BOTF Guide - by Aralon

[Amazing]

Aralons BOTF GUIDE
The Basics
Overview:
1) Effective Production/Building
2) Ship movement/Orders
3) Raiding
4) Effective Sabotage
5) Planetary Assaults/Invasion
6) Minor upgrading


1) Effective Production/Building
Systems always put out their full amount of production regardless of how much is needed to complete a construction in that turn.
Example: A ship might need only 2000 to be finished but the system producing 1900 each turn will build on it for two turns using a whole 3800 to construct it and wasting 1800 credits
You avoid such wastes by buying ships and structures when 2 turns of construction are left. You should always try to keep around 5000 to 10000 credits left to do this.

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2) Ship movement/Orders
Ships move with engage or avoid, most players don’t pay so much attention to these options but they of course have an effect.
Make sure your big fleets which are used to attack the enemy are on engage and small task forces of newly produced ships that want to unite with the main fleet are on avoid.
Same with explorers and support sips of course.
When you have the enemy sending scouts and small taskforces into your space then you should use your main fleet on intercept to catch them.
But be careful not to use this when an enemy has a superior fleet coming to you, in that case you should avoid contact as long as possible
Try to catch small task forces he uses to stuff up his main fleet and use the time you buy to get more ships build and into your fleet.

Addition: When you have tooltips off and let the mouse hover over the symbol of an unknown ship in the bottom screen you can identify the shiptype, race and shield strength. This enables you to avoid races you dont want to meet, to identify valuable minors faster and meet them and so on.

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3) Raiding
Raiding can be a powerful tool against your enemy even in tech level 5 games but even more so in lower tech levels
If you can steal enough money to get your opponent into negative credits then you stop all his production and often force him to scrap ships.
Positioning ships near the enemies vital systems and raiding him requires a superior fleet, otherwise you have to rely on short strikes against him where you move in raid for a turn and retreat, you also risk loosing your raiding ships in such a case.
The best situation to use raiding in is an enemy hiding behind a Starbase and trying to buy time to get a stronger fleet, in that case your raiding is the best way to fore him out.
Include as many ships as possible into your raid groups, even support ships can be used to raid when you group them together with small ships.
The more experienced your ships are the more you can steal through raiding.
[If you have cloaked ship then be careful not to uncloak the whole group by adding an uncloaked ship to it]

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4) Effective Sabotage

The easiest way when using Intel is to simply put 100% on sabotage and wait for your enemy to loose ships and structures.
You can be more successful in penetrating your opponents Intel defense when you also assign 1% to spying activity.
That way your opponent’s defense is split between the two fields and your sabotage is more likely to be successful.
To be the winner in an Intel war, which is often as decisive for the game as the ship battles, you need to constantly add more strength to your intelligence.
Your main colonies that are not building ships should always construct high-level Intel structures.
On colonies and conquered worlds with a large enough population you should also build some level one Intel structures
Assign populace to them and then keep buying upgrades whenever you can afford it.
When you take too much damage and are forced into the defensive then you should assign 99% to internal security but keep 1% on sabotage.
Once your opponent sees you defending he often assigns all Intel to sabotage and spying.
Then after a few turns your 1% Intel often manages a quite hurting result against your opponent and forces him to lessen the amount of his sabotage to defend his vital structures.

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5) Planetary Assaults/Invasion
Planetary assaults can be done in two ways.
The first one is to bomb the planet with command ships until the orbital defense is destroyed and your Troop Transports can land without being destroyed.
The alternative is to sacrifice scouts who take the orbital fire so that the Troop Transports can land in large enough numbers to take the system
Against players who build around 20 orbitals on their planets this is often the only way to succeed with an invasion.
The important point is the order of ships; the scout group has to be above the Troop Transport group in the taskforce menu. The most secure method to archieve this is to follow this procedure step by step: First remove one of the bomber/escort ships from its formation, then do the same with one of the troup transports (the escort/bomber is now above the troupship and both are at the bottom of the shiplist). Now order both ships to attack planet. Then you select the bomber/escort ship and assign the other ship with the same task to his group, once thats done you select the troup transport below and assign the other troupships to the same group. Now you have both groups in the correct order of ships and both have got orders for a planetary assault. IMPORTANT: After you finished the procedure you must not click on any ship in that system again (not even on ships that are not part of the planetary assault) for the turn, wait till the planetary assault has taken place before selecting one of the ships again. Otherwise you might erase the order of ships and in the worst case the troup transports fly in first and get shot down by the orbitals before they can reach the ground.
To compensate planetary shields and bunkers you should add one capital ship or at least an additional scout as the last ship in the line. A command ship is far more effective.
Make sure that your ships ground combat value exceeds the systems ground defense strength, if things are close then wait for an additional troop transport so that you can be sure of a success.
A complete loss of a group of scouts plus a group of Troop Transport is far more costly in time and credits.
Keep in mind that a system you were used to be taking with 3 troop transports [like Ferenginar] on hard settings might repel your attack on impossible settings unless you use additional troopships.
If you chose, your big command ships can take the role of the suicide scouts and get the Troop transports through the orbitals.
If you chose to do this, keep in mind that not every command ship can bombard and live. The following ships can be used to bomb a planet/Shield your Troupships during attack and survive it : Federation Command, Heavy Cruiser and Dreadnaught ; Ferengi Marauder and Warcruiser* ; Cardassian Battleship, Heavy Cruiser and Cruiser* ; Romulan Warbird* ; Klingon Battleship. The ships marked with a * take severe damage from orbitals but survive one bombing run.
The big ships do of course kill the orbitals, population, and destroy buildings while scouts leave them intact so you can use them to defend your new system.
Also worthwhile to note, when you take a computer controlled major races starter planet using the scouts instead of the commands, the planet will often have a dilithium refinery weather it has dilithium or not.

