?

4.1 The second turn...

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 isn’t worth it in which case I’ll build 50 mines and some defenseposts. Planets with natives ofcourse get more clans, and don’t 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.

4.2 But what if I can't planet-hop?

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, it’s 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 you’d normally do. If your homeworld is at an isolated location you’ll 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 don’t reveal their heading, though it’ll be pretty obvious you’re not flying from that cluster to that isolated planet but in fact are flying from your isolated homeworld to that nice cluster.

4.3 Early-game hostilities

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.

4.4 And then what?

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?

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5. War!

5.1 Diplomacy

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)

5.2 Engage!

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.

5.2.1 Defense

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

5.2.2 Offense

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 they’ve 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 you’ll 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.

5.2.3 Battlegroups

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 they’re 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. It’s 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 don’t know what you’ll be flying in to have a Nebula or Diplomacy set to fight first.

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6. Allies

Personally I think allying is both fun and vital. Nobody can win the game solely on his own and even if you’re planning to you’ll 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 we’ll 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 won’t blow up before they’re 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 aren’t likely to be short on money, so it’ll 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 everybody’s most hated enemy and most beloved ally. If you’re sure you can trust them that is. You wouldn’t 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. You’re just what he needs to get to the Lizard, since your Loki-immunity allows you to tow out the Lizard’s 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 Firecloud’s 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 it’s 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, there’s 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.

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7. Enemies

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 doesn’t think he’ll 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 planet’s friendly code he can make the planet beam up all it’s money to his ships or control the friendly codes of your minefields. That last abilty is one you shouldn’t 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 doesn’t 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 don’t 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, you’re one of the races best-equipped to handle them. Lokis decloak cloaked privateer ships, your other ships kill it and he doesn’t get a chance to rob. None of his cloakers can stand a minehit, and as long as he hasn’t robbed his way to some powerful enemy ships there’s no way for him to stop an incoming attack. As long as you make sure he doesn’t 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 it’s 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 you’ve 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 you’re going up against the Crystals superrefit becomes yor best friend: don’t 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 they’ll need a lot of supporting planets. The solution would be to take them out, but if he knows what he’s doing he’ll 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 you’re 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 he’ll know the strength of all your planets, he’ll know what resources you have and he’ll 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 isn’t 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 doesn’t 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 it’s 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 you’ll 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 you’ll have to plough your way through some serious minefields to reach his important planets, only to find out that they’re heavily defended.

The Rebels
Like most carrier-races, the Rebels don’t 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 that’s 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 can’t 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 you’ll 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 won’t stop them, and to get to the Cobol you’ll 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 don’t get to his important planets anytime soon. So the trek to the Colonial heartlands will be a long and patient one.

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8. Closing words

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.

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