When setting up your fleets in botf what do you feel is your best ship setup? I normally set up two types of fleets and convoys. I only set my Command fleets, and Fast Attack fleets to crew training. While my convoy escorts just get on the job training.

These are my favorites:

Command Fleets
1-command ship
2-heavy cruisers
4-light cruisers
2-heavy escorts

Fast Attack Fleets
1-heavy cruisers
3-heavy destroyers
3-heavy escorts

Convoy Fleet
3-heavy escorts
3-troop transports
3-colony ships

lol, 9 K'Vort IIs

but seriously:

Command:
3 Command Ships (best ship of race)
3 Heavies
2 Strikes
1 Scout
18 Destroyers will accompany my command fleet usually at the start, then I'll join two command fleets when I start getting big.

Fast Attacks are usually all destroyers for me

Convoy (rarely build these):
4 Destroyers
2 Troop Transports
3 Colony Ships

Planetary Strike fleet:
6 Strike Cruisers
2 Heavies
1 Command

That's pretty much it. I know some people don't use strikes at all but I find they're pretty useful. I'd adjust the list depending on what race I play but that's the general fleet complement.

I ever seldom use strike ships. It is normally out of wanting to take system very fast to lessen the hit to moral. The last game I played I was playing the Dafeds mod. Man what a great game it was! lasted 791 turns with massive ship losses. I turned to using strike ships; due to losing about 200+ ships against the Klingons I had roughly 350. I guessing the Klingons had easily 500 to 600 ships owning about ½ of the map. I had to go through the Cardassains, and Romulans to get to them. They have completely subjugated all of the Ferengi empire by the time I got to them around turn 450. after losing the first 7 legendary fleets to them; moral was not doing so well. So I started using strike ships and troop transports to move behind their lines and start to take systems from them.

P.S. Dafeds & Jiggy that is a great mod only wish the ship mods fired phasers.

I have never found strike cruisers to be worth the cost. Perhaps they survive if the crews are trained (as in elite +)?

As at least the Romulans, I've found that you can either
1) use Cruiser II's as cannon fodder (most likely one will die per orbital)
2) pray
3) avoid conquest and achieve space superiority across the area you want to conquer, then strangle them one system at a time
4) wait to conquer until you get Warbird II's, they will survive if there are as many as there are orbitals. I allocate faster fleets of Destroyer II's and Battlecruisers, with a few elite/legendary Warbird II's for fleet combat, while leaving a couple dozen Warbirds for planetary assault. Be careful to rotate them, so they can repair themselves. The assault fleet's raw firepower come in handy if the Borg show up!

With the other races, as far as I understand each supership (Dreadnought II, etc.) can take out an orbital without fear of death as long as the forces are balanced with the number of orbitals. Otherwise, cannon fodder works just as well.

I usually like buying mass scouts sometimes and then wait for reseech to get a free upgrade to scout ii's which for ferengi at least are devastating. Or is it for destroyers. Ah well 9 fast level 2 ships usually are a fav of mine.

Tho best ever strat has always been 9 warbird ii's cos they can kill anything i heard.

Romulans:

9 Destroyer II's in a fast attack fleet
9 Capital ships; either 9 Battlecruiser II's or 6 BC II's and 3 Warbird II's.

In general (any race):

I group by speed or range. I keep fast ships together so they can become a fast attack force or a rapid response defence force - especially ships with speeds of 3 or 4. I won't burden a task force with faster ships with ships with speed of 1 unless it is necessary for some escorting reason, or to make a powerful strategic move. After considerations are made for speed, I try to get as many ships operating at their peak ranges as possible.

For example, as the Federation I won't hinder the range of 8 Heavy Cruisers by adding one Command Cruiser or Dreadnought (unless it is a D II, and I don't care about range). I would rather keep the heavies separate or group them with other fast/medium range ships, so that they can operate most effectively. To escort a slow/short range ship I will usually assign older cruisers that only have a speed of 1 or something else I don't have a better use for.

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And yes, Skeeter, I am pretty sure 9 Warbird II's can destroy pretty much any single entity (except maybe the Edo Guardian - I've never tried that), and probably can take out any assortment of nine ships any enemy can muster, provided they are well trained. I wouldn't really hedge that bet against a Borg Cube, but It might just work.

A borg cube can be destroyed by 6 Warbirds, or 4 Warbirds II without any losses.

