Critical Mass strategy

This post is extremely short on details. If you're in a reasonably spacious map then no matter what race you are, it's a good idea to get trade ports as soon as you can and then to build more while cranking out units and putting pressure on your enemy(ies).

It's not just spam - you have to know what ships counter what, and what your capital ships can do most effectively, and what the enemy's caps do, you have to know when to fight, retreat, colonize, bomb, etc. It's not just "step 1: spam. step 2:  win."

I see no problem with the general strategy in Sins of increasing your income (trade) so that you can then support a large fleet (even if they're of units you might call "spammable").

And no, Titans will definitely not change this tactic. A titan is probably going to be much more costly than a capital ship, probably much more costly than even a starbase - it'll probably take at least 45 minutes to get everything together to start building one. But a decent opponent would be pressuring you with his fleet by the 25 minute mark, and wouldn't give you enough breathing room to invest funds in researching and building the Titan.

They should make trade more diverse and require a bit of micro instead of having trade be build to get "auto" cash.  It wouldn't be difficult to implement and could add more strategy to the game as well.

I dunno. Among good players, with the necessary constant focus on the enemy's fleet, scouting, your own research/builds, micromanaging battles, and so on, I'm not too hot on something else requiring repetitive user input to be most effective.

... although during the long truces which sometimes happen during a 1v1 maybe it would be nice for something for the players to be able to direct a lot of focus towards...

Nice Idea, but completely disagree with the need in Sins. Between managing research effectively without trapping cash, scouting, colonizing, upgrading planets effectively, maximizing trade route,  building effective and balanced fleets without trapping cash and effective Micro Fighting- I don't need something else to do. Maybe if you are someone who auto places everything, auto scouts, and traps tons of cash so you don't dynamically research or fleet but I think SINS was created to focus on the fun aspects of RTS and 4x strategy games. Don't know about you but I don't get my jollies off by endlessly clicking for resources. I want to be able to setup my resource network and then focus on expanding it, not micro-managing it.

THere is a lot to do in the game outside of micro, especially with the laginess of endgame.

Well, I'm not talking about major micro, but something else. 

I'm talking about opportunities.

Each planet has a need that might arise at random, for a certain good.  Some planets produce it and you can make a bit of extra cash building a small convoy of "superfrieghters" to transfer the materials.  I'm not talking constant fleet actions here, as that wouldn't make sense.  You could trade with allied planets and or enemy/neutral planets.

For those times when you really really need some cash!  This would be fun because you would have to defend your superfrieghters from enemy attack, and if they get destroyed your downpayment on the goods is lost (takes money to make it after all).  The returns would have to justify the time/effort naturally, to make the trips worthwhile.  This would give military minded players a different opportunity to destroy one's trade empire aside from cutting the trade worlds off.

This would be simething to do while waiting for something to happen if you are in a lull/stalemate with another player.  Since these happen often in this game, there needs to be an active way of overcoming them aside from resource feed from other players.  This would give the economics some ACTION, while not being too demanding on your micro time.

Game as it stands now.

Spam A Then spam B

Then go full carrier vasari fleet and roll over everything in one pass.

There is few to none uses for capitals in late game, apart of planet bombing and few exceptional caps like Kol, having a capital that cannot repel bomber waves means that it will be dead in one pass, no matter the level.

Late game superiority is on vasari side. Best SB and best defensive ability (phasic trap) and best repair unit - instant HP with armor bonus, means that you can actually keep your capitals and SB's alive under focus fire.

Anything can be outspammed, but on equal terms, microed lategame vasari is unbeatable.

I'm not certain I have seen the term "Exceptional" and "like Kol" in the same sentence. Unless your playing a MOD, Kol is definitely on the low end of the good Caps IMO.

Not sure about this one either, I love the Orky but realistically it is the least performing from a fleet threatening standpoint. I can build 2 argos with only max override and completely obliterate 2 massive fleets for the price of 1 maxed Orky which may destroy a fair portion of 1 of those same fleets but certainly cannot threaten the shear number of vessels that an Argo can. Lets not even talk about the Transcencia, between Mass Disorient and fully upgraded Met. Storm- It can eat fleets for breakfast.

TEC aren't supposed to meet Vasari on equal terms, they are SUPPOSED to out-spam their opponents. Thats the whole point of being able to have more money than God and build factories with 175% build speed on their SB. You are making a false comparison.

O rly, TEC can beat advent on equal term just fine.

The reason vasari dominates is phase missiles. The maxed out phase missiles are so ridiculous.

Do realise that lategame vasari done right is mobile, can be anywhere it wants and can concolidate and push with better than anyone else.

And saying you can "wipe fleets" with override, maybe in care house for retarded kids lan party, yes. Who in they right mind will come near a SB unless they absolutely have to? Especially when they can send 90 bombers that way and 1 pass it.

Vasari is big map domination race. Tec is only race that even stand a chance against it in large maps.

And if you dont respect kol then you clearly haven't seen kols clearing skies in one co ordinated burst. It is the one and only late game cap ship TEC should build in numbers like 4+, if you are rich then you get few dunnovs to keep the healthy. Kol is your carrier fleets best friend, it allows you go bomber heavy and sit on edge of well without fear of enemy SC. Even against skilled player who actualy KNOWS how to micro SC (something that makes telekinetik useless ability) he will never get to strike your fleet without losing big portion if not all of his shit.

