There's no right and wrong way is a phrase used to explain the unknown outcome of a series of events in the hopes you comfort what answer you have to explain it.

Right and wrong in sins is dependent on the movements, structure and units of your opponent. 

To be able to get a clear picture you must scout your enemy and make tacticle decisions on what to do. The right decision goes a long way into winning the game so you must first learn to find your enemy, colonize planets and asteroids quickly, build trade ports quickly while building as many long range units as you can (all this at the same time): Tec: Javelis, Advent: Illumminators, Vasari: Assailants. Forget about researching weapons upgrades and mining resource upgrades until you have mastered this.

After you can do this efficiently then we can talk advanced stuff like Scout and light frigate attacks, Flak, Repair/utility cruisers and heavy cruisers.

I get the whole "expand as quick as you can" idea - I employ it aggressively in Sins. 

But here's my basic strategy for single player (I play TEC right now, 1 race at a time lol):

Build my free cap ship plus some scouts and set them to auto-explore. Build up defenses on my border worlds as quick as I can, researching planet infrastructure and increasing my pop cap, tactics and logistics slots. I like to have at least two hangar bays and a compliment of gauss cannons at each border world. I focus my research on increasing mineral production and economic expansion to begin with.

Come mid-game I keep two main fleets, typically protecting my border worlds as I'm building their defenses and watching what my opponents are doing. Then, as I continue to build my fleets, I move them to occupied nearby planets/asteroids. But I don't focus on what ship is attacking what; I understand how my fleet needs to be built up, but should I be zooming in on specific battles and directing individual ships?

Because right now I'm focusing my efforts on long-term strategy and keeping my territories protected in case of attack.

I scrap my factories and other useless buildings and move them to my border worlds, to quickly build my fleets around there to help with protection.

This work? 

static defense bad. dont use them until you gain more experience. they are good to expand quickly

Hi there!

I just came to this game and read the tutorial(s) and so one. But there is one question left: What is the best beginner race? I like Advent the most but thanks to some circumstances I came to the conclusion that this race is not the best for beginners. I play DOW2 a lot which is micro-intense so I suppose Vasari could be a choice for me? Or is TEC more balanced tech-wise?

Thanks for the tips, after going through the tutorials, then jumping into the game and getting decimated, decided to spend some time on the forums and get a heads up. Will now endeavour to have another go with a few tweaks on the game options till I get my head round all the menus!!

Thx for your tips. 

Had a game with TEC and well... After 20 min I just couldn't stand a chance against a Advent fleet with massed bombers and shield support.  I tried the flak-ships... and they didn't work too bad... but this is kinda devastating and seems to be quite a superior mid-game strategy. Am I wrong?

If you're new, definitely TEC.  Advent and Vasari are more micro heavy with Advent being focused on insane synergies while the Vasari rewards...  Idk how to describe it..  It's just different.

The Advent has the best strike craft capabilities, and yes, Bomber spam has been, and will continue to be really powerful. You just have to mass fighters and flak in response.  A very good combination to have on hand is LC, LRF, and Flak.  Each one counters the counters of another, making it very difficult to stop a fleet composed of such.  Later in the game, you'll want to throw in some HC too.  In your case, Percheron Light Carriers, Javelis Long Range Missile Frigates, Flak Frigates, and Kodiak Heavy Cruisers.

Massed capital ships is usually a bad idea.  The reason is that for their fleet supply and cost, they don't put out as much DPS.  They have abilities.  Now, because of that, they are powerful, but they aren't something that you'd ever want to spam.  When I play Advent for example which needs capitals more than any other, I'll start with a Progenitor, build a Halcyon in midgame, and lategame, I'll finally build a Rapture and a Radiance.  If I've got money to spare, I'll build a second Halcyon, but I almost never build a Revelation.

The same applies to the Antorak when playing as Vasari (my main).  I'll only build it for very specific circumstances however.  My lategame Vasari capitals generally consist of a Jarrasul, a Skirantra (possibly two), and a Kortul/Desolator, depending on how much strike craft the enemy uses.

