Fed accuracy bonus for Photon Torpedoes (+50%), Pulsed Phasor Cannons (+30%), and Gatling Phasors (+40%).
Sebastian did some analysis of PTT's (Photon Torpedoes) and concluded they were the probably best general purpose Fed weapon except versus Stormers, who have special resistance to PTT's. PPC's are excellent against ships with ver high evasive bonuses, but are more expensive, so PTT's are probably better if you're building a huge fleet.

Racial weakness

Feds can only generate a maximum of 12 Spy Mana per turn (Host 47) - i.e. they are poor at Spying.

Recommended colonisation strategy

Feds have a wide farming range and cheap terraforming ships. These ships will shift climate 5 degrees per turn, each, towards 50C. Thus you can farm any world you want. The importance of this was brought home to me in a game where I played EE (who can only farm ships in a narrow band of 20 degrees or so). By turn 30, my farms were producing about 2,000mc per turn whilst my Bird rival (farming range: 50 degrees, plus terraformers traded from Feds) was generating 7,000mc / turn. Every turn... you can see how it mounts up!

You need 1,000 colonists per farm on farming worlds. So you will end up with some high population colonies generating cash and food. But you still have to ship the cash back to the nearest shipyard somehow where you can actually use it. I suggest that you pod the food home, and dump the cash into local government centres, freeing your homeworld income for shipbuilding. Be sure to guard the farming worlds with troops and agrovators, since Feds are the first race anyone looks for when they need prisoners. If your population ends up in prison camps, your happiness will crash and your economy is hampered.

See the Agrovator trick under Food above. Maybe you don't need to spread your population around.

Your initial wave of explorers should drop a few people, on as many planets as possible, ASAP to gather natives. This has the side benefit of preventing rivals with native dustoff and contraband dustoff devices from stealing all the good stuff in your region. Follow up by dropping 200-1000 colonists on each planet, perhaps using Pods. Why 1000? Well, it allows you to run 10 mines productively. And you will need at least 200 in order to produce more than a handful of supplies to keep building with (factory output is limited by the square root of population). It means Borg hyperprobes (capacity: 50 Borg guests) are unlikely to be able to take the base by simple ground assault. This leaves the bulk of your population on your homeworld for now, where it can breed... and pay taxes. In fact, many players will drop a minimum of 5000 colonists on a mining planet (for 50 mines), and on a planet with a soil rating of 200, they would drop 200,000 colonists to run the farms.

Blitzforming

Look at it this way. It takes a ship several turns to get to the extremes of your empire. During this time the colonists in the pods are not breeding, and the ship could be shuttling minerals, fuel, natives or contraband from worlds nearer your HW back to the shipyard you already have there. The remorseless laws of compound interest mean it is usually best to keep the bulk of your population at home or close to home, where they will breed faster, generate taxes you can ship home easily, and where they can be defended easily. Don't try to set up lots of big far-off colonies early in the game. Use the ship time to cart supplies etc to a few worlds and when you DO settle a world, drop enough people, supplies, cash and food on it that you can turn it almost instantly into a revenue-generating world with government centre, max farms and needing no further attention.

Therefore, keep as many as possible on the homeworld to breed up to about 1,000,000 ASAP. At this point you can start settling certain types of worlds with high numbers of colonists, keeping in mind:

• Try to keep at least a million folk on the homeworld at all times. It maximises the tax income from the Natives you ship home. Ideally, you will eventually want >10 million people, all in Cities, on your homeworld to fund your ship building there.
• Big podfuls of people should be taken (docked in a ship for fuel efficiency and safety) as quickly as possible to their destinations. Don't leave significant chunks of population in pods any longer than you have to.
• Spreading your population out makes them difficult to defend. Don't spread your population evenly. Concentrate population on just a few worlds where high population is useful. The rest (mining colonies and farm worlds) don't need more than 2,000 each unless you are suffering from Ground Assaults.
• It is no longer worth landing lots of population on a world to try to Gather contraband. That 1 million folk will generate a lot more money, faster, in cities.
• You only need 1 colonist to gather Natives. But Amorph worlds are different, because the wild worms like to eat your colonists, and your colonists are not safe until all Worms are rounded up in cages in the bases. Drop at least 100,000 on such worlds. Worms produce a constant flow of Lerchin Spice, which you don't even need to gather if they're in your base. Free money and well worth a few colonists!

