Sins is getting Overwhelming...

Best to ask this in the strategy section. Otherwise they may not see it here. Not to mention that 'here' (Off-Topic) is spread across 12 different sites, some unrelated to gaming at all.

A lot of it really depends on the map you're playing and game type (FFA or locked teams). If you're playing Random maps, there's really no set strategy and you pretty much have to play it by ear.

If you're struggling a bit as a TEC, here are a few tips I can give you:

- Build the 2 civic labs and research tradeports ASAP. Even with 3 planets in a chain, without any fleet upkeep you'll have money rolling in. This works even if playing against unfair AI in FFA, since they'll see you as a weaker opponent and not rush to attack you. In addition, you'll probably be able to escape bids on your head for the pirate raids a couple of times.

- Start with the Marza, rather than the Akkan. The Akkan has poor firepower, and you can get your Marza to level 4-5 pretty quickly just by fighting neutrals around planets, especially if you come across some terrans or deserts. Jump the Marza in, destroy the neutral LRFs first, then jump your Cobalts in. I usually build about 8 cobalts to supplement the first capital. If you don't destroy the LRFs before jumping the Cobalts in, they will switch targets. You shouldn't bee too concerned about fast colonization, since you'll want to make sure you have upgrade money to get them out of negative income right away, and a colony frigate will do fine for that. You'd need one anyway to capture neutral resources.

- When you've got 3 planets upgraded, make sure you get trade ports on them as quickly as possible. Keep on clearing neutrals around for XP, at this stage you still shouldn't be worried about enemy AI if you're playing FFA on a large map. Save up some money, then research Javelis hull and do the fleet upgrade right away. If you do it right, you should have money to queue about 8-10 Javelis while all the research is being done, and get up to 15+ ships built fairly quickly. At this point your game start is pretty much done and playing by ear begins.

- You can start researching hull techs, as you've got enough ships for it to make a difference and your capital is getting to its mid levels and it will help. If you're playing against Advent, research Gardas quickly because they tend to use strike craft fairly early, as their carriers are a low-tier research.

- You should also have scouts on auto explore mapping the planets around you. Look for good choke points to set up (several lanes leading to a planet, and only one leading from the planet to your empire is the perfect choke point). Colonize those quickly and set up defenses. Make sure to put up hangars quickly, as the new siege frigates will avoid your turrets and you need fighters to take them down. But still keep on building ships, 4-5 turrets, 2 hangars, and a repair bay will hold early fleets long enough, so don't go overboard. If you have Entrenchment, get a starbase up. Do a weapon and an armor upgrade as you are able but likewise don't go overboard.

The rest is really specific to how your game is going at that point.. if you have any more specific questions

First off, I suggest locking teams. AI will always, ALWAYS get friendly with one another, and then begin sending huge, joint fleet attacks against you. In one game, (albiet many patches ago) I had a game with unlock teams, all AI set to unfair difficulty. Within a couple hours, I had about 6 of them sending huge waves of ships against my planets; I only survived by fleeing to a neighboring system, barely managing to colonize a new planet before they completely owned the 6 or so I had. So make sure to lock teams or you will get ganged up on like crazy.

I personally find an all or mostly capital ship approach (for non-entrenchment, which I am presuming you are talking about since you make no mention of version) works well against all but the biggest combined AI attacks. IMO most of the strategies are more or less whatever suits how you like to play. I usually build up all 16 capital ships before building more than a handful of frigates. There are a few good reasons for this. First, they are strong enough to beat off most attacks if used properly (micromanaged). Second, building them early gives you a big advantage when it comes to their levels. Third, one of the most important reasons, is that unlike frigates, they do not go down easily and so do not need to be replaced nearly as often, giving you more funds to spend upgrading planets or researching. From there, I mostly turtle my way through the game, only taking one planet at a time, keeping chokepoints to a minimum, and then building up the outer planets' defenses. During this time, most of my funds go to teching up, which is important for keeping the capital ships alive. make sure to make teching up antimatter generation a priority with this strategy, since that is what keeps your ships healed (via whatever ship has healing abilities for the faction you are playing as). The downsides to this strategy is that if the AI decides to send multiple capital ships in with their normal frigate spam early on, you may be forced to retreat back a planet or two. The other downside is with only capital ships with no supporting frigates, there is very low dps output. Battles will be very long and drawn out (IMO thats the best kind) and you will be stuck turtling through, since you just won't have the firepower to destroy their defenses until about the time you have the entire tech tree researched and the capital ships are higher levels. Usually by the time I have all 16 capital ships, I am about ready to go on the offensive; and by that point the cost of a new capital ship is minimal, since you have a good deal of the civilian tech tree researched.

