There were 2 vasari capital ships 1 Vulkoras Desolator and 1 Antorek marauder, along with 2 other ships; 1 skarovas enforcer and 1 sivuskras ruiner, for a total of 4 ships

Well that's a pretty sh*tty thing to do to someone lol, good thing I decided to use diplomacy on the Vasari this time, 4.52 relationship should mean a cease fire soon. But wouldn't that phase out effect wear off after a few seconds, or after i input a new order? I spent about 5 minutes trying to get it to retreat, you'd think the Antorak would run out of Anti matter by then if it was continually using abilities.

Yeah, you've helped. I managed to get a ship away from a  phase out ability a minute ago. I allied myself with the Vasari to take out the Advent and once the advent were defeated enough to get the smashed glass logo over their diplomacy picture the freakin Vasari said, "sorry, this target is too tempting" and betrayed me, going after the advent capital we just captured -__-  I even had allied victory on! WTF?!?  

They really hit me hard too, before the betrayal I had 3 cap ships (1 level 6 akkan, 1 level 5 sova, and 1 level 5 Marza) along with 18 corvettes, 23 Javelis LRM, 13 cobalt light frigate, 11 Hoshiko repair frigate, 9 Percheran light carriers, 4 Kodiak heavy cruiser, 4 Cielo's for a total of 82 frigates and 3 caps=85 ships.  After the battle I lost my Sova and Akkan, while only barely saving my Marza, and only had 5 Cobalts, 4 corvettes, 6 Javelis LRM, 3 Hoshiko, 4 Percheran, 3 Kodiak, 2 Cielo = 27 frigates + 2 caps, 29 ships total left out of the 82 I had.  

In order to stand a chance I had to retreat and try to rebuild, I hurried up and finished the Ankylon Titan I was working on, and tried to build a few replacement frigates.

.......................................................................................................................................................................................................

Well, I went head to head with their "backup fleet" which had 4 capital ships and 50-60 frigates. I lost 3 more capital ships and SOMEHOW my level 4 titan that i had just made, I managed to replace the capitals and actually chase the vasari off. Now i have a sova, marza, and dunov, with maybe 15-20 frigates at most, and their backup fleet is still almost as strong as my only fleet, while their main fleet is nearly twice that size; how the hell is normal AI able to muster up enough money to make two 60+ ship fleets and completely replace their losses like it's nothing while still spending the cash to conquering planets and take out the other AI that they killed earlier? I just don't understand how i can't afford to make anywhere near as big of a fleet as the normal AI, considering I'm a TEC loyalist, which are SUPPOSED to have a much better economy than the others?   I'm not giving up though, I'm an idiot like that; otherwise i'd have never beaten dark souls with a melee only character lol.

I'm playing against 2 normal AI enemies vs just myself on my side. The corvettes were recommended by a couple guys, i think it was geofan, not sure though. They recommended to spam out cobalts and corvettes early game until i had at least 15 of each then to get 15-20 javelis in mid game. I did upgrade them somewhat, I got a couple missile upgrades for javelis, 1 shield/hull upgrade which i think applied to all frigates, and 4 laser upgrades. I didn't just leave them on auto attack though, i usually focus fired them on to capitals or the most dangerous frigates, but I wonder if I was focusing too many ships on one capital/heavy cruiser and maybe should have split the fleet up into 2 or 3 focus fire groups. I used to just lump every ship into one "fleet" group, but I found out it's better to "fleet" group them by type i.e. put all the cobalts together into one group, put all javelis into another, etc..

I tried to limit my capital ships to 3 or less, I typically stuck with an Akkan for my 1st due to it's colonize ability, then got a Marza for planet bombing and straight DPS, and lastly a Sova carrier for fighter support without the cost of percherons, embargo's usefullness, and it's decent base attack. I had gotten them up to at least level 4-6, and got one Akkan up to level 8, but they keep getting destroyed even though I pull them out of the fight with over 2,000 hull left because of the OP vasari capital ship abillity that cancels your retreat orders so you can't phase jump out. I've lost so many ships that way, lol.

I'm usually in my gravity well, because mid-late game i'm being "hit and run" raided from so many directions that I don't have enough time or credits to move my main/backup fleet into enemy territory or build another fleet to do it instead.

Regarding the ship's being too mixed? Yeah, i think you're right, I just watched a video of a guy that did an "almost" perfect strategy for TEC loyalist, the only thing he did wrong was making too many capitals early and using 2 kol battleships, which apparently are widely considered useless (although I think they're sort of ok for normal AI) He had 2 Kol Battleships, 1 Marza dreadnaught, 1 Akkan battlecruiser, and 1 Sova Carrier. He used just capital ships with a couple scouts and cobalts thrown in every once in a while. He did alot of economic research and trade stations until he was making a quite good 31 credits/second, put up 3-4 starbases on different border planets, and when he had 6-8 planets colonized and was getting raided often he made 20 Kodiaks and 30 Javelis, and upgraded the missile research on the javelis 5-6 times. The overwhelming missile barrage was enough to take down 4 level vasari capital ships and 20 vasari frigates with only his 1 Kol, 10 kodiak's and the javelis. So I think rather than making 10-15 cobalts, 10 corvettes, 15 javelis, 10 hoshiko etc.. that I should stick with 2 or 3 ship types in each fleet; maybe use 25 javelis, 25 Garda, and a capital ship on 1 fleet, and 20 Kodiak, 15 Percheron, 15 Hoshiko and a capital ship in the second, would that be more like you were saying? Less variety, more quantity?

