The Solar Federation Of Planets:
The Feds fleet is made up of many medium size ships that are designed to serve a variety of missions. They have only one ship that can serve as a fighter carrier. The Feds do not like to use fighters except as a last ditch measure when starbases or planets fall under attack. The weapon they most favor is the torpedo. For some unknown reason they like to paint their warships bright white and put external lighting systems on them. This tends to make them easier targets in a fight, but it also has the effect of scaring the daylights out of enemies. After all anyone who would light up their ships so brightly has to be unafraid of all enemies and have a very powerful ship or they are just completely stupid. The Federation has two terraforming ships: Bohemian Class Survey Ship: Will make planets warmer until climate type 50 is reached. Eros Class Research Vessel: Will make a planet cooler until climate type 50 is reached.
The Solar Federation is very good at making friends with the natives that they contact. Their members are more productive than the average. They collect twice the megacredits per turn per tax rate percentage point from both the natives and the colonists.
The Solar Federation has a set of strict laws that are enforced by the universal environmental protection agency (UEPA). In order to follow all the laws the Solar Federation can only mine at 70% the normal rate.
The Solar Federation is the only race that can upgrade the tech levels of old starships. If a Federation ship sets their mission to "Super Refit" and is at a Federation starbase for one turn. The chief engineer will remove the engines, beam weapons and torpedo launchers and replace the parts with the highest tech level parts available from the starbase's parts inventory. If a higher tech part is not available the chief engineer will not swap parts. Old parts taken off the ship will be placed in storage. Super refit requires a full set of parts for the ship to work correctly.
For Example:
To super refit a Nova Class you need at least 10 beams of any one type on the starbase and at least 10 torpedo tubes of any one type on the starbase. Normal ship building takes place before the super refit, so if some other ship uses the refitting ship's parts before hand, the super refit will not take place and the ship will be left with no weapons.
NOTE: If the Nova has 10 torp tubes and 10 beam before the super refit, it will have the same weapons after if there were not a full set of better parts on the starbase.
The Federation has two terraforming ships:
The Feds can also build the Loki Class Destroyer that can decloak all enemy ships within 10 light years.