So yeah, early game, TEC, go marza, get it to 6 and try to surprise someone or use it as deterrent. Late game when you see people running with 100 or so carriers, kol is only thing that you should get.

Just depends on what your looking for your Cap to do.

If you want a big red target, Kol is your boy. Everyone loves to snipe Caps, you cant snipe a Kol (or a Kortul). So while your FF on my meat shield my frigates are eating away at your DPS.

If your looking for you Cap to do something other than throw bullets everywhere and take damage, yeah Kol is lackluster-ish.

But I digress.

HAHAHAAHAHA...thank you.....needed a good laugh....wow....Ok....Im done.

As Carbon pointed out above, Kol is a meat shield, plain and simple. Max the armor, HP & AM and let the level 3 shield do its thing.

But please, please don't try and fool anyone into thinking that it is some magical air superiority platform. Not trying to start a fight here but if a newbie comes and reads the forum, they deserve to have truthful information.

Perhaps, if you stop playing comp stomp, and come play skilled multi player games once in a while you will see that late game 100+ carrier SC swarms are scary. I'd like to see how you play late game TEC without any kind of proper SC killing ability when vasari bomber swarms get big enough to one pass anything they so please.

The Kol's flak burst is an exceptional ability if you can bring it up to level 3.  With two Kols working in tandem, flying large numbers of bombers overhead will cause instant death to those unfortunate enough to be hit by both bursts.  Combined with flaks to clean up stragglers, this is an effective way to keep enemy strike craft on their toes and prevent them from having free reign.  Good players will stay out of range of this death trap, but that will mean far fewer opportunities for their bombers.  Late-game battles are so XP rich that reaching level 6 is relatively easy (so long as you don't have too many caps), which mitigates one of the Kol's primary weaknesses.  By this point, TEC has the money to simply replace any capital ships when they die, and combined with the Kol's toughness that makes them pretty reliable.  The Kol really shines in the late-game as a result.

Most other TEC capital ships are absolutely horrible in the late-game, so in many ways this is a total inversion of the early-game where TEC has lots of great choices.  The Dunov with its EMP is decent against Advent who are playing with shield antics, Armistice is always a great ace to have up your sleeve, and the Marza will always be your best bombardment weapon, but that's it.  Sova is still a passable combat unit, but you're better off getting it killed so your other caps can level up faster. 

The great thing about the late-game is that experience is really easy to get, so losing a high-level capital ship isn't a catastrophic blow.  If you do a fair bit of micro, ensure you put your abilities to good use, and have the cash to replace them promptly, mixing a larger number of capital ships into your fleet is totally viable in the late-game.  You'll lose them on a fairly frequent basis, but that's true of all units.  So long as you're getting value out of them before they die, it's a great use of resources.

finally someone not hating on the kol...  I tried Kol + dunov + marza and I iced 2 viscous computers.  We were comp stomping (a rarity for me) and three others left.  The computers then started killing two of the players while attacking me on all fronts simultaneously.  I had two fleets of 2 dunov, 2 kol, and 2 marza to deal with the computer.  One fleet had an akkan as well.  all around a great fleet composition for engame, as I could protect my fleet against the 30-40 bombers the computer had as well (and could have easily protected against far more!).

Oh you actually survived that? Heh.

-horrible

-Siddy just meant vasari have the cheapest starbase. 

"once upon a time i thought i could win by mass producing caps. i failed cos of the economics and opportunity cost esp when my caps where sniped-so its just Enforcers, Kodiaks and Crusaders  with Flak on the side." Yes u can counter this with heavy armor dammage dealing units (e.g lf swarms) but i just replace my flak with an appropriate counter e.g lrf. etc etc yaada yaada

I cant waste money on caps.. wud rather spend it on a starbase with mass disorientation. Its more fun watching caps and ships floating about trying to find there footing." 

Heck yes it gave me a chance to experiment with the TEC late game.

I would rush the computer fleet and hit it with my fully levelled emp's.  Then i'd use a few of the marza AOE fleet attack to kill regeneration of the fleet.  Then i'd hit em with a second emp volley and then immediately use my two level 6 marza missile attacks.  it was quite effective at kicking the crap out of the enemy fleet.

Took me a while, but in the end having one fleet on defense and one fleet on offense I was able to wipe the computers out.

And if you had a level 6 Akkan, which is even less uncommon, you hit Armistice whenever it looks like you are in trouble, and run back to your star base (with repair), which nobody dares approach for fear of being blasted away.  

And it won't be long and you'll have a level 6 Dunov which quadruples the above mentioned abilities, and means you'll rarely run out of antimatter.

Except that this sounded like it was against the AI, which has no such common sense!

Even human players can sometimes be coaxed in.  By positioning your own fleet nearby, he may be under the presumption that you're not willing the blow the base (mutually assured destruction) and decide to rush you.  If you place the Akkan just right, you can activate armistice to render your fleet invulnerable, while keeping the starbase and enemy fleet out of range.  When it goes boom, your fleet is unaffected.  I've used this one a couple times.  Bottom line: always presume that any non-capital unit sent into boom radius of a starbase will die.  If you're not willing to sacrifice the unit, then don't get into boom range.

Ironically, cheating AI's fair pretty well against boom bases since they can replace their fleet more easily, and are more likely to suffer those kinds of losses in conventional fights anyways.