ok i knew the basic workings about boft but i never botherd looking in the huge insturction manauel about some minor things i could never do in boft and now i lost the manauel! id be very gratful if maybe you could answer the two things i could NEVER do in boft...

firstly is intel... i didnt know the first thing about how to sabatarge, espianage or anything else i usually just had maximum internal security but even then people would sabatarge my planets and so on so if someone could tell me how that worked that would be great!

lastly orbital bateries whenever i tried bombarding a system i lost my entire fleet to orbital batteries and i could never seem to sestroy that many myself, is there a specific way to destroy them without losing too many ships or do i just have to accept my entire fleet is lost witht them when i bobmabard the system

thanks in advance!

you use command ships and strike crusers and wat have ya lol. ive just been gettin back 2 the game, havent played it for 4 years lol. if u want 2 try a multy player game then just say casue ive never played it online

Intel is simple if you look at your intel security its a bar saying 100%? basically lock all races that you dont wish to use your intel on and keep the rest open, then take your intel security down to whatever level you dare to. In turn the intel points get moved onto other races allowing you to use your intel against them.

To stop your self suffering to intel build more intel buildings and allow more population to work with intel rather than industry science ect and keep ur internal security high.

Orbitals can be overcome but you cant expect to take a planet with destroyers or scouts, use your cruisers to do the work for you, once all orbitals are taken down (you can tell by holding your cursor over the planet your bombing on the galactic map) send in the troop transports to finish the job but keep note of your ground combat and the planets groud combat it may take more than 1 trooptransport to take the system.

If you need more help just say ill try explain in more detail.

forget strike cruisers they are crap, you need at least twice as many tt`s as orbitals, stack your ships so the cruisers are below the tt`s, then they will take the brunt of the attack from the orbitals so your tt`s can go in unopposed.

The more ships the better - but make sure they're not destroyers lol, the Orbitals will rip them to shreads

If you focus your intel on sabotage, you might be able to take out your enemies intel buildings as well.

They can't spy on you if they have no spies.

Sabotage is also the option you want if you want to steal enemy ships. That can be a good way to win a war without firing a single shot!

sweet thanks for the help thats virtually answered my questions one more thing is there a way to increae max pop on a system (with maximum terrformed planets) as half the time i want to divert a single system to ship building but food or energy is eating up my labour pool any advice? cheers for all your help the most ive ever done is play a 4 day match with my bro and against super easy ai (but this was when the game had just come out dont think ive played it since but it was a great game!)

Unfortunately once its fully terraformed there's nothing else you can do to increase a system pop - maybe there will be structures in BOTF2 to increase populations
You can however build upgrades to your structures so that they require less labour to operate properly. A level 2 farm will produce more food than a level 1, so you can divert a notch or two of labour into industry etc. Also pick your ship-building system well, for example Benzar has great bonuses to industry, Mintaka has a nice food bonus (so more labour can be put elsewhere), and systems with more advanced industry structures (as Vulcan often has) will allow you to build at a fast pace with fewer labour.

i think enemys sabotage gets more powerfull when your systems / population total is bigger, cos a bigger empire is more difficult to secure against sabotage so you need more intel points...

in the normal botf version the ships will be destroyed by orbital batteries in order they are shown in the ship list. so if your fleet is large enough to bomb them all away in one turn, take as many scouts as there are orbitals so these will be destroyed instead of expensive ships

heavy ships for planet bombing even could resist some hits, you'll see the hull points blown away so that you could group them to a fleet down in the list and they won't be attacked any longer

There IS one way of increasing Planet/System sizes!

The Planet mod!
http://www.armadafleetcommand.com/botf/index.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=8

Or the German version:
http://www.armadafleetcommand.com/botf/index.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=9

That's a link to the download for the Planet mod, from the parent site of this one, armadafleetcommand.com.

If it tells you to log in, try using the same login details that you use for this site. They <should> work.

If you can't direct access the download(s), the english version mod is second in the list on the following page, whilst the German one is third:
http://www.armadafleetcommand.com/botf/index.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=2&min=30&orderby=titleA

The mod increases the maximum population of the planets by 2.72 times, as well as making the Homesystems far larger.

This means that ALL class M planets (Irrelevant of size) have a population of 255, and (As an example) Jupiter and Neptune are now Class M planets - Sol goes from holding the 300-odd population it has, to having 910 population.

This is the only way that I know of to increase the size of your systems, other than by terraforming.

Forgive me for this, but isn't that just cheating?

And also I fear counter productive, surely if you can't beat the AI normally the last thing you want to do is provide it with a massive population boost!! If you can’t manage 300 population points properly then mismanaging 900 isn’t really going to help.

IMHO no, as it affects the AI empires as well - it's no "disbalancing effect" which is the common cheating definition

It's a mod. That's all it is.

Yes, it could be seen as cheating, but you have to remember that the increased population ALSO affects the other Empires, so it does balance out - so you aren't cheating in that respect.

I have found that the average size of system is now around the 600 mark, but it is still possible to find systems with 100 population or less.

I personally think the mod is well-balanced because of this, however, it is up to you.

If you still think it is cheating, then don't download the mod. If i've persuaded you that it isn't cheating, then download it. It's not as if you'd be the only person who has!

And if you're worried it will screw up the mods you already have, then just make a backup copy of stbof.res

Agreed, I did kind of contradict myself!

sweet i might try it out thanks

I think i will have a crack at this, just to see the speed at which i can bang ships out and the huge fleets i will be able to sustain with such a large pop.