Federation Strategy

[Anonymous]

posted on April 8th, 2009, 1:40 am

Last edited by Anonymous on April 8th, 2009, 10:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Alright, so I have been playing as the feds against random AI trying to figure out what their best stragity is.  Now I have played as all Races, and been able to beet other AIs with them, however with the Feds I have had no such luck.  I was trying to think of their advantages.  Sure they have a pretty quick start with the warpin descents, but what else?  They can't spam.  They don't have powerful ships besides the TWO Descents you are allowed.  They have ok defenses cuse they are cheap, but they arn't powerful. Their ships mine slow, and are all expensive.

So when is this race good?  They can't be good in the very beginning because the scout is not good, and the saber only has one phaser.  In the mid game, they can hold their ground, but it takes so much time to build their ships, that if you mount an attack big enough to do any damage, you will leave your base unguarded.  In late game you are dead, because you can't get enough resources to build sovies, phalanxes, or defiants and you don't have enough time to build another shipyard and multitask.

Now don't get me wrong, the Feds are my favorite race, but I think they could really use some work.  The Ideas I had in mind, would be one, raise the mining rate of the miners, and then either lower the build time of the ships, or raise their offense.

Tell me what you guys think, remember all this is IMO

posted on April 8th, 2009, 2:14 am

Let me just say one thing before I begin..... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! Not AGAIN!

Now that THAT's out of the way...
I'd really prefer not to look for mine or other people's old posts on strategies and simply quote them here (plus, I'm not sure if you've read them already); but there have been plenty of statements on the Feds balancing already.

So please don't take this the wrong way but I have to disagree with every point you make. I even thought you were joking at first, really. 

First off, all mining ships mine at the same speed I believe (except for the Borg), and even if they don't it is balanced by how much their facilities cost too (Klingon economy is really hard to set up for example). Secondly, their ships are not expensive, they are mid-price as far as comparison to other races allows. They are superb early game as the Saber (already been through this) has long range, dodges torpedoes excessively, and has relatively high shielding while being cheap, the fastest destroyer, and very quick to build (which incidentally could make it easy to spam). As you tech up you will notice that with good micromanagement the Akira is an extremely powerful warship. All the Feds ships have above average high shielding for their price incidentally and they build quickly compared to say… Romulans (and even Dominion if I remember correctly…. dunno how you can compare any race to the Borg though). Likewise their turrets are second to none and they even can be upgraded with an ability (forgot the name) to decrease enemy rate of fire. Later game you have some of the best support vessels (with blackout, plasma coil, increase weapon fire rate thingy) with extremely durable ships such as the Excelsior II and the Defiant.

I have not mentioned your other concerns because they really depend on how you play. Also, who uses the scout for battles anyway? 

If you haven’t already you may want to try Mayson too: best turrets in the game (artillery range FTW), excellent destroyer mop (Norway), and cheaper ships from the small shipyard. Not sure if you have done this, but you might want to try playing as the other factions: you’ll quickly find that your complaints will dissipate when you realize what other factions have and do not have.

I really like the Federation too and have played a lot with them in recent days/weeks (multiplayer mostly but a small bit of AI to test some things), but out of all the races, I think that they need the least work done on them. If you want, this weekend I can have some games with you and hopefully show you some of the Feds strengths if you want.  I must warn you though there really is no way to compare playing multiplayer to playing against the AI, as balance flies out the window when playing vs. the AI (as all it does is spam). Thus I really find this thread somewhat… irritating. 

posted on April 8th, 2009, 2:51 am

dont listen to dominios, he just likes to hate on us because we bring ideas he dosent agree with

now yes i understand what your saying, it however has been suggested that feds have best mid game, i dont find this to be true, i support you, and i have your problem often as well, its hard to attack without sending pretty much everything in

posted on April 8th, 2009, 3:17 am

Against the AI, 5 Excelsior-II and 2 Sovereign can usually eat their whole base, and quite a bit of their fleet.

A few Defiant (4) backed up by a pair of Excelsior-II and a Remore can shred most fleets.

posted on April 8th, 2009, 3:25 am

I honestly thought you were joking, too.  I figured it out though.  Your evil twin was locked in the basement and got out.  Then hacked your account and made this post, right?  Because I know for a fact that that's the first thing my evil twin would do.

I recommend going to the Sovereign Class - Durability Issues thread and clicking on page 19.  Read the posts by Dominus, Silent, and myself about how spectacular the Federation is when it comes to to doing what they do.  I mean, how much offensive value do you need when you can have a remore drop the shields of a station and have your fleet open up on a now unprotected target?  That's like going up to someone and kicking them in the jimmy!