Well considering he only had 6 or 7 planets (1 or 2 of which were asteroids) I'd say that's pretty good. It was less than 2 hours into the game when he had that much. Normal difficulty on a medium map doesn't give as much money making opportunity as large multi star hard AI maps would. Honestly it seems that if I focus on the economy enough to get to an actual "good" early economy amount like 40-50 creds/sec I'd end up having to skimp on my fleet to do it. I've had times where I had at least 10 planets with 5-6 trade ports and a few starbases with trade bays, and only had like 27 cred/second, how much do you usually make that early in the game?

Hmm, Interesting. I think I'll try that. I just started a new game 10 minutes ago, I'll test out some of those ideas.

Thanks

I think it would be better to go 2-way colonization. Build an Akkan and get chokepoints, and first frigate should be colony ship and some cobalts (like 5-10) and the protev should be accompanied by the cobalts and take the easy asteroids and dwarf planets around you, these will improve your early economy by a huge amount. Skipping these is not a really good idea, the extra resources help immeasurably in setting up defenses on the borders. But never forget to upgrade the population to lose the underdevelopment, and build all extractors, after several years I still manage to forget these too often BUT never bring in your protev until most militia has been cleared, not a clever idea to lose an expensive colony ship early game.

If your startes is not an Akkan (so you want to get the Marza level6 ability as fast as you can), you can still do the 2-way colonization, just build 2 protevs, the Marza has so huge firepower it will easily clear most worlds fast and meanwhile get some nice levels.

So, 2 smaller colonization fleet is the best, Akkan alone can deal with most planets (though the heavily defended terran and desert worlds with several heavy cruisers shoud be avoided unless you have frigate escorts.), and the protev+cobalt fleet will easily take easy worlds (asteroids, dwarfs, lightly defended ice and volcanic planets).

Remember, it is just Normal AI, it does not get resource cheat like Hard does, so if you take more than 50% of the map in a 1v1 you are winner, though smaller territory is more than enough because AI likes to waste tremendous recources by attacking starbases with miserable fleets and lose them all without dealing real damage to you. And the AI never goes trade-heavy, so if you do, he will be in a huge disadvantage.

A starbase with only a capital ship to help is able to fend off an attacking early-mid game AI fleet, I tried it myself many times, if you have repair you don't even have to build a huge fleet to easily contain AI, and if you place some turrets next to the starbase, it will help much. Hangar bases should be ignored unless you have their special abilities that are awesome for all races. I usually have a moderately upgraded starbase, 1-2 repair bays and 1-3 turrets next to the starbase, and expand defenses only if needed. If the AI starts to birng anti-structure cruisers, build corvettes fast and snipe those ships, his losses will be significant while you only lose some cheap ships.

It is not impossible to go eco-heavy against AI this early, but you need to know exactly what you are doing and what you can allow yourself to do, it is very hard, like walking on a razor's edge, one mistake and you may lose too much. But if you can set up a nice eco early, well, the AI is in a big trouble

What level AI was it? And was the AI attacking him early?

Also, the impact of income depends on game speed... So 30 can be huge if he is playing on Normal speed, while 40 is just meh on faster settings.

Nah i was teaching him how to play, he had like 6-7 planets as far as i remember. I have no idea what you just wrote. Is income different on other game modes/types as i only play the settings used in multiplayer..ie.fastest speed, no pirates, quick start?

Also regardless of game speed the trade income increases exponentially the longer your trade line is, its never a static number.

[quote who="xDarkxIdealsx" reply="42" id="3384736"]

Quoting JinglyGoo, reply 41
Nah i was teaching him how to play, he had like 6-7 planets as far as i remember. I have no idea what you just wrote. Is income different on other game modes/types as i only play the settings used in multiplayer..ie.fastest speed, no pirates, quick start?

Also regardless of game speed the trade income increases exponentially the longer your trade line is, its never a static number.

 

 

Ohhh, I thought you said men"tor" sorry. I don't know why you'd be getting different income but my trade port chain has 1.1 for all trade ports not in a line, and 1.4 for all that are, and it doesn't seem to change even when i chain a line of like 6 trade ports, I've even used starbases with the trade bays upgrade; on that game i had 10 planets, 6 trade ports and 4 starbases with trade bays all chained together in a line, all extractors built plus a few i captured from asteroid belts/junk space, and the first 2 industry research tiers maxed and the 3rd one half way finished, and all in total without my fleet upkeep i had 41.3 which went down to 32 after upkeep. Maybe multiplayer gives you an income bonus or something. i just know that it takes quite a bit of work for me to reach even 40/second on my single player games that early into the planet expansion process

EDIT: Wait a minute, fast speed? as in you sped up the in game clock? That's might be part of it because it would speed up the industry research allowing you to max out 4 or 5 tiers within 30 minutes of real time.