For some other races, like Evil Empire, there actually is a point to spreading population around early on instead of concentrating it on the homeworld. But since Feds only gather contraband slowly, and their economy is based more on cities and farms, they should not disperse population and make it vulnerable, at least not early on.

Strategy suggestions

Don't bother spending money on Hyperdrive tech; you don't have any hulls which can use a hyperdrive engine.See the Combat Tips page: Swarming section. You cannot use any Superweapon except the Protomatter Cannon, which happens to be Superweapon Tech 5. So if you want to use those devices, you will have to buy the first 4 (very expensive) techs first... but you won't be able to use the lower techsuperweapons.
>Keep a High Guard or two on each ship if possible. This helps prevent the hull plans being stolen (everyone wants Bohemians and Lokis) and, it also helps them shoot more accurately. Then there's the Fed Scotty Bonus (miraculous self-repairing in battle).
Pete Chambers [who's played Feds a lot] advises: Trade hull plans is my recommendation for Feds - a decent courier and a grav miner are very welcome. Also hyperdrive ships. And make Io class fighters when you can. Good even in small quantities if you can afford them.
Many Fed ships use mostly small weapons. These suck unless you boost them with Exotic Tech.
You need a defense against hyperspace attacks: grav well generators, or grav mines. Trade for, or Spy for plans to ships like these. If you have this, it will break up incoming hyperfleets and give you time to muster your defenses when enemy fleets appear on your borders.

Additional Fed analysis by Jon Nunn

Ground Units:

I wouldn't bother trying ground assaults as part of a regular Fed strategy unless the enemy are really weak (Peeps or Scavengers or Crystals, say). The Fed ground assault vehicles are weak, and it will be more cost-effective to just use Troops and accept the losses. If forced to fight ground battles, say because then it is a good idea to mix in a few ground vehicles (tanks, I'd suggest) because these are much less affected by other races' special powers (dark force rating, Lizard boulder attack) than personnel. Also, in late game, lasercannon may be a worthwhile defensive investment. (Very expensive tech, unavailable in early game.) Here's your options for ground assault mechs:

• Agrovator - main use is enhamcing farm production, but they are a good defense against casual ground assaults too, especially as every farming base is going to have a few dozen of them by mid game.
• Hover Craft - cheap (30 mc), 2X defense against ground troops compared to troops, but not really any use. Colonists trained into troops are cheaper.
• Fed tank - your best ground unit vehicle. Still not very good compared to most races'.
• Lack good good Attack Air ground units -> need for fighters to defend yourself from air units. [Note from PH. Other folk tell me that non-wing fighters are an expensive way to do this - the losses are horrendous. Perhaps AA guns (Planetary Tech 8) are more straightforward.]

Important use for Ground Units: Of note even 1 Fed Agrovator will slow the Borg down under host 98+, because bases with ground assault vechicles can no longer be forced to surrender from orbit via Borg assimilation. Instead the Borg will need to ground assault the base if he still wants it. He may instead decide to just blast the offending base from orbit if it doesn't have valuable resources though. - Jon Nunn

Fighters:

Most Fed players don't bother with Plymouths and Bellarmines in big fleet battles.

• Plymouth Shuttle: Good for attacking ground units, but otherwise just [Flake] cannon fodder at 50 mc / fighter. Decent armour for a type 1 fighter though.
• Bellarmine Shuttle: 2X shields of Plymouth and 2X flying range at 120 mc / fighter. Still cannon fodder.
• Io Class fighter: actually an excellent fighter (better be for 350 mc each). 2 automatic hits (1 with beam, other with missile) for anything with less than 30% evasive [including all Borg fighters]