Edit: to adapt this approach for Entrenchment, use fully upgraded starbases to defend your chokepoint worlds, with the worls bording them having partially (25-50%) upgraded starbases in case a fallback position is needed. This leaves you able to use your entire capital ship fleet to attack, and absolutely nothing the AI does is able to stand against a moderately leveled 16 capship armada.

Edit 2: Just so you know, I <3 Vasari. Jarrasul Evacuators are my favorite ship in the game! When full upgraded they can colonize, drain planet, use nanites which do 1200 damage over a few seconds (one shot kill for most frigates), and when 2 are used together with a phase inhibitor can stop enemies from escaping altogether with their gravity warhead!

Thanks for the advice. A more experienced friend of mine just seems to be able to pump those cobalts out like popcorn, and me with my three capships were looking a little puny. I'll try that.

 A few tips for outsmarting the rather dumb AI:

1) AI will always attack defenses. Be sure and build-em around all your border worlds. AI is particularly fond of sending a bunch of siege frigates to take poorly defended planets on your borders. Be sure and upgrade emergency facilities and put up turrets all around the planet to kill em. Hangars with fighters are particularly effective at killing these guys. Hangars with fighters are also great at taking down enemy assault cruisers(entrenchment only)

2) AI will ALWAYS run when outnumbered, follow him and make sure you turn that fleet into debris. PJIs will slow his escape.

3) AI will almost always retreat to defend their HW.

4) Planetary militia are dumb as rocks. There are 3 things they are guaranteed to do. 1) they will chase scouts fruitlessly, sending one in beofre your fleet means they wont attack your fleet until the scout is dead. 2) Siege frigates will break off their attacks if the planet theyre protecting is colonized, kill them first, colonize and slap up a couple of turrets to handle the rest and youre golden. 3) All the militia ships will go after your colonizer frigate as soon as it enters the well, be sure it has plenty of AM to spare when jumping it in with militia still around so it can colonize and jump out without delay.

Other tips:

Dont stop colonizing as long as their are uncolonized planets to grab. If your fleet is needed elsewhere to defend, build a small secondary fleet to continue grabbing planets. LRFs are great at subduing planetary militia.

Grab Asteroids! Ignore dead ones. Asteroids are easy to grab cuz they'll always only have 2 ships defending them. Dead asteroids should only be colonized if you need them for tactical purposes, otherwise they are a waste of your precious resources.

Dont forget about your economy! AI always gets an economic advantage to counteract its lack of smarts. Build up your econ to keep up and you'll always clobber him with your tactics.

Good luck!

One more thing about economy and colonization:

I would suggest not blindly to colonize each planet in the galaxy because colonizing costs resources for extractors, infrastructure upgrades, defense and such. The more colonies you have the harder to defend. And allegiance from HW is another subject. The farther away a colony is the less effective its production of creds and resources. And therefore the longer it will take to pay off your investments. I do not remember exactly but I calculated a long time ago that an asteroid colony with 35% allegiance will take almost an hour to pay off the investments.

So that leads to 3 possible consequences:

1. Try to colonize close to your homeworld (avoiding stretched empires)

2. Move your homeworld to a more central colony (if it makes sense)

3. At a certain point other options will push your economy far more than new colonies:

a) build trade ports (especially as TEC build em early, quick and many of them)

build broadcast centers (to increase allegiance and therefore overall production)

c) build orbital refineries (to further increase resource income rates)

Build Hoshikos.

Also, don't get more cap ships until you've at least upgraded your fleet twice (or are about to do the 2nd). Ships are way more effective than caps in the early stage.

Pound for pound, frigates are more effective than capital ships for non-ability combat. The reason one would employ capital ships is primarily for their abilities, be it anti-strikecraft work, fleet support, or planetary bombardment (includes devastating attacks, but often such attacks require multiple capitals to maximize their effectiveness or cannot be employed constantly).

And keep rebuilding scouts - having an idea of what your opponent is doing/building will make it easier to decide how to appropriately counter their strategies.