The borg isn't THAT strong, you know..

[quote="TheWhiteRaven"]lol, 9 K'Vort IIs
quote]

Seriusly......does things where undestroyeble........with a complement of 18 K'Vort IIs you could almost finish the game.......so thats why I disabled the cloak on the K'Vorts

How the hell the is that possible? The game chrashes if more than say 200 ships are invoked in one battle. At least with my version does...

That realy depends on the system you use. Botf itself doesn't crashes, it is your computer that crashes because it can't handle the amount of date it has to store, calculate, render and what not. If you have a brand new, state of the art computer, it won't be any problem.

Are you sure it crashes, or does it simply freeze?

If it seems like it is freezing, then just try leaving your computer for a while. It once took 40 minutes to load a battle (On my old computer) - the only reason why I bothered to leave it so long was coz I went down to have my dinner and I was side-tracked. Just as I walked back into the room, the battle started. It frightened the hell out of me!

The better your computer, the faster it will be at loading battles. The thing that really slows down a game is the number of weapons - try modding it so ships have fewer weapons, especially torpedoes. Increase the damage to compensate if you want.

I KNOW that having lots of weapons slows down the battles, coz I created an Oberth with 255 torpedoes the other day. I sent 9 of them against a Klingon outpost. It took about a minute to load the battle, even though there were only nine ships and an outpost on the battlefield...

...

If it is crashing, it may be due to your system, or your version of the game.

You could try different versions and creating huge battles, but it depends on your patience really...

I'm really sorry. I own a 1.7GHz Centrino system with 1GB of RAM, so this _is_ not the problem. And no, it crashes as in "windows tells you the program has terminated with abnormal return code".

That does sound like its a version problem then - i'm not an expert though, so I might be wrong.

Your best bet is to install the game from scratch (Backup your mods first) then try to have a battle with more than 200 ships. If the game still crashes, then I don't know what it could be.

If the game works fine though, then you'll know for sure that it is a mod problem. You'll just have to install your mods one by one until you find the cause of the crash, then simply avoid that mod, or look for updates to it.

If you can't be bothered to set up a massive battle each time you add a mod, save a game right before the big battle - you can just keep going back to it then.

I have only had the game give databreak errors, but never has it crashed due to having too many ships in game if I still have the saved game I can send you teh data file out of it.

Got to be 9 defiants! Best ship in the game imho and the best reason to play the federation. I've had 3 elite take out a borg cube and 9 are virtually unstoppable, just so damn fast that they hardly take a hit and they can take out pretty much any capital ship.

You know that in all those years I play BotF, I have never seen a defiant?? I just never have a game that lasts that long to have them. Or are all you guys playing on tech 5 when you start a game?

2 basic routes to getting the defiant before the games over.

1. Start on tech level 5, does take some of the fun out the game imo as you no longer control those vital early research / colonising decisions, but it does let you focus more on the strategy and battle tactics side.

2. Use the largest galaxy size, start on lower tech levels and play a defensive game until you get them. So get all the good systems you can in the early game and get plenty of friendships with minor races going, once you encounter another major race expand by using getting membership treaties. With luck you'll also get a few ships this way. Not many but enough to sit with by your key outposts. This let you focus on building research structures.

Basically you have to just use the feds strength - research and dipomacy. Even when another race declares war on you just take a defensive posture around key starbases/outposts take out their fleet then zip out and wipe out their outposts to criple their range and they'll usually offer peace after this, or accept your offers. Do so and keep reserching away. It's a bit of an artificial way of extending the game but it's worth it to have defiants roaming around )

Of course if you're playing multiplayer this is harder...

without tech level 5 I can still reache the defiant...IF i play on hard mode or impossible mode.......but the 1 thing that bothers me on the defiant is its coming to late in the game....it should be build before the sovereign and its weapons are far to strong I think

I've modded my game, so I made the Defiant more like the canon Defiant.

She has relatively few weapons, but (Beam-wise) they're massively powerful. She also has a really strong hull but weak shields that recharge at a high rate to show how overpowered she is.

Sorry should have said that you have to play on impossible...It's the only setting I ever use otherwise the game's just too easy. I guess it kinda makes sense that you don't get the defiant until later as it is so powerful that the feds with their superior research would get it quickly and win the game every time. Perhaps having 2 versions of it like most other races would have been an idea...