• A detailed example of how to use one ship - the Loki: I was not clear what the point of a Loki was - but with 25 small weapons and no large ones, it is clearly intended for something. Zapping wings perhaps? I asked Tim, who replied: "Small weapons are not fired at fighter wings. A Loki was designed to attack light enemy ships. Remember each hit from a small weapon has a chance of hitting a ship's soft spot. You could have a large ship with large weapons blow off the shields and armour and the Loki can peck at the soft spot 25 times a tick. Note that only three SW's can hit Soft Spots since that was written - but Small Weapons are now much more effective when boosted with Exotic Tech. If you stick a High Guard on the ship, the Fed Scotty Bonus will make it extremely hard to kill.
• Jon Nunn addressed the question with his usual detail and advised the following, which incidentally explains a lot about how combat works: "Assuming money and resources are no object: I'd outfit the Loki with: -
  • 6 Turbo Lasers. With the Loki 70% Evasive Bonus, it's only in real danger of being hit by things with very high attack factors. (Such as fighters.) Thanks to the 70% attack bonus, vs Borg fighters, each laser has a 70 + 35 - 20 = 85% chance of hitting a Borg fighter per second. (Uses 18 energy units second)
  • 10 Io Fighters set to defend the Loki from fighters to shoot down fighters the point defense systems miss. Actually Jon changed his mind on this one as he got more experienced. He now suggests 10 Bellarmines, since 10 Ios would more than double the cost of the ship. My own view is that you want the heavier Io if you're expecting a tough fight, like a big fleet action, but Bellarmines are probably pretty good versus light ships and force the enemy to split his defenses versus ship and fighters.
  • As for small weapons, thanks to the 70% attack bonus, all of them start with automatic hit odds before evasive bonuses (except if hit by point defense). If energy weren't limited I'd be going with 25 Plasma Guns, however 2 FTL5 engines and the best generator possible only generate 140 units of energy per second. So I'd only mount 11 plasma guns [110 energy]; 2 Xenon Beams would be nice for a few early armour damage shots [2 energy]; the remaining 12 slots would be the fasest weapon : Pulsed Laser [12 energy]. Total small wepon energy: 124.
  • Total energy consumption = 142 (-2 deficit) With a power bank of 140 this gives us 70 seconds until slowdown in weapons firing which then is very slight.
  • I also think the most appropriate setting for a Loki is Attack Dangerous. Those ships are less likely to have attack and evasive bonuses, with the ironic result of making the Lokis safest near them than the softer ships.

Jon Nunn's Fed ship analysis: (ordered by tech level)

Note: In the following recommended equipment, I wouldn't use Micromissile Launchers, they are only effective versus fighters. Jon also favours Turbolasers and sometimes these are not the best choice of Point Defense either. It all depends what you're fighting (turbolasers and multimissiles would be excellent versus the Evil Empire's hordes of fighters). Jon wrote the recommendations before some weapons were given special powers, e.g. Concussion Rockets are now extra good versus Sandcasters... this is all part of the game: one can argue forever about the "best" weapon mix and everyone has their own secret combination! - PH

