That would be good, but you probably wouldn't have had time to get too many Kodiaks out. A pure LRM fleet would have beaten his fleet (with same fleet capacity/cost, or even slightly less). However, at that low of a tech level, how fast you're expanding and how much you're putting into your fleet is more important than what units you are building. It's just about timing the peak of your fleet size.

Lrm's would be a good counter, Hoshikos would also help... but have some Kodiaks to support carriers, and hurry up on that, b4 he gets a lvl. 6 Marza.

(^) Koda0

<cough>lots of bombers<cough> = bye bye Marza and SB!!!

answer to the topic : illuminators.

And the whole Starbase thing.....he mentioned VANILLA sins in the 1st line of his 1st post....

Personaly, I'd just spam LRMs until I could afford carriers and kodiaks. Don't spend too much of your resources on definsive buildings, either. Focus mainly on ships early game.

The problem ( IMHO ), is that you didn't have a fleet to counter him. I'll assume you spent instead on the defenses. Fleet ALWAYS wins against defenses in vanilla SINS. Defenses only serve to slow down an advance, not stop one. They are only truly effective against pirates.

Given his fleet, almost anything in moderate numbers would have worked ( with the planets defenses ) to beat him back. 10 kodiaks, 20 or 30 LF/LRMs.. 20 Cobalts might have been enough ( backed by the three repair bays and 11 platforms ) to even take out his Marza. For what you spent on defenses, you could have easily afforded the fleet, which in turn could have counter attacked, or at least pinned some of his fleet in fear of the counter attack.

I've had to train myself to think of large amounts of defenses as the first step to loosing. You give up the initiative, lock resources into non-mobile units, and wait for your enemy to choose the time and place of the conflict. Remember the french and the Maginot line in WW2. Buy ships instead, and as TEC, JUST BUY MORE.

This is highly presumptuous.  You can do this against the AI, but against a player you cannot presume he's going to fall into your trap.  He could easily scout it and go around it.  You also presume you have enough time to research starbases and PJI's and produce a solid defensive line.  This is incredibly expensive and if he so much as scouts it he'll make sure all that money was wasted by either attacking on a different front or sitting back and building a counter.

Against a rush, your only real course of action is to have your own standing fleet.  If he's got lots of cobalts, LRF (assailants, javelis, illuminator, depending on your faction) are your best course of action.