New Player, Lots of Basic Questions

1. Tech Tree
     It is usually what ever you feel is needed to current situtation, there is a thread that talks about what to research and what not to research and when. Most of the time (aside from what you are doing at the beginning) the answers are wild and varied.

2. Economy
     Yes, that is pretty much it. There are some research things for planet population in the tech tree that help, but not much else.

3. Culture
     Does not really do anything offensively, but increases your allegence at teh planets which makes them work harder, and slows down enemy take over of planets. Occasionally you can remove an enemy for its planet by Culture but it rarely happens. All races also get something for being in their relative cultural area after full culture research (AM increase, Damage increase, Sheild Mitigation increase)

4. Fleet Size
     When you need a bigger fleet. Is varied by situtaion and what is working and what is not.

5. Pirates
     Caps get experience for killing things. Pirates are a good snack for caps. Makes them big and strong.

6. Expansion
     You might want to expand a little faster. In MP games this can be critical and it is hard to overexpand, it can happen but rarely.

7. Refineries
     This is a bit more contriversal. Personally I use them, but I usually play against AI groups and were every resource counts long term. In MP they are rare because they take a while to be worth anything. Refineries affect both their own grav well and the ones next to it. When you hover the mouse over an extractor it will tell you how many refineries it affected by it (usually 3 for colonizable gravwells and 4 by uncolonizabel gravwells).

8. Static Defenses
     If you are play regular Sins, there is not much to these guys. In the expansion Entrenchment, they become a bit more useful. The best choices are repair bay (Always a good choice) and hanagar defenses.

9. Planet Specialization
     A little bit yes but not as effective.

well, tech is very dependant on your starting position and who your playing against... if your in the "ima screwed" position... then starbases would be a good thing to tech... if your in the economy position... then obviously civic slots should be upgraded.

Your preety set on economy (for tec anyway)

Culture is important... every planet you have your own culture on gives you 10% increase in income on your hw... to a 40% increase on far out colonies (25%->35%... 40% increase)  (this does not affect trade or refinary income)

Fleet size depends... against ai... you can easily get away with a much smaller fleet... expecially if you have a starbase or 2.

Most people play wiht pirates off... but generally you WANT the pirates attacking you... because generally,... they are just free exp for your capital ship (however if your busy attacking someone else... and your planet has no defences...)

You want to expand as fast as possible... because more planets = more income. also... its also generally cheaper to get another planet than upgrade logistal slots.  agaisnt ai hoards... expanding slow is fine (overextending yourself agaist 5 ai fleets is a baad thing)

Refinaries are occasionally usfull on planets that have lots of phaselanes to other planets. The break even point for trade port vs refinary is 6-7 resource rocks. Advent "refinarys" are different... so... be carefull there.

As far as defences go... you want a repair bay or 2. it is the most effective defence out there, as it keeps your fleet alive much longer. some of the other things can be helpful... expecially the special ablities of some defences... phasic trap is GREAT for trapping enemy strike craft so they cant bomb the shizz out of your starbase... the 500 shield the advent hanger bay grants makes buildings it surrounds 500 damage +4 damage/second +60% sheild mitigation harder to kill... one hanger bay really really helps keep buildings not dead (like... PJIs)... and defences are great if your being attacked... but if your being attacked... either your not attacking... or your dead.... both of which are generally bad things.

As far as planet speciallizeation... there really is not much of a benifit... if you have a planet iwth 40%+trade income... you should be building tradeports on it... and hub planets should have (no more than 3) refinaries... not-front-line planets should hold your labs (to keep em safe... military labs more important than civic...) and just general such.

Also... it seems you are playing single player... so... 1. your missing out. 2. multiplayer is played very differently from single player... so thats why perhaps alot of the threads dont make much sence to what your doing.

or maybe he is just trying to improve his SP game so he can play online without getting raped, having his teammates have to carry him, and, overall, having a Negative Playing Expierence.

Tech Tree
This is very different from Civilization.  In that game, you more or less systematically cover the tech tree.  In Sins, you'll be selectively picking the technologies you want and will leave a lot of items (even at the lower tech levels) unresearched.  It takes a while before you get comfortable with the tech trees and are able to find everything you need, but once you get there it's basically a matter of picking and choosing select technologies that apply to your situation.  Very few technologies (ice/volcanic colonization, for instance) are considered mandatory no matter what.