• Small Deep Space Freighter: Just as useless as it was in V3, only this time it won't keep other players from building real ships.
• Fuel Tanker : Its towing ability from VGAP3 is all but gone with only 50 towing power. Otherwise same uses as VGAP3 (money & fuel carrier)
• Outrider: At 50 mc / ship (plus engines and weapons), attack bonus of 60%, and evasive bonus of 40% this is really the Fed's first "fighter". (Following techs lowered to near minimum; hull itself goes obsolete quickly:) 1 FTL-1 engine, 4 Pulsed Laser , 1 Flake Cannon , 1 35mm Vulcan (50 shots) -> 10 surplus energy.
• Nocturne: First Fed torpedo ship, plus minesweeper and mine dropper. "Fighter-like" bonuses. Build lots of these. 1 FTL-1, 1 Sandcaster , 1 Force Beam , 6 Pulsed Laser + 2 Flake Cannon , 2 Micro-sandcaster -> -3 Energy/sec -> 50 seconds until short of energy.
• Medium Deep Space Freighter: Good inital freighter especally since unlike VGAP3 you can't build large ones right away. Can haul a reasonable cargo load, and many players use these as the backbone of their merchant fleet, hauling pods around. Low mass, thus quite fuel efficient.
• Bohemian: Its main use is sitting around warming planets up, but also doubles as a fighter in fleet combat. Complete replacement for the Outrider. Considering likely weapon tech levels Jon reccommends: 2 FTL-5, 2 Streak Missles, 4 Pulsed Lasers, 1 Auto Blaster -> 55 surplus energy. (I think he is assuming that it will be refitted with these weapons once you reach these tech levels, for you will always have some of these planet warmers sitting around. The weapons are chosen partly for a good range.)
• Eros: It's main use is sitting around cooling planets down. Includes 60 kT large weapon mounts. 2 FTL-5 engines, 1 Anti-Matter Gun, 1 Sandcaster , 1 Streak Missile + 1 Turbo Laser -> 53 surplus
• Small Transport: An armed Small Deep Space Freighter, hard to spot, good evasive factor gives it a chance of surviving if set to run away. 1 Positron + 1 Streak Missile + 1 Flake Cannon -> -2 -> 50 sec til short. Jelmer Renema swears these are brilliant in swarms set to "Ram"
• Terra Starbase: (Weapon design unspecified; when first built it's likely for the goody devices and therefore minimal weapons; in mid-game it's a defensive measure and so the exact techs you have will determine the weapons used; and when you have techs for Missouri and Kitty the starbase not likely to be involved in combat unless the war is going poorly.) This has both terraforming devices, mines the planet it's built at (or towed to) in one turn, can construct more ships, detect mines at a distance, and keep crews happy with the holodock. Very tough for a tech 4 ship. 2 Pulsed Phasor Cannon + 2 Sandcasters + 4 Plasma Guns + 10 Micro Missile Lauchers -> 108 (2/5 gen, +52 surplus) Comment from PH: don't build these Starbases - hull tech 4 - until you have hull tech 8, because without a Missouri hull to tow it around it will sit uselessly over your homeworld. It has no engines and is too massive for hulls below tech 8 to tow.
• Vendetta: Once built, Bohemians are off fighting duty. 90% attack bonus for weapon accuracy = lots of automatic hits for weapons and anti-fighter point defenses. Somewhat prone to spontaneous blowing up though. (10% spot soft) 2 FTL-3, number 1 generator, 3 Photon Torpedoes, 1 Sandcaster, 8 Pulsed Laser , 4 Turbo Laser -> 9 surplus
• Large Deep Space Freighter: Complete replacement for medium one, just like 3.0
• Banshee: This is a complete replacement for your Nocturnes. Build lots of these. 2 FTL-1, number 1 generator, 3 Photon Torpedos, 1 Sandcaster, 2 Plused Laser, 2 Micro Missile Lauchers -> 21 surplus
• Nebula: Kind of a mirror image of the Vendetta (90% evasive and 30% attack bonus). Put some of these in your fleet and the opposition will need high attack bonus (fighters) to track them down. 2 FTL-5, NO/2 gen, 2 Photon Torpedos, 1 Pulsed Phasor, 1 Sandcaster, 3 Pulsed Laser, 1 xenon Beam, 2 Micro Missile Lauchers -> 26 surplus.