Addition about Cloaked ships:
Whan a taskforce is cloaked you dont get the "attack system" button in the order menue, normally you have to wait till next turn and leave the ships uncloaked to get the planetary assault option. You can get it without waiting a turn if you simply uncloak the group and then add or remove a ship from it. This makes the comp realize that the ships are uncloaked and the "attack system" button appears. You can order a planetary assault and then cloak the ship again if the group still consists only of cloakbale ships. The group will appear uncloaked again next turn after the planetary assault but will be cloaked if a tactical battle takes place while the turn before is processed. One more thing... keep in mind that cloaked ships are more vulnerable to orbitals. A cloaked warbird will take more damage and take longer to repair than an uncloaked WB. A rom destroyer group in T4 which bombs the enemy homeworld will loose less ships if it bombs while its not cloaked. If you are "sure" you wont get attacked while you bomb a planet and that planet has orbitals, then i advice you to bomb uncloaked and avoid damage.

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6) Minor Upgrading
New players often make minors members as soon as possible.
While this might be ok when you are in tech 5 games and the minor has a fleet, dilithium or an Intel structure you need or want to use it’s always better to make the minor a friend or affiliate first then wait till he has upgraded to a large minor with more population and structures.
Only then should you make him member and be fast such an upgraded minor is always a tempting target for other players as well.
Don't waste time to terraform the minors other planets it automatically terraforms them when it upgrades and wont upgrade quicker that way.

Aralons BOTF GUIDE
BOTF-Game tricks
Overview:
1) The one uncloaked ship
2) Money demanding
3) Phantom Dilithium
4) Edo Training
5) Morale Battles
6) Pillaging/System scrap
7) Super terraforming
Trade route morale
9)Intel stockpiling


1) The one uncloaked ship
In Klings vs. Roms ship battles you should always try to have an uncloaked ship with you, either a support ship or an uncloaked scout.
The scout is less preferable cause it is risky for your other fast attack ships in your fleet when the enemy can use a group order on it.
The effect is the following: the one uncloaked ship gives the opponent a cloak turn to shoot at you but he can only target the uncloaked unit.
In the second turn your ships are still cloaked but his ships are uncloaked and you are free to slaughter them without any risk of them shooting back.
If you defend a position then an outpost or starbase can play the role of the uncloaked ship.

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2) Edo Training
Edo training is a trick for races with cloaked ships (Roms, Klings) to make a small fleet of ships very experienced in a few turns.
You can attack the god of the Edo in the cloak turn and then hail in the second turn to avoid being shot by him.
Such an attack is enough to raise a regular ship to the veteran level and can raise them further if you continue to use it.
But be careful not to damage the Edo gods’ hull without killing him, in that case he will shoot back even if hailed and kill your complete fleet.
Watch how much of his shields is depleted by your early attacks and when it gets critical you should reduce the number of ships in the attack or use the same number of less trained ships.

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3) Phantom Dilithium
The phantom dilithium trick is based on the fact that dilithium is not really used during the construction of a ship, just in the last turn when the construction is completed.
That means you can build ships on more shipyards than you have dilithium.
Only in the last turn of a ships construction it really uses up one unit of the existing dilithium and can stop other shipbuilding during that turn.
Its important never to leave a system screen with a "not enough dilithium"-message displayed on it to make this trick work.
To avoid this simply leave a screen with the message on it and reenter.
Then the message is not shown as long as you don’t change something on the screen and you can leave it now and press turn.
This trick should be practiced in single player before it is actually used in an online game.

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4) Money demanding
In a two player game with computer controlled major races on the same tech level you can get amazing amounts of credits from these computer races by demanding it from them.
A trick to make them accept a 10000-credit demand is to have a fleet at the border of their territory in the turn they receive the demand you sent them.
It’s not so important to place the fleet at the exact border of their space but its vital that they can clearly scan it.
Step by step you simply give your fleet the order to fly to the "threat"-position then send the demand then press turn.
This does only work well when the comp race is not yet hostile towards you, so don’t kill their ships or heavily intrude their space before you have their money.
Continue demanding every turn and reap what you can from them, once they become hostile and dont pay anymore declare war on them and hit them as hard as you can. Next thing is often that they offer peace and quite alot of money (especially fergs often pay very well for peace if they were hit hard enough) accept the peace and start the demanding again since they are again neutral to you.
When you meet the comp races early and make good use of demanding you should be able to get around 60000 to 100000 extra credits or more.