Economy
First things first: be careful not to get fall into the trade port fallacies.  Many singleplayer gamers take advantage of the AI's leniency in teh early game to build up a strategy revolving around setting up a trade empire then crushing the AI with a superior fleet later on.  If you take that into multiplayer you won't survive more than twenty minutes.  Trade is a very powerful way of producing wealth, but it's very expensive to set up, and if you pursue it early your won't have a strong enough fleet to fend off an attacker. As a general rule, the best way to raise an early game economy is to capture lots of planets.

Culture
Friendly culture raises the loyalty of planets under its effect.  Hostile culture lowers loyalty.  The higher your loyalty, the more income a planet will produce.  Moreover, if loyalty hits 0% you lose control of the planet and cannot recolonize it until the culture recedes. Culture is very effective because one culture generator can affect half a dozen planets with ease.  That's much more cost effective than trade ports, which usually require a trade chain of 4 or 5 to get off the ground.

Fleet Size
This is a really tough question to answer.  Making your fleet larger is exceptionally important both for survival and victory.  On the other hand, it's always tempting to stay at lower upkeep levels to secure a long-term income advantage.  As a general rule, if you're going to upgrade your fleet, you need to use it actively.  If you're not upgrading your fleet level, you need to watch your opponent like a hawk.

Pirates
Yup, they're just plain annoying.  If they attack you, your capital ships get the experience for killing them.  In general, this makes it a benefit to be attacked by pirates.  The first raid or two is a little dangeruos, but after that it's of no concern and any reasonable defense will fend off pirates without difficulty.

Expansion
You're basically doing the opposite of what you should be doing. You should expand voraciously until there is no more room to expand, and only then start to fill out logistical space. Basically a 6-planet empire without trade ports is more lucrative than 4 planet empire with trade ports. If you built trade ports while I was expanding, my income will be higher than your's, plus I will own more planets which I can use as tactical assets. The worst-case scenario is if I capture and fortify a planet near your homeworld early game. If you can't take it back, this is practically a death sentence.

Tactical space is entirely another consideration and that should be based on the threat of your enemy fleet.

Refineries
As has already been mentioned, this is a more touchy subject.  Some people consider them useless, others consider them subpar.  There's no question they're a relatively poor way to increase your income.  However, if you see a good location to build one they can be worthwhile.  Refineries affect the gravity well in which they were built as well as adjacent gravity wells.  You typically need about 12 extractors under their effect to make them worth your time.  Neutral extractors (the ones in uncolonizable gravity wells) are better than usual.

Static Defense
The problem with static defense is that it's static.  The AI is more than happy to throw itself on your immobile defensive emplacements, but a player will just go around them or destroy them from outside their range.  In general, the only one worth your time is the repair bay.  It's extremely affordable and it doubles as a place to retreat injured units or capital ships.  In the middle of a fight it greatly adds to the longevity of your fleet.  Hangers are decent, but any dedicated fleet won't have a problem with them, hangers are strictly for fending off unsupported harassers.


Planet Specialization
In practice, this is feasible but unnecessary.  Sometimes you do get a planet bonus that gives +30 trade income, in which case putting your trade ports there is a great idea, but those cases aside there's no need to specialize a planet, and in most cases you do want to diversify your assets so losing a single planet isn't going to destroy you.  The one exception is front-line worlds, where you definitely want a military-based setup with frigate factories, repair bays, and maybe even a starbase.

Tech Tree

There are a few techs that are going to be pretty essential early on in the game. Ship research is probably one of the most important, you should almost always research your respective races Long range frigate (Javelis,Illuminator,Assailant) as soon as possible. The long range frigates are excepional at killing the common early game light frigates (Cobalt,Disciple,Skirmisher), and should be the backbone of your fleet early on in the game. That goes for SP and MP in most cases. Other critical techs include the Ice/Volcanic colonization techs(if there are several of said planets nearby) and repair bay tech. The most useful techs you'll need are the ship techs. Each ship fills a vital role in the fleet, and the more variety of ships you have, the stronger your fleet will become. But remember that strong fleets have strong backbones, meaning that the bulk of your fleet should comprise of good damage dealing units like Long range frigates and/or Heavy cruisers.

