In previous versions, there was only a very limited array of options to design your builds around. Basically just two or three vessels with slight modifications in build orders. While this still can give you quite a few interesting choices, it feels rather limited. An important goal of the faction redos is to give you a much wider set of strategies to play your favorite faction. If you start your first game with the new Federation, you will stumble over one of these options within your first few clicks! There are four lights.. ehm I meant, there are two yards!

Indeed. The Federation, as a first example, starts with two yards to chose from: The Antares Yard, which we all know, and the Cassiopeia Yard, which some might recall, as it looks familiar from the old Mixed Tech yards. Both yards specialize in two sets of units and follow up buildings and technologies. These will open up even more options for you to play the way you want to, but let's focus on the two initial yards for now.

The Antares Yard is more about conventional ships, like the Monsoon - an effective defensive ship - and the Steamrunner we just talked about. The Cassiopeia Yard offers you access to your support fleet - the Canaveral and the Remore, for example - which come with (new) special abilities to either disrupt your opponent or increase the effectiveness of your own vessels.

These two yards - all follow-up technologies and techtrees ignored - give you a wide array of options, as you can either invest your resources to focus on support vessels and their research with two Cassiopeia Yards (don't get confused by some more fragile support ships in older versions of Fleet Operations. We will talk about one of these ships in the next newsposts). You could also try to focus on a conventional fleet with reliable allround vessels and offensive strength by constructing two Antares Yards and the follow-up bonuses or you could try to find your best mix, by building both yards and trying to support your Antares fleet with the Cassiopeia ships. Or - of course - you could try to go with just one yard and get one of the interesting later options. Ok ok, I will note down to write a newspost about both technology paths soon.

Here is a short overview of the unit listings for your Federation early game, Avatar units ignored. Notice that the Saber Class is your universal zero-requirements vessel that you can build with any yard to start your fleet.

You will also see a brand new vessel available at the Cassiopeia Yards. More on it in a future news posts!