Nemesis

Nemesis was the first addon written by Oleg Shvartsman, and changed the scope of addons quite significantly. The many racial specialties in this addon are very powerful, and ignoring them can really hurt you. With the Nemesis addon the Feds have two new features: the Genesis Device and the Sweettalk option.

The Genesis Device allows the Feds to build up an empire fast and easy. Within host-configurable temperature-settings (default: below 25 and above 75 degrees), unowned planets without natives already on them can be transformed into perfect planets. The Genesis device immediately terraforms the planet to a temperature of 50, natives of your choice are put on it (number of natives and government type are random), and minerals equal to a large meteor load are put into the planet to be mined. In addition all mineral densities are set to 100% and 50 structures of your choice (mines, factories or defenseposts) are built. The only condition to be able to do this is the ship you're using the Genesis device from has to have more than 49 clans onboard.

My first choice of natives to put on planets are Bovinoids. The "normal" natives on other planets can provide plenty of cash, and at a mineral density rate of 100% the 70% Federal mining rate doesn't hurt that much so there is no need for Lizards. The extra supplies are of course put through some Merlins, and additional starbases are built like crazy. With all these Bovinoids it won't be much of a problem to keep all these bases operational.

This addon can certainly help you to build a lot more ships before the shiplimit is reached. The use of the genesis device is restricted by three things: there can't be natives already living on the planet, the planet has to be within a certain temperature range and unowned. Without allies this means you can only use the Genesis device on planets that match these conditions, but if you're allied to the Borg or the Crystals things get much better. In one of my current games I'm in charge of both the Federation and the Borg. The Borg are assimilating my natives on hot and cold planets. When all natives have joined the collective, the planet is handed over to the Federation (using Nemesis' xG1 friendly code). The clans are taken off the planet and voila, we have an uninhabited but terribly cold or hot planet which the Feds can now nicely use their Genesis device on. The Crystals can be of help by using their Onyx to heat up planets that are not quite hot enough to use the Genesis device on.

The Sweettalk option lets Federal captains persuade the other races' captains not to fight. Actually they don't do anything related to fighting when your sweettalk is successful. They don't build fighters, they don't build torpedoes and they don't use the abilities they get through the Nemesis-addon. The success rate of this sweettalk is host-configurable, and 25% by default: you'd need four ships to successfully sweettalk enemy captains. Diplomacies however get four times that rate (so by default 100% - but don't count on Diplomacies being 100% effective, check the settings first). The Diplomacy gains greatly in value when this addon is used. It can kill most small to medium ships, and it can sweettalk the ships it cannot beat. One exception are the Borg: they cannot be sweettalked, so you're still screwed once you're facing those cubes. The number of torpedo tubes on the ship and the amount of torpedoes you're carrying on it have a negative impact on the sweettalk-proces.

Sweettalking works as follows: a Fed ship sets it's friendly code to SWT and intercepts the ship it wants to sweettalk. Assuming here one Diplomacy has a 100% success rate (if not: find out how many ships you need and intercept an enemy ship with multiple sweettalkers) the enemy ship will be sweettalked, and it's friendly code will change to SWT. Now this offers some nice opportunities....

It is documented that sweettalking does not protect every ship in your fleet from the sweettalked ship, so what you'll have to do is match it's friendly code of SWT. As long as you keep your one Diplomacy intercepting and sweettalking the enemy ship, all ships with the same friendly code are safe. Unfortunately it is no longer possible to tow ships that are being sweettalked to your base to force a surrender, unless you have an ally to do the towing for you. But if you get a sweettalked ship to your base (maybe you've sweettalked it the turn it was flying to your base) and the starbase is set to SWT and "force a surrender" the ship will be yours the next turn.