Brand new player, need suggestions with first steps.

Asteroids are considered planets, and can be colonized. Use your frigates to attack the enemies surrounding the asteroid, then your colony frigate can colonize it.

With the ice planet, you have to research colonies for it by building at least two civilian research facilities. Just make sure to destroy the surrounding enemies before though, or their siege ships will bomb the colony.

The standard first move in sins is usually to build a capital ship factory (sense your first capital ship is free,), upgrade your home worlds population (for more credits), and maybe start building research platforms. Once you get your capital ship, it along with a few frigates are almost always sent to the asteroid first as they have the weakest defenders (note only asteroids are worth colonizing, as it can have a small population and you can build extractors on it. Dead asteroids are colonizable but have no population or minerals, so they're only use is for a buffer. Astroid belts are not colonizable but they may contain "neutral" extractors that your colony frigate can take over). Once you destroy the militia around the asteroid, send in your colony frigate in and as soon as its colonized, build up its population (so it makes you money instead of reducing your cash flow) and build extractors, then move to the next planet.

In your case, you could probably send all your light frigates to the asteroid and be okay. Also, if you want to get used to the feel of sins, you can play a game without any enemies (AI), and along with turning pirates off, ensures you will never be attacked.

Generally, you start by colonizing a nearby asteroid. They require no upgrades to colonize, and have the smallest milita guard. A colonizing captial ship can usually do the job solo.

Remember to keep a mix of ships. A combination of Light Frigates and Long Range Frigates are good vs Pirates if you get attacked early, and later on it's good to keep some anti-air frigates around. A mixed fleet will outperform a single-unit fleet every time.

Don't overextend early. Grabe an asteroid and 2-3 other planets, but if you get too many more planets, they'll drain your credits.

The best defense is a good offense. That is to say, if you really want to defend a planet well, invest in ships, not hangar bays. For the price of one hangar bay, I can build 2 ships. They'll be much stronger, and if I need to reinforce a nearby planet, I can move them around.

LEARN TO USE THE EMPIRE TREE. It's INTESNELY helpful, especially on larger maps.

Remember also to use the Pause key to stop at first and look over the situation. - and = will speed up or slow down the game.

Do the tutorials, do them twice!

You get your first capital ship for for free. So build a capital ship factory first thing. As soon as it is complete, build a capital ship. The one that colonizes is good to start with, but you can build what you want. Send the cap ship to capture a planet or an asteroid. It can handle the little fleets that surround these planets on its own. Later on, give it more ships to keep it company.

Upgrade your home world population for more money. Upgrade any colony with a population a couple notches, otherwise it will cost you money rather than contribute.

Build metal and crystal extractors. Look at the tech tree and you will see you need a couple military labs to build the long range frigate, it's a missile frigate if you are starting with TEC.

This game looks baffling right at first. But it's like learning to ride a bike. The training wheels they give you are sort of limited and won't take you very far, so expect to fall over a few times at first, but just get back on and try again.

Okay, a nice basic starting strategy is as follows:

* Immediately:  Build cap-ship factory and set a capital ship going (I like the battleships, but colony ships will save you money). Build all resource extractors in the home grav-well

* Then: Build a few light frigates, and a colony ship if needed (i.e. if you went for one of the non-colony capships). Use these to claim surrounding worlds. 4 light-frigates alone will capture an asteroid without loss. The cap ship and (say) 6-8 light frigs should capture virtually any other worlds. Jump the cap-ship in a few seconds before the frigates, so the AI defenses will target it first (let it soak the damage).

* When you capture a planet, upgrade the civilian infrastructure by 2 points ASAP, or you will be bleeding cash. Try to build the resource asteroids quickly too.

* As you are expanding, build 2 civilian research labs and start researching economy-related stuff, or volcanic / ice planet capture abilities.

* Place a few static defense turrets in captured worlds which can border a neutral or AI-held world. This should stop the AI attacking quickly with a small and irritating force.

* I don't agree with the "upgrade your home planet immediately" ethos. Sure, you get an extra couple of credits per second, but it is expensive (750 /225 / 225) and that cash is extremely valuable at the start of the game. I would much prefer to put it into getting trade facilities earlier, and/or upgrades for newly captured planets. Upgrade the planet later, when things aren't quite so critical.

Enjoy!

thx much for all the suggestions. I think my weekend will be devoted to this game. LOL

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Thanks all for the above suggestions. I too am new to this game and have had it for a week. Must say its easy to play but very hard to master. There are so many upgrades and you have to spend your credits wisely.

What I need advise on is the upgrading of new technologies etc. I keep finding that I run out of available 'points' to build research facilities so I can upgrade the new technologies (I.e sometimes you need 7 civilian research facilities) even though I have upgraded the home planet.

The only way I can do this is by colonizing another planter and then upgrading that planet and building more research facilities. Also found that I have a similar problem when I want to build trade routes between two different planets. On the 'new' planet I can make a trade facility but on the home planet I cant because I dont have the available points to build that structure.

Can anyone help me on this and how is the best way to upgrade your technologies? I.e A type of method..

Many thanks

good thread!  I've bought SINS last week and so far have knocked off 3 games on the easiest settings.  Some good tips in here.

I ran into a similar problem with not having enough logistic support at some of my planet for critical space platforms.  I found out taht I could scrap unnecessary or redundant platforms in order to free up slots for the platforms I need.  I believe all you have to do to scrap a platform is select it and you will see the platform in a small window at the center bottom of your screen.  To scrap it all you need to do is click on the yellow/black bar at the bottom of this small window (iirc, it also give you time to reconsider scraping the platform in case you made a mistake).

good luck!

i see your question has already been answered. if there are other clarification regarding those matthers, you could always come into this forum. good luck and continue to have fun playing the game.

@ soase1

Thanks for the great tip. I too have had this idea of scraping platforms to free up logistic space and have adopted it, however I 'noticed' if you upgrade say your civilian research up to a level of 3 (I.e 3 civilan research centers) and then scrap all/some of them, then you will not have those abilities that you researched in before.

The question is, is this true and to what extent? I haven't fully paid attention to this matter.

Can yourself or anyone help me on this?

Many thanks again

When you lose labs (either because they were destroyed or your scrapped them) some things you researched become unavailable, but others remain in effect.

The ability to produce unit-types and structures is lost.  If TEC researches trade centers and loses their labs, they lose the ability to build new trade centers until the labs are first rebuilt.  However, special abilities are not lost.  If TEC researches cluster munitions and loses their labs, their LRM's are still able to use cluster munitions.  In addition, passive upgrades like health, armour, or extractor efficiency are not lost.  The ability to colonize desert and ice planets also is not lost.

As a result, you usually want to keep your labs intact to maintain the technology you researched.  For most intents and purposes, this means you don't scuttle your labs.  Even if you don't need the lab to maintain your current technology levels, this may ultimately slow down your advance to higher tech levels later on.  That said, sometimes you may want to move your labs to other worlds.  A good example is to make way for refineries in the late game, which provide the best returns in the high loyalty worlds near your homeworld... the places where you built those labs in the early game.

Darvin3 thanks for the info and hints. Could I just bluntly say that all special abilities (I.e all abilities that are not involved in creating units or buildings) stay intact?

Thanks

seems like its the case of when you upgrade your structures/unit abilities and then destroy your harmony research centre you will loose that ability. However upgraded special abilities remain intact. Thanks everyone and this thread is a great place to start off.