Cheers dude. I didn't see the disable option.

I'l keep at it. I think my biggest problem is putting too much money into planets straight away, not enough ships and not enough decent weaponry on them.

What sort of game are you playing- what map, what level AI and how many, what options?

The classic and most basic defence against pirates is to have a regen unit and three turrets close together at the attacked planet, plus a trade port if possible.  You allow the pirates to attack the turrets before attacking with your fleet.  A trade port will split the pirates as some of them will chase the durable and quickly replaced trade ships.  It may seem odd to have trade defend against pirates, and it is, ho hum.  Also bear in mind that pirates will not chase damaged ships beyond that grav well.  You can often replace turrets as they are destroyed.

You don't want to put credits into weapons upgrades of any kind until you have a fleet with 20-30 ships of one type.  Vasari phase missiles are the only exception.  Defence upgrades may be different as they help your cap ship, on the other hand having a second cap ship may be more important.  Levelling cap ships quickly is vital, this is why the original pirates were scorned by experienced players.

By far the best ship to deal with pirates is a carrier cap, as it doesn't have to approach them to be effective.

When expanding in a game with pirates present, try to take into account the most direct and therefore most likely route they use to attack.  If you can choke them it becomes much easier to defend as you can up the defence infrastructure on one planet, allowing multiple regen units and more turrets.

What sort of force are you using to expand with, as it sounds like slow expansion is part of your problem?

Do you have the expansions? Have you updated with the patches?

Capital ships have nice abilities, but they're very expensive. Frigates can easily outdo their damage output at a fraction of the cost.

Although pirates do send a lot of ships, their ships are comparatively quite weak and stupid - they have no shield mitigation. As for what can deal with them... as DesConnor said, building turrets, repair platforms, and a trade port works very well. You probably don't want to be building any frigates to counter the pirates because it's likely at least some of them will die; static defenses work a little better.

Pirates come starting 15 minutes into the game and attack every 15 minutes after that. You have 15 minutes from the start of the game to expand and build defenses before the pirates first attack. A player who's decent at early expansion should be able to have 6+ planets by that time (in 1v1 at least); with an empire base that large, building frigates or defenses or even new capital ships shouldn't be too much of a problem. Whatever you choose to do, you should have enough funds to fight off the pirates.

If I were you, if you have repair platforms at the planet being attacked, I'd consider sending at least the cap carrier and maybe even the other carriers to the front of the gravity well. They have tons of hull, can withstand quite a lot of damage, and the ship they're most weak to (light frigates: the Pirate Rogue) are rarely sent in significant quantities, I think.

Since repair ships need to be very close to your own damaged ships to be used, your repair ships should be up front. If you're TEC, they're Hoshikos: even if they're attacked and die, they'll be well worth their cost.

I would recommend not using "fleets" at all because (among other things) the game seems to often tell ships in a fleet to "reform fleet" even while in the middle of a firefight, meaning that your ships'll move to some new position instead of focusing on attacking enemy ships. Alt-clicking and shift-alt-clicking to select ships and give orders is a little more efficient I think.

Capital ships are nice for their abilities and for their ability to take damage, but often do relatively little damage of their own. Combat-oriented frigates and cruisers do more damage per supply and per cost.

Crystal, being relatively uncommon, is one of the reasons players often try to get close Ice planets as soon as they can, because Ice planets have between 2 and 4 crystal rocks to place extractors on.

Unless you're playing a very long game, I probably wouldn't get more than the first two crystal extraction upgrades, because the research costs quite a lot (especially in terms of crystal) and takes a very long time to pay off.

If you're looking for more crystal, try capturing any crystal neutral extractors in the neutral gravity wells, which give you a significant amount of income. (you know how to capture those?)

If you're TEC, you can research Favored Client Discount and buy crystal from the black market at heavily discounted prices (down to around 320 credits/100 crystal, which is excellent). If you have a lot more metal than you need, of course sell it to the black market too.

If you're finding yourself needing crystal in almost all of your games, that probably means you're researching a whole lot. Unless you're fighting against the more insane AIs (cruel and vicious), not that much research is needed.

Unless it's the late-game, you probably shouldn't have more than 2 or 3 capital ships - everything else should either invested in regular frigates, which have more damage output.

That's a neutral extractor. The only way to capture a neutral extractor is to send a colony frigate to it and use the "Capture Extractor" ability.

If you're going to invest in an expensive starbase, I'd probably put it at a planet because planets with repair platforms can keep the starbase alive indefinitely. If you build a starbase in a neutral gravity well, it'll be more easily destroyed, depending on what kind of fleet the AI sends at you.