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5) Morale Battles
Morale battles are simply repeated small fights with a minors ship or small fleet were the minor is not killed but always retreats giving you a small victory and morale boost each turn.
You often find the situation that one of your scouts or a smaller ship encounters such a battle when entering a minors system.
Just repeat the battle continuously and your morale will rise each turn again and again.

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6) Pillaging/System scrap

The system scrap is the scorched earth strategy some players use when they are sure they wont get a system back they are loosing.
When the enemy invasion fleet is ready to attack then you scrap everything except orbitals, energy- and Intel structures.
The orbitals and the energy structures powering them are there so you still inflict as much damage as possible on the ships attacking your planets
While the Intel structures cannot be used by the opponent anyway and can still be used for another turn.
This tactic is called pillaging if its used with a small fleet that attacks the enemy while his main fleet is diverted and then invades a system just to scrap it and not to stay and defend it.

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7) Super terraforming
Super terraforming is the trick to place a colony ship and a Troop transport in one group and use them for terraforming.
Any group of ships containing those two types of ships will terraform a planet in one turn regardless of the size or type of the planet.
This is especially useful in lower tech games were a good colony can really affect the game.
In tech level 5 games I always advice the players to use as few colonies as possible and build more warships instead.

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Trade route morale
Trade route morale is what I call the effect trade routes have on a minor’s morale.
An established trade route will steadily raise a minor’s morale over time making it cheaper to affiliate them or make them members when you have the time to wait for their morale to rise enough.

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9)Intel stockpiling
A very important method to prepare for an intelligence war later in the game is to assign populace to intel structures from the start on.
The gathered internal security builds up over time and creates a security shield that the enemy has to wear down with his offensive intel before he can start to succesfully sabotage you.
A good intel shield can give you the time you need for an attack against your opponent or it enables you to sabotage him while you only have 1% assigned to internal security and force his intelligence into the defensive from the start on.

[RSE_Dissy]

This is it! What ruthlessferengi was looking for, what I tried to rewrite, this is it!

The ultimate botf strategy guide written by Aralon for Red Squad Elite!!!

Worship the leetness of this guide. Take it all in. This is the bible.

[RSE_Chris]

At last we have it! if everyone follows this and takes it in, there will be a lot of challenging games

[stardust]

I'm guessing that this is the holy grail for you guys then?

love the intel stockpiling tip, that'll keep the Cards off my back for a while longer

[ruthlessferengi]

cool:) any early 1-3 /earliesh tech (4) comments?

[RSE_Dissy]

T2 tip:

When your researching Outpost class II, and you've nearly finishe,d build a fleet of TTs and order them all to build outposts everywhere: the turn u complete research for outpost II your outposts will be auto-constructed, and you willl retain the use of your TTs! <--outposts for free! = t2 outpost2 is awesome too

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

Works for Starbase class II as well!

[jonboylondon]

tip four has not worked for me in MP - i did everything you said...- no joy

[RSE_Dissy]

effective sabotage? which race were u and whp was u intelling? (Give in 10 turns at full intel power and they will be crying...if your card/rom) and they're kling/fed

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

I guess he's talking about Money demanding.

[RSE_Dissy]

hmm tip 4 is either edo training or sabotage :s

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

Aralons BOTF GUIDE
BOTF-Game tricks
Overview:
1) The one uncloaked ship
2) Money demanding =>4 !!!
3) Phantom Dilithium
4) Edo Training =>2 !!!
5) Morale Battles
6) Pillaging/System scrap
7) Super terraforming
Trade route morale
9)Intel stockpiling

=> swapped

[RSE_Chris]

Just to add an edit to the RSE guide:

"6) Minor Upgrading
New players often make minors members as soon as possible.
While this might be ok when you are in tech 5 games and the minor has a fleet, dilithium or an Intel structure you need or want to use it’s always better to make the minor a friend or affiliate first then wait till he has upgraded to a large minor with more population and structures.
Only then should you make him member and be fast such an upgraded minor is always a tempting target for other players as well.
Don't waste time to terraform the minors other planets it automatically terraforms them when it upgrades and wont upgrade quicker that way."

When a minor race upgrades, it does not always terraform every planet. Therefore, terraforming all systems before a minor upgrades is a good idea to ensure a maximum system.

[stardust]

It's also good to hold off getting minors right away because of known bugs like aquiring minors and finding out they have no industry or food buildings...they usually iron out when minors get advanced though
Very costly to put that right if you do get stung like that, especially on MP when you've got far better things to be spending money on

[The_Nighthawk]

Just to add an edit to the RSE guide:

"When a minor race upgrades, it does not always terraform every planet. Therefore, terraforming all systems before a minor upgrades is a good idea to ensure a maximum system.

However, it's not a guarantee. At least, it isn't in BoP. It might be in Vanilla, but it's been a while.