What would you have done different with Vanilla BOTF?

[slickrcbd]

I was thinking "optimal arrangement" to take the minimum number of losses. Also for every race but the feds (who don't like planetary bombardment) I don't usually have the troop transports or scouts participate in the bombardment if there are more than 2 orbitals as I tend to just lose all the transports that way. Even with the feds if attacking a core world with 8 orbitals I will have the warships spend one turn bombarding without transports before having the transports attack.
On the other hand, if that initial bombardment wipes out all the orbital batteries, I'll often just have a single scout/science ship bombard along with the troop ships to minimize casualties and infrastructure destruction (since I'll want those structures intact when I take over).

[thunderchero]

Even with the feds if attacking a core world with 8 orbitals I will have the warships spend one turn bombarding without transports before having the transports attack.
On the other hand, if that initial bombardment wipes out all the orbital batteries, I'll often just have a single scout/science ship bombard along with the troop ships to minimize casualties and infrastructure destruction (since I'll want those structures intact when I take over).

when you do 2 separate bombardments like that it will do far more damage to population and structures than a single bombardment.

The problem for me is I never lose any ships or fail any bombardment now that I understand how to sort ships and always use more than I need. If I don't have enough ships I wait until I have enough ships and correct ship types.

[slickrcbd]

Even with the feds if attacking a core world with 8 orbitals I will have the warships spend one turn bombarding without transports before having the transports attack.
On the other hand, if that initial bombardment wipes out all the orbital batteries, I'll often just have a single scout/science ship bombard along with the troop ships to minimize casualties and infrastructure destruction (since I'll want those structures intact when I take over).

when you do 2 separate bombardments like that it will do far more damage to population and structures than a single bombardment.

The problem for me is I never lose any ships or fail any bombardment now that I understand how to sort ships and always use more than I need. If I don't have enough ships I wait until I have enough ships and correct ship types.

So what's the rule of thumb for how many ships are needed?

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

So what's the rule of thumb for how many ships are needed?

Safest way is enough cruisers able to survive and destroy 1 OB each and enough TTs with at least twice the systems ground combat strength.

But even then the game sometimes ignores the ship sorting mentioned by thunderchero and OBs attack TTs first.

When using cheap/fast/weak ships as OB blocker, make sure to have at least one ship, able to survive an OB attack, with the torpedo firepower matching the shield generator output (remember the tech level influence). Otherwise your TTs cannot land. But this method somehow increases the risk of ignoring your ship sorting.

[cleverwise]

I agree with a lot of these changes:

1) Map coordinates are very important when you have so many systems. You spend a lot of time going where the heck is that system? This was mentioned.

2) I agree the Borg are way to powerful. I would rather just not have the Borg or an option to turn off just the Borg. I know if you turn off random events the Borg are gone but if you want random events you can't just disable the Borg.

3) Better map scrolling would have been nice.

4) The Federation gets way to butt hurt over war. I get it the Federation is about peace but come on even when war is declared you always lose attacking systems. This has to be balanced out with take a system then do something "good". I find that annoying. The hits were way to large.

5) The spying engine was way unbalanced. It really needs a lot more work.

6) I, too, agree the silly actions of the computer. Make a peace treaty two, three, four turns later broken then a few turns later we want a peace treaty again. What the heck?

7) I always thought why the Ferengi for a major power? That made no sense. If anything it should have been the Borg.

I know there were other things I came up with over the years but do not recall all. Now some of this has been fixed via mods and patches here on AFC. Also at some point software needs to be released as one could forever keep adding features. Ofc over all BOTF is a great game and I enjoyed it a lot when it was first released.