Currently the federations philosophy of fighting seems to be "Walk softly and carry a big shield" however according to the show their philosophy is closer to "Speak softly and carry a big shield". The federation commanders always try to talk things out before firing photons. But since that would make for a boring game i propose that some elements of current federation alliances be allowed to surface in the game. I think that the federation should be able to warpin vessels from their allies. I have two ideas on how to make this work.

Option 1: at random when you send out a distress call some of your  allies will answer that call.

Option 2: Your Starbase would have an option to add on "guest quarters" to it. By doing that visiting Dignitarys/Ambassadors will visit you and while they are on station you can call on their ships via warpin. after they leave you may retain whatever ships you managed to warpin during that time. After a visiting ambassador leaves their is a "cool-down period" to prepare for the next one. You might wonder why they would want to visit a place that might get them killed but they are not always the most rational people, they might enjoy the harm it places them in. Anyway in the event that the starbase is seriously damaged the ambassador would be evacuated. Some examples of the ambassadors would be Spock for the Vulcans, Garrak for the Cardassions, Major Kira for the Bajorans.... (sorry cant think of anyone else right now)

One other thing the seems to be missing is what made the federations so unique. Its things like luck, taking initiative, and the out of the box thinking that all officers seems to have. While this would be even harder to represent than just simple diplomacy like a suggested before, i propose that this be represented by having federation starships rank up differently than all of the other races.

Option 1: Federation starships have an additional 2 rank up classes. So instead of being able to become a veteran at rank 5 federation ships rank up 2 more levels first and then they can become vets. Of course they gain an additional ability at rank 6 as well as rank 8 (veteran).

Option 2: Federation starships have  2 levels of veteran. Gaining a new ability if they reach the second veteran rank.

Option 3: Federation ships receive a passive ability at rank 2 and at rank 4.

Option 4: Federation ships rank up extremely fast.

Option 5: Federation ships receive much better bonuses for ranking up.

I think that some combination of these ideas would make for more realistic game play. These ideas could also be used to solve the weak Federation late game.

O please comment and developer feedback is even better

Peace talks?  That would be cool, and make the game longer.  Like having a treaties for a limited time cease fire, or AI Controlled neutral Zones or even Demilitarized Zones where you could mine and build research, but not Military ships or turrets. This would make for very interesting game play.

I dont like the Ideas for changing what fed ships rank up....right now the feds are very balanced in terms of philosophy to abilities. I do like the idea of bringing unity one station into the game...Unity station could be a "neutral" station where players could send vessels to dock and negotiate cease fires and alliances....however allies are allready taken care of via the game setup screen. "nuetral zones" and "demiltiarized zones" sound cool but could potentianaly make a lot more games stalemates. Also I belive that curently from what Ive gathered from posts by the devs implementing neutral zones is curently not posible.

maybe a neutral colour nebula that disables weapons as standard that wud function as perm neutral zone,like the idea though
 

i understand that most people are not crazy about my ideas of changing rankup but lots of people complain about the lack of federation late game strength so this was my idea to fix it.

With the new strength of the sov's sp weapon, i don't think that will work anymore. Akiras will become the only built ship by virtue of their massive damage dealt from fleets of them with their sp weapon!

what weak federation late game? 

How about instead we just crew starfleet ships with klingons yet still call it starfleet and let them go on rampage lol.No wait better Idea with time travel....go back get some nordic or vikings and then put them in command of fed ships....then all fed ships can have the "everything dies" passive ability. basicly same idea as nathanj....