----Registered only----

• Brynhild: Its main claim to fame is still the Bioscanner. However it has size 60 weapons (such as Anti Matter Gun), that is if you don't already have Photon Torpedoes. Lots of Point Defenses and good evasive factor. 1 FTL-1, NO/2 gen, 1 Photon Torpedo, 1 Sandcaster, 6 Micro Missile Laucher -> 5 surplus
• Arkham: It's main claim to fame is the boarding laser, but are you sure you want to use it considering how bad your troops are in combat? Marginally more weapons than Vendetta, but without the fighter-like bonuses. 2 FTL-5, NO/4 gen, 3 Photon Torpedos, 1 Sand Castor, 1 Pulsed Phasor Cannon , 4 Pulsed Laser, 1 xenon, 1 Tachyon , 3 Micro Missle , 1 Interceptor -> 14 surplus
• Loki: Again, this completly replaces the Banshees. It fact with 70% attack and evasive bonuses and 25 small weapons, this is the true Federation fighter. And 3.x players, yes, it still decloaks ships. (you still need a ship with large weapons, but at the same tech level there's the Missouri) 11 Plasma Gun, 2 xenon, 12 Pulsed Laser, 6 Turbo Laser -> 142 (1/1 gen, -2) -> 70 sec before short of energy.
• The Loki is perhaps the ultimate anti-fighter (anti-wing) ship. Armed with micromissile launchers and turbolasers, its 6 PD mounts and decent attack bonus chew rapidly through wings - but also it is incredibly cheap compared to most fighter wings.
• Note that if you turn on the Loki's Tachyon Scanner, it increases the visibility of all ships in the area and unmasks cloakers; but be aware it also makes your own ships visible from right across the galaxy. This is known as "The Hirst Maneuvre" after its discoverer, who lit up his home base and fleet so everyone could see that what he was really building was only a fraction of what he claimed. So maybe move the scanning Lokis out of range of your big fleets..? (Luckily it no longer lights up bases.) Lokis are brilliant anti-fighter ships by the way, because they can mount 6 Turbo Lasers and back these up with a large (70%) attack bonus. And they can carry a small anti-fighter Wing too. Lokis turn out to be excellent fighting ships even lacking Large Weapons, because they just keep pecking away with LOTS of small weapons each of which has a chance of hitting an enemy ship's critical soft spot once the armour and shields are gone. Obviously the Exotic Techs which boost small weapons make it even harder. I think most users just fit turbo lasers and pulsed lasers to Lokis.
• Missouri: highest large count of weapons so far, comes with 20% attack and evasive bonuses as well as extra parts/hull, control systems, and life support shielding. Nice tractor beam for towing a Loki too at 190. 60 fighters, 2 Transwarps, 1 GF 8000 / 3, 4 Photon Torpedoes, 2 Sandcaster, 2 Pulsed Phasors, 6 Plasma Guns, 1 Tachyon Gun, 1 Xenon, 2 Positron Cannon, 2 Pulsed Laser, 2 Turbo Laser, 4 Micro Missile, 2 Interceptors -> 18 surplus
• Diplomacy: Maybe add one to your fleet to keep the crew happy (holodeck). Otherwise like a slow, light Missouri. I guess you're building this because you don't have enough material for a Missouri? (Holo-deck only benifts the ship crew itself) Money and minerals determine the outfit. Suggest: 4 Pulsed Phasor Cannon, 2 Sandcaster, 11 Plasma Gun, 1 xenon, 4 Micro Missile, 1 Interceptor -> 224 (3/4 gen, 76 surplus)
• Kitty Hawk: At last, a ship capable of holding enough Io fighters to do actual damage to ships (athough the wings should probably still be initally set to attack enemy fighters / defend friendly ships from fighters) As an added incentive to build, it also has a holodeck. 2 FTL-5, 2 Tachyon Guns, 6 Micro Missiles, 4 Interceptors -> 40 surplus. Comment from PH: filling this with 500 fighters may be cripplingly expensive, even if you don't use Io Class Fighters. Comment from Jon: 1 of these for every 5 Missouri or Missouri equivalent. There's really no point in building this ship unless you can afford to fully load it with 500 fighters (athough a good chuck of these can be scuttle-craft.)
• Thor: A lot like the Version 3 version, lots of firepower for the money. 2 FTL-1, number 3 gens, 6 Photon Torpedoes, 2 Sandcaster, 2 Tachyon Guns, 3 Micro Missile, 2 Interceptors -> 3 surplus
• Super Transport: Faster speed than medium guarantees more use than in VGAP3
• Alaska: Your fuel maker. In an emergency it also has 10 point defense systems. 2 Pulsed Phasor, 2 Sandcasters, 2 Plasma Guns, 3 Turbo Laser, 2 Micro Missile, 5 Interceptor -> 94 (2/5 generator, 76 surplus)
• Merlin: Your mineral maker. Also has 10 point defense systems for emergcenies. 2 Pulsed Phasor, 2 Sandcasters, 2 Plasma Guns, 3 Turbo Laser, 2 Micro Missile, 5 Inteceptor -> 94 (2/5 generator, 76 surplus)
• Nova: More weapons and better internal shielding than the Missouri, but slower and without the bonuses. A comparsion between this and 2 Missouris in both combat and cost should be made before building one. Maybe build one per 3 Missouris? It also has the mine sweeper, mine dropper, and Holodeck. 40 fighters, 4 FTL-5, 1 GF-8000 / 5, 4 Photon Torpedo, 4 Gatling Phasor, 2 Sand Casters, 10 Plasma Gun, 2 Xenon, 2 Tachyon, 6 Positrons, 8 Micro Missile, 2 Interceptor -> balanced enegy use / generation.
• Super Nova: Most weapons possible, if you see one, it might be built with 20 Transwarp Engines, 5 of the best power generators, the best shield, 20 large laser arrays, 30 plasma guns, 10 micro missile launchers, and carry 240 Io fighters. It can also build ships itself, along with the same devices it's little brother has. However, IMHO it's main use is the message it sends ("I have so much money and minerals, I can build a Super Nova!") The Proto-Matter Cannon is more for creating planets than combat due to it's slowness. Against one, I'd try "using the force" to find the soft spot. 10 Large Turbo Array, 6 Turbo Array, 4 Sandcasters, 27 Pulsed Laser, 3 Xenon, 10 Micro Missile -> 1246 (5/5 gen, -46) -> 50 sec til short if Proto Matter Cannon off. Comments from PH: SuperNovas eat fuel. Their fuel tank is about 5000kT, but this will need to be refilled to get across a normal sized galaxy! Also, my simulations show that the Nova is much more cost-effective, largely because you can build about 3 of them for the minerals required for a SuperNova - and that does not include the 1000kT of each mineral required for the PMC weapon. Two Novas will take out a Borg Cube as easily as a SuperNova will, but much more cheaply. In addition they use less fuel etc. The only time a SuperNova is needed is arguably to blow through a Base Shield, such as when attacking as homeworld. Even then, it takes about two turns' worth of bombardment with a PMC to destroy a Shielded enemy base - the PMC is not a planet-buster weapon. Finally, it is worth noting that there is currently a debate going on amongst VGAP4 Beta Testers as to exactly what a Base Shield should protect against, which may make Superweapons less necessary than you'd expect. After seeing someone's prized SuperNova captured with ease and turned against them, by an enemy with a boarding laser, I realised that the SuperNova and Nova have unusually low crew levels for tech 9/10 hulls. I reccommend that you cram lots of troops (and High Guard if you have them) on board to minimise the problem of them being captured if they survive a battle in a damaged condition.