Economy

The others are right, that you should expand quickly, but only as fast as your economy will allow. To streamline this process, when you capture a planet make sure you have enough resources to put points into planetary infrastructure (1 for asteroids, 2 for all other planets). Your economy suffers when you colonize a planet as an underdeveloped planets will take money from your credit/second income rate. By putting points IMMEDIATELY into infrastructure you'll reduce the amount of time that planet is underdeveloped, minimalize its impact on your economy, turn it into a money maker quickly, and allow you to move on to the next planet without delay. Te easiest way to expand quickly is to use the capital ship with the colonize ability as your first Capital ship, and the colonize ability as its first. This will allow you to enter a neutral well, destroy the siege frigates guarding it, colonize it and then build a few static defenses to help handle the rest of the militia guarding the planet. Build a repair bay first and you can take your cap ship out of danger from destruction by even the most heavily armed militias. Throw in a few turrets to help with the killing part and you can take planets with your cap ship alone, while a second fleet expands in another direction. This is just one strategy (but a popular one), so don't feel limited by it. Once you've set up a decent empire of planets you can then start focusing on the planet upgrades. Also this way you can sort of specialize planets, planets on the inner part of your empire wont need the health upgrades or tactical upgrades (so your not wasting money there), while the outer planets will benefit from more health and tactical. (especially if they border the pirate base or enemy territory)

Culture

Culture is important to the game in the long run. It increases planet allegiance by 10% (somewhat slowly) which in turn increases your planets credit/metal/crystal output by 10%. While that may not seem like much, a single culture beacon can effect several planets. The best place to put them is at planets with lots of phase lanes attached to them. The culture will travel along the phase lanes to adjacent planets, and then will travel (more slowly)  along that planets phase lanes to its adjacent planets and so on. The spread becomes slower as the "signal" gets weaker the further from its source it gets, so its a good idea to put a culture beacon ever 3 to 4 jumps to keep the signal strong. The other benefits of of culture are that its a great defensive tool and a marginally effective offensive tool. When your culture signal is strong at a planet, your enemy will not be able to colonize it. So if your empire has a strong web of culture and your enemy gets in, they wont be able to establish a foothold in your territory. That being said, you should note that capital ships repel culture, and so does enemy culture. Having a strong culture web will often overcome the repeling of culture by a single cap ship, but the more they have at a location, the stronger the repulsion, but this goes for your cap ships against their culture as well. Also, the further a planet is from a Homeworld, the lower its allegiance (to a minumum of 25%). Using culture on your border worlds can often drop enemy planets far from their homeworld to a 0% allegiance, which will make it turn neutral, at which point you can simply send in a colony ship/cap to colonize it and take it for your own.

Fleet Size

You should only increase your fleet size when 1) you need more ships and 2) your economy can support it. Keeping a close eye on your opponents forces with scouts will give you a good idea of when you'll need more ships. The first level of fleet supply is easily supported by the economy you start out with so dont hesitate to get that one. But be careful, at higher levels, it will decrease your economy more, making it difficult to rebuild your forces if you take heavy losses, so with a big fleet, don't hesitate to retreat and save your ships if you get overwhelmed. Losing a planet (unless its your homeworld) is much less hurtful to you than losing your fleet.

Pirates

Covered above.

Expansion

Covered above. Although note, tradeports will boost your economy in the short term, while population is more of a long term bonus (as it take quite someitme for your population to max out wonce its upgraded.)

Refineries

I agree with the previous assessments of refineries. They're beneficial in the right situation, but often the logistics slots they take up are better served with other structures like tradeports

Static Defenses

Repair bays are best. Its a good idea to group your planetary structures close together so you can cover them with repair bays and turrets much easier. Against the AI, turrets and hangars are pretty useful, but against humans, better not to bother. Just be sure whatever defenses you build, to supoprt them with repair bays to keep them healthy if they come under attack.