Well i haven't mentioned anything about what i've been researching in the last couple games, i think it was back on page 1 but that was from my old save files. This game i'm doing now, i'm actually tearing them a new one, I essentially spammed cobalt's and an Akkan at the beginning and took the advice greg and a few others said; just take your fleet and rush to the choke point. Within 20 minutes of starting I took an Akkan and Marza with 15-20 cobalts right to the Advents front yard and kept pushing while aggresively placing starbases as often as i could afford at every planet i conquered, right now i've taken their capital and they have 1 planet and 1 asteroid left. I've just finished destroying the trade ports, and temples on the planet and will shortly move to take their asteroid, that fleet had 25 javelis, 10 garda flak, 1 Akkan and 1 Marza.  My other fleet was 15 cobalts and a Kol battleship, they stayed behind near the homeworld to defend at first, but after I started steam rolling the advent I got them on the move and started attacking up the other side of the star system into Vasari territory; I managed to take one of their very well fortified planets. They had an Orkulus Starbase and 5 capital ships, by then I had bolstered the fleet up to 18 javelis, 15 Cobalt, 10 garda flak, 1 Kol Battleship, 1 Sova Carrier, and 1 Dunov. 

Now it's just a matter of finishing the last Advent asteroid and taking that fleet around the upper rim to attack the Vasari from the north east of their front lines while simultaneously coming straight up the southwest with my other fleet, all together after the heavy losses on both fleets from the last two big battles I have 5 capital ships, 3 Garda, 5 Cobalt, and 20 Javelis which i'm obviously going to increase the numbers of before attacking, not bad against 2 hard AI considering I was having trouble even on normal before 0.o              

You had it all wrong.

At start you need to build only 1 capital ship which is akkan then fill fleet supply slots. That on normal fleet sizes will give you 7 cobalts... DO NOT UPGRADE FLEET SUPPLY AT THIS TIME. Once you secure first choke (which doesn't necessarily mean that you are attacking AIs only militia) - Meaning you colonised planet build frigate factory and star base it. If you do not have enough fleet supply for SB constructor scuttle few cobalts. Do same for all other choke points you can find.

After that go colonise planets inside your territory you defined and secured by those choke (defence) points. Then spam trade ports which means build maximum trade ports per planet as you can (not just 1), keeping some for labs and culture centres. Plan ahead so you extend your trade line and use planets that would cut or shorten it for military civilian labs and culture centres. Once you fill your slots with trade ports (more than one per planet) upgrade your fleet supply and start fleeting up. Then use star base strategy. 

On another note AI will know you SB and in his code is to attack easiest target therefore in game where AI s are not allied there is very high chance that they will fight between each other and just ignore you our attack with skirmish fleets. 

Just some SINS trivia 

On Fastest settings base value for trade port is 1.7 cred per second

1 trade port gives you 1.7 +(0.1 * n) income 

where n is number of legs you have in trade chain.

So with 7 legs in chain (white line when you hover over credits) 1 trade port will give you 2.4 cred per seecond. If you build 10 on desert (9 max + 1 from TEC tier 6 research) you will get 24 cred per second only from that desert planet.

I didn't mentioned that before but I assumed that you play on slower speeds but even on those 31 credits looked a bit low.

On faster settings without DLC and its modifiers it is not uncommon to get 140 + credits per second inside 45 minutes of the game. 

Actually

Actually other than upping fleet supply once at the beginning and only rushing to one choke point at first, that's exactly what i did. I built cobalts and an akkan, colonized a couple nearby asteroids, then immediately rushed to take over the first choke point and SB'ed up, then backtracked to take over the other small planets behind the choke point just like you mentioned, I kept pushing forward one planet at a time towards the advent and starbasing each important one i conquered, then when I took their capital I consolidated the other units I had been building back at my original home world and sent them up the other side to hit the other choke point. I also placed trade ports at nearly every colonized world when I knew they were safe enough.

This game was really getting on my nerves at first, being a bit of a perfectionist with strategy games. I was staying at my mother's house to help her after her surgery for a couple weeks, and she'd see me up at 2:30 am scribbling strategies, lol. She probably thought I was crazy. I seem to be getting the hang of it though, I can beat 2 Normal AI's 60-70% of the time, and 2 Hard AI's maybe 40%. 

Thanks alot guys for your help, I can't do multiplayer right now because my Internet is lagging like hell, but i'm going to upgrade to higher bandwith after the comcast promotion i'm on is over next month so hopefully it'll fix the problem and I can see how fun the multiplayer is.  I'm thinking of trying out Advent for the first time too, the only reason i immediately picked tec was because their ships didn't look real weird like vasari and some of the advent, and their starbases are amazing; dual fortresses really fits my play style, are there really any big differences between tec and Advent as far as overall ship makeup and strategy?