If you go back into some of the archived threads you'll notice a trend.  It seems that for every post about anything at all, there are like some 5 federation posts that have been made.  So if you catch flak for this post, know that it's not you personally.  There's just this history of the Federation getting the most attention on the forums because everyone likes "da feds" and wants to be the next Janeway when gameplay wise they are one of the strongest races of the five.  Trying to explain why this is has kind of been like playing whack-a-mole.  :fish:  Everytime you think you've reasonably defended your argument, another one pops up! 

posted on April 8th, 2009, 3:44 am

Against the AI, 5 Excelsior-II and 2 Sovereign can usually eat their whole base, and quite a bit of their fleet.

A few Defiant (4) backed up by a pair of Excelsior-II and a Remore can shred most fleets.

correct, even though i tend to not use sovreigns, but the rest of the fed ships kicks ass if u use it right (common ppl, start to use the powerfull tools like remore and the other support ship)

posted on April 8th, 2009, 3:54 am

Well stated Mal  :lol:

And Ray, I'll eat your children.

And yes, attacks generally are doomed to fail if you send four ships and leave the rest at your base. With no faction can you really leave ships at your base unless you are really desperate to lose (or you are just so spectacularly good, that you don't need half your fleet in order to kill your enemy). In case you didn't realize Ray, Adm. Zaxxon is playing against the AI. Consider that the AI has no resource limitations, will build all ships fully researched and promoted and doesn't care if you attack its mining or not because it won't do anything to set it back anyway. They also won't attack your ships until they get to their "target". Even if it is just a scout. Now, do you really believe that the same strategies work against the AI as work against a human and that it is fair to state that the Federation is weak based solely on AI battles?

I am "hating" on neither of you, I am just stating what I have seen, played and heard on multiplayer. If you disagree, fine. But prove it (*cough, Ray*). Don't just say "they seem weak to me" or "dont listen to dominios, he just likes to hate on us because we bring ideas he dosent agree with". If I said anything more about this matter it would just be redundant if I said anything else about this matter.

posted on April 8th, 2009, 5:53 am

I just played a game and won with about 15 fed ships vs dominion (supposedly one of the better AI) I won in about 15 min trust me, if nothing else, the fed is very powerful. Also the fed is very good early to late game after that they start to lose ground to the larger battleships. So don't let the game go that long finish em off early.

posted on April 8th, 2009, 6:03 am

Longer the game goes, the more Excelsior-II you need to deal with battleships.

Also, against the AI, enough of Mayson's torpedo turrets will stop any race except Romulans (The Serkas will actually fire at it outside of it's targetting range, so you'll need to manually tell the turrets to shoot them.)

posted on April 8th, 2009, 11:15 am

I've been on plenty of RTS forums and more often than not I come across situations like this. The community is vastly divided on how powerful a race is.

Many people say they are underpowered, the rest will argue either that they are perfectly balanced or even one of the stronger races in the game and in fact another race needs attention.
In every case - from my experience - I found that the players arguing for improvements to this race simply lacked efficient strategy with them and/or found them hard to use efficiently (If they weren't one and the same).

What we need is a strategy subforum so the more experienced players can teach the less experienced how to play better. Or we could just organize tutorial games.

posted on April 8th, 2009, 12:39 pm

  Agreed. A while ago, on 3pr, there were threads about preferred tactics, but now people just complain about races being weak or overpowered. A sub forum on tactics for different races will be welcomed. 

posted on April 8th, 2009, 1:13 pm

It would be kinda cool if the more experienced players started youtubing (is that a word) videos. Then the more experienced players could show the other players how that race is strong.

posted on April 8th, 2009, 2:03 pm

@ Dom, and Mal

The reason I started this thread was because I have played A very long time this week trying different strategies, just trying to figure this all out.  I have read, and posted on the sovereign thread which was resolved.  I really don't mind if you don't want to do anything with the feds, you don't have to post.   Any way that's just my opinion.  Weather or not I suck or not remains to be seen.  Also I almost always play Mayson.  The problem, is if you fortify your base with turrest, you cant build battle ships, because you don't have time or resources.

@Silent

I specifically play against roms a lot, because they are hard to beat.

other than that y'all should 1 on 1 with the Borg ai hard and tell me how it goes

posted on April 8th, 2009, 2:55 pm

But the point is, you can't use AI as justification for balance, it just doesn't work that way. If you have different factions, AI can never be well balanced, it's just a fact of RTS.

If you want to post a serious balance thread or post, then collect data from online games against human players of similar skill level.

posted on April 8th, 2009, 3:20 pm

Borg AI Hard?  First, it cheats.  Badly.  It does not follow the Borg rules.  It builds mining outposts with Assemblers, and it will have multiple cubes 20 minutes into the game while only controlling 1 set of moons.  There is only one way to beat it.  RUSH.

Which, btw, makes the best races for beating it Fed (Their abnormally high shield strength means if you just keep pumping cheap fedships into their base, they won't just instantly fold against the Assimilation Matrix) and Klingon (Large number of ships that hit hard?  Check.  Willing to lose 3/4 of them for a win?  Check.  KA'PLA!)