Planet specilization

Mostly its a good idea to spread out your labs to multiple planets on your inner empire, that way if you lose a planet, the effect on your military/economy will be minimal. Other than that, just note that desert planets make wonderful specialized planets. They have the highest number of logistics slots, allowing you to outfit one with a huge trade facility, or a super ship production planet. But like in finance, best not to put all your eggs in one basket.

Thanks for all the responses.

Well, I started up a new game, random, 4 player, medium galaxy last night and tried to incorporate a lot of the comments in this thread.

Quick Expansion:

Quick expansion really ties in with economy and trade. After reading some other threads, my first order of business was building a colonizing capable cap ship and grabbing as many planets as I could. In my OP I said I was doing a lot of comparing to Civ 4. Sins is totally different in this respect, early expansion is definitely the way to go. My money economy was roughly as efficient as slow expansion with trade ports, however having more asteroids, I never ran into steel or crystal issues. But I think the trade v tax issue isn't what really makes the difference. With a trade econ, I had to build more logistics slots and build the trade ports, which ate up a ton of money. Now I save all the money I was spending on those. Same thing with labs. Before I was maxing out a planets logistics slots to build a lab or two, now I just go to whatever planet has some space available. Really like the fast expansion strategy.

Culture:

I'm still not totally sure all the effects of culture, but I did build the communal temple, and my economy was booming, so I must have been doing something right.

Tech

Went for the long range frigates pretty fast as suggested. These things are awesome.

Defenses

Again, did what was suggested, built repair stations and not much else. Eventually, as my empire got pretty spread out, I started building turrets/hangers because it took my fleet a while to get to places, but by then my economy was strong enough that fortifying a planet didn't kill my economy. Having multiple repair stations helped me win some seriously outmatched battles.

Thanks again for the hlep

The loyalty of planets under the effect of friendly culture increases by 10%.  Your tax income rate and extractor income rate are both multiplied by your loyaly.  If you have 50% loyaly on a planet (normal for a reasonable distance from your homeworld), then you receive only 50% extractor and tax income.  If that planet comes under the effect of friendly culture, its loyalty will increase to 60%, a big bonus on your overall income.  Culture is a great way to increase your income when your economy is tax and extractor based, and unlike trade ports you can build one to affect many planets.

It should also be noted that planets under the effect of hostile culture will lose loyalty over time, and if it hits 0% you lose the planet.  This is a great way to use culture offensively.

Each culture station generates a constant amount of culture starting at 10 culture/sec and increasing with research to culture spread rate. When a station begins broadcasting, its 10 culture will be split evenly amongst the phase lanes connected to the gravity well it is in. This means that for planets with 1 phase lane, the spread rate on the planet's infocard will be listed as 10.0/sec, 2 phase lanes will spread at 5.0/sec, 3 at 3.3/sec, and so on (the most phase lanes I've seen connected to one planet is 7, so one unupgraded culture station would broadcast at 1.4/sec for each phase lane at that planet).

One implication of this is how quickly your culture spreads versus how many planets it will affect. Putting them in a gravity well with few phase lanes will mean your culture spreads more quickly, but fewer planets will be affected in the short run (given time, it will spread to more). In gravity wells with more phase lanes, your culture can reach more planets, but it spreads more slowly and is easily repulsed.

Adding more culture stations increases the spread rate linearly, so 2 will generate twice as much as 1, 3 will generate triple the amount of 1, etc.

Something about trade ports that I don't think has been mentioned yet is how long the line of trade ports is. The longer the line of trade ports, the more income per tradeport, but the more tradeports you have, the income per tradeport doesn't necessarily increase, just total income. There's also sometimes a situation when adding an extra tradeport actually decreases the total income. Imagine if you have a circle of 10 planets. Each planet is only connected with the two adjacent planets. If you make tradeports on every planet but one, the line will be pretty long, it will be 9 planets long. If you add one more, though, on that tenth planet, the length of the line will decrease to 5, since to get from any planet to the one farthest away from it, it only takes five jumps. This kind of thing happens pretty commonly in a real game, but on a much smaller scale. You might lose say one or two planets in the line, but not much more. Hope that makes sense.