Everyone, even those who've played against the AI for months, gets wiped out when they're just starting multiplayer. Playing against humans is extremely different from playing against the AI.

But we REALLY need more people willing to come play online. You don't even have to fight other humans if you don't want to - it's pretty common for there to be what's called a "Comp Stomp" in which humans partner up and fight a number of AIs. But please consider playing online - PM me, I'll be happy to teach you what you need to know to be a decent player.

You should build your fleets around them as there abilities are extremely powerful, especially against the AI. However, you need to have a lot more frigates in your fleets for them to be really effective. Most of your damage output will come from frigates, and if you fight a force that has twice the DPS of your fleet because you built too many capital ships those abilities probably won't matter very much. I would shoot to have 100 fleet supply of frigates for every capitalship you have (early game this ratio will be lower as you want to get your first free capital ship, but once you get the first few fleet supply upgrades just build more frigates until it you achieve it).

In general, the biggest mistakes noobs make are

A. Not expanding fast enough. You should try and get your free cap ASAP and then max out your starting fleet supply with frigates and quickly take over nearby planets (asteroids first). A cap and 8 light frigates should be able to take everything except desert and terran planets.

B. Too much research. While things like unlocking new ship types, repair platforms, planet colonization techs etc. are a big priority, post of the % stat bonuses are not worth while until you get a larger empire. The very earliest terran population and armor upgrades maybe an exception, but otherwise skip these until you have a several hundred fleet supply worth of units.

C. Too many capitalships. Against near even fleets these can often decide the winner, but 1 battleship and a dozen LRMs will almost certainly lose to 25 or so LRMs your opponent could have for that fleet supply.

Indeed it is. This place looks like heaven compared to hells like gamefaqs, where some poor fools look for *advice*.

If the neutral gravity  well is a chokepoint, it is worth to put a starbase there... by example, if there chokepoint can lead to 4 of your planet, it is cheaper to put a starbase in the neutral gravity wheel that at the 4 planet...

And nothing stop you to have a little support fleet with your starbase... seem that you play TEC... think about Hosiko cruiser, the TEC mobile "repair platform"...

Expanding too much fast is not good too... best to have a few planet upgraded with a good trade chain that plenty of planet not upgraded who generate no income...

Rushing is only good on small map where ennemy is only a few jump away... but it will not work on a huge multistar random map with 10 player !!!

As for the pirate, don't feed them to much with bounty... your money make them stronger... they are usefull early for slow down the development of your ennemy... later, let them come to you and use them like training for your capitalship... they usualy come always the same way, so use 1 or two capital along a few hosiko for repair... in no time, you will be able to upgrade your capitalship...

Point is that with sins, you have mutliple way to reach victory... in fact, with team multiplayer, member of one team use different tatic too... you can have one guy who is more on the eco who feed a other one who is more on the attack... single player will allow you to find at what you are the best...

Cheers people.

I've got the hang of the general game, but I'm still having major problems with these damn pirates.

It seems that unless I upgrade my fleet cap, or upgrade my frigate weapons I'm unable to simply destroy pirates on a one on one fight.

They appear first of all with literally 10 pirate cutthroats and over 10 rogues. The pirate cutthroats just decimate my 8 frigates, whilst I take out about one of theirs. Anyone have any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Look at it this way. As TEC, a halfway decent early-game fleet to use when attacking another player has a capital ship and perhaps 40 or 45 frigates, using only the first fleet supply upgrade. Build more frigates, as Kitkun said, or, a better idea would be to either use no frigates, and instead have a single capital ship in the gravity well along with a few turrets and a couple repair bays.

Or if you don't want to do all that and have the funds you could just build a starbase, if you're OK with the overkill.

Upgrading your fleet cap for the purposes of fighting pirates would be a waste of money: so would upgrading your frigate weapons. Building more ships is almost always a better investment than researching weapon upgrades, except when you have 30 or 40 or more combat-oriented ships of one type.

Yes indeed. In late game Sins, even with normal fleets on, I will usually have 2-3 "Large Fleets" each consisting of 3-4 Capitals, 50-60 LRF, 35-40 HC's, 25 ish Fleet support healing ships and 25 ish Flak Frigates. This is generally my preferred but if Im going more SC heavy then I will have 3-4 Caps, 35-40 Lrf, 15-20 HC's, 15-20 ish carriers and 15-20 fleet support/healing ships.

Usually 2 around 1000 each. Granted I also usually play multi-star maps against several cruel AI with a typical empire of 20 ish planets so I max my fleet supply pretty regularly.

I likes me some epic space Battles

ok the easyest way to get rid of pirates is too get them to attack other people,

call me a noob but it works!