Sadly there are no Competitive Scene for Sins. The games run too long for most of the current ADHD generation. Space Opera-style RTS's have issues along those lines.

There really SHOULD be a competitive scene for sins.

I recently tried to cast a replay, but its to embarrising to post on the interwebs, both from my own voice's suckyness, to the laggyness of my computer while trying to render and record epicness at the same time.

I really feel like a turnyment durring the rebellion beta will really help the devs with the balancing issue... which will certainly be a huuuge issue with the titans, and corvetts and god knows what else.

rebellion is also supposed to have better multiplayer support... so there might be the possiblity for a competitive scene there, in which case you should practice now. 

I promise you though, if you get on sins multiplayer... you will get crushed.   and you will realize how competitive sins can actually be.  you should try it... if you can survive the lobby and actually get in the game, hehe.

The Rebellion expansion sounds promising. Is 5v5 considered the standard? Is 1v1 just not really played? How long do games take, etc. Edit: Also, which game do I purchase? The trinity collection thing?

Not bad, but the peak time now seems to be 2-11 pm U.S. Eastern Time.  (Carbon, why don't you getcher butt onto ICO?  There are still newish players around for you to go up against.)

Sadly, for numerous reasons, many of which are historical, Sins has low online player counts.  When I say low, I mean only 30-40 people online (for the Diplomacy expansion) on a weeknight.  A couple hundred people have played the game competitively in the past, but many have moved on.  Some are coming back now in anticipation of the upcoming Rebellion expansion.  Now for the good news--this game rocks and it's an overlooked gem, and there are a couple 4v4 and 5v5 games every day, but you have to wait for them to fill.  There's more activity on the weekends.

With such a small player base it's hard to have much of a competitive scene, and although a few clans formed, the game never really had enough players to support leagues or ladders.  For some reason Sins just never sold well to the online multiplayer RTS crowd.  However, you can still have a lot of fun playing in 5v5 games.  Many of the people who play are pros, grizzled vets who will provide you with a tremendous challenge and stomp you while you get up to speed.  There are even pros-only games sometimes.  So, if you're asking whether there are competitive games to be played, the answer is yes, but they don't count for anything other than  for enjoyment and ego gratification.  We even have a system set up for the 4v4 and 5v5 games where two captains draft-pick the other 8 players.

You should know that the upcoming Rebellion expansion (late 2011 or early 2012) will be a stand-alone product, meaning that you don't need to have bought any previous Sins games to play it but it will include all of the content of the earlier games.  So, in a way it's like it will be a Sins-2.  Hopefully Rebellion will bring hundreds of new players onto the server now that the online multiplayer aspects are more polished (less lag, fewer game crashes and desyncs, etc.--problems that plagued it in the past).  If you're serious about the game, try the demo.  If you think you'd like it, consider finding a sale on the Trinity pack (the original game and both expansions) and that will save you $10 on the Rebellion download.  This way you'll have a couple months to get up to speed before Rebellion hits.

As I type this, there are 38 people logged onto the Diplomacy expansion server and it's 2:00 am U.S. EST.  Do note that the Vanilla/Entrenchment server is pretty dead and just consists of friends playing comp stomps.

Pbhead pew pew's carbons planets.  with nukes.

If I can get my comp back online I will continue to play on weekday nights. I crushed and got crushed. It's a blast if you can find a game. If you can't, talk to people who are hanging around waiting for a game to appear, and ask them to host, or host one yourself.

I think that a turnymant would be great fun. I would participate.

Beware though, I rushed someone in a 4 player FFA, killed him in the first 20 minutes, and took his planets. The other two players paused the game and quit, leaving me hung up for 15 minutes. Talk about lousy sports. My experience is somewhat limited, but it seems that either my computer didn't register their surrender during the pause, or this is an issue that needs to be resolved...

Maybe we need a 1v1 map pack with an autoinstaller.

One thing is certain, the competitive scene is a little less competitive without you around Darvin.

I think DirtySanchez was referring to something specific for 1v1.

Hopefully Rebellion introduces map transfer and removes the need to organize the community around downloads.

Basically, what people want is what you described about Map Designer'd maps dling to happen for GForge maps, as the latter have a lot more going for them/are more detailed/etc.