Birth of the Federation

jlberner13 wrote: Then for whatever reason I hit a wall...and started losing all of my warbirds to the orbitals.
Thanks.

Like cleverwise said you need at least as many warships as there are orbitals on the planet. But i think you had, otherwise you would have started losing TTs.
Your Warbirds must have been taking damage from conquests; they do if they don't have enough shields; check their hull after each assault and see how much they lose for an assault; if there's not much remaining, rest them for a few turns to regenerate some.
I know that was an issue in vanilla with the romulans and klingons; not enough shield for a CC to absorb all the firepower from an orbital.

In the mod i play CCs have enough shield to not get any hull damage in the assault; i did the change because like you said it was no fun having to wait for the hull to regenerate or keep building ships.

I have found, with UD(whatever it is) patch, the Fed's populations dislike subjugation WAY MORE than bombardment. So if the sector I want is NOT a minor race, I just bomb it clean and then colonize. If your winning even occasional battles the hate from bombing is barely noticeable.

Good know. :-)

As the Feds I usually try to take over as quickly as possible so I really haven't played that way. Thanks for the share.

Well I figure as the Federation, especially when they declare war on me, then they know full well what could happen. That leaves 2 options when an enemy system needs to removed. Cleanse it or occupy. Occupy hurts morale more and then leaves a population with a heft morale penalty. Cleansing it hurts morale less and then lets you colonize the system and eventually have an un-penalized workforce. ^^