Anti-Fed tactics

• Very vulnerable to Ground Assault. (Comment: Taken from FED race stats sheet: Colonist Combat 10 Crew Combat 5... Tim's response:That is no mistake. The average colonist is better at combat than a person trained to be a ships crew person. Yes, the Fed train their crew people through the use of drugs, chips and holograms NOT to fight, but to be peaceful. They tend to use stun weapons or try to talk their way out of a fight and are very quick to surrender or threaten to blow up theirselves if they do not get their way.) They are the ONLY race that has ship crew that is weaker than colonists when it comes to combat.
• The Scotty Bonus makes their ships unusually hard to finish off if you peck away with just a few weapons, so I suggest using a few big ships against Fed swarms. This will allow your ships to concentrate enough firepower in one broadside to totally vapourise a Fed ship. Try regenerating from that, Mr. Fed Zombie.
• Hyperships in early game - but they will probably trade for grav mines as soon as they can!
• Small weapons aren't as useful as usual against Feds. SW's are 25% weaker against ships until their shields are gone, [I think this means they fail to fire 25% of the time,] and due to the Scotty Bonus, Fed shields are continually regenerating.
• Most Fed players are defensive. They can survive easily behind walls of mines, while slave taking races etc try to attack to get at their wealth. Gold pod attacks seem the most effective technique once they've holed up like this.