I rarely would advise getting Krosov Siege Frigates until you need them when you go on your final offensive.  Cielos are spectacular for taking down single targets because Designate Target increases damage dealt to a target by 40%, so if you're facing capitals or titans, make sure to micro that ability to be used on them.

As someone who doesn't main TEC, I can't tell you what ratios to have with hoho's.  They are very good at healing your ships, though with a lot of them, you should really disable demo bots because that drains AM really quickly.  Dedicate some to healing and some to disabling for maximum effect.

Advent vs TEC can be difficult because of the Advent's strong military presence.  That said, for an opponent spamming Illuminators and Aeria Drone Hosts, it can be quite difficult as those two ships counter each other's weaknesses rather nicely.  I'd advise building flak frigates and consider adding a Kol with Flak Burst.  Flak Burst annihilates strike craft, particularly that of the Advent because they have low health but high numbers, meaning it can wipe out an entire swarm in two shots.

Target the Illuminators with your flak frigates, and for even better effect, fly your flak straight into the middle of the Illuminators.  You see, while most ships have forward facing guns, flak have guns pointing in every direction, so to make the most use of all weapon banks, you need to be in the thick of battle.  Flak frigates also have a lot of health, so they should help tank things.

If you haven't, you may want to consider adding some Kodiak Heavy Cruisers.  Kodiaks deal high damage, but more importantly have a ton of health and can take down pretty much any other frigate one on one.  They act as a great meat shield for the rest of your fleet, particularly your lightly armored Javelis LRM.

Something else to consider is that flak frigates are better against fighters than bombers, though they still do well against them.  Basically, the more fighters they have, the less LRM you'll want because fighters can wipe out LRM pretty quickly.

For a more graphical representation of counters, see here: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/378976

As a person who plays fairly heavy TEC, I can offer the following advice, I don't claim to be an expert but it works for me. You are meeting resistance from Illuminators, Drones and some capitals- here is how you challenge that crew.

1st- in this situation I cannot overstate the tremendous benefit that flak can be to you. Why you may ask?

Many reasons. Flak on a per cost level, tanks nearly as well as the Kodiak Heavy Cruiser having decent armor for a frigate and high hull values for its cost and ease of availability. They will certainly out tank enemy fleets of LRM but LRM don't normally have to tank since they are long range but this is not completely true in the case of Advent as I will detail below.

Flak actually has a higher base DPS than LRM however it is not usually realized as that DPS is spread over omnidirectional firing so that focus firing is much less effective with Flak. But in this case it works to your advantage because the Illum also spreads its damage over 3 directions. The normal Illum strategy is to fly right into the formation of an enemy fleet which effectively lowers the DPS of TEC/Vasari LRM because they spend time not firing while pointing towards their target. So by countering Advent LRM with Flak you can out tank them and negate their asymmetrical fleet attack. In this instance, the Flak has nearly the same damage output as the Advent LRM but vastly higher durability.

Flak also obviously targets the SC produced by the Drone Carriers. Now Flak normally is not a completely effective counter to SC because they have a permanent decreased accuracy against SC. Remember your level 8 Akkan? Please tell me you have at least Lvl 1 Targeting Uplink...every level of Uplink adds roughly 6% range and 5% accuracy to all ships in its area of effect. Normally accuracy is not a big deal but in this case it is HUGE. That means your flak are hitting the SC sooner and for more damage as hits are actually placed instead of missing. Level 3= +20% Range & +15% Accuracy which after accounting for the increased mitigation rates and other factors translates to a roughly 30% damage increase vs Flak. Combine that with the fact that Advent SC depend on quantity over quality and your Flak fleet will be SHREDDING their SC to itty bitty bits.

I like to have 3 waves to my fleets- Frontline, LR Firepower & LR Support. My frontline ships are Heavy Cruisers and Flak that I rush to get in the way and generally tank/aggro the enemy fleets. Then LR Firepower with your support Caps come in to start administering pain with LRM damage & abilities. Lastly the support fleets comes in and moves throughout the other 2 fleets as needed to provide the necessarily healing, buffing & debuffing.

As far as ratios, I find that Hoshis can provide support at roughly a 2:1 ratio, that is to say, for every 2 other ships in my fleet, I like to have 1 Hoshi. You can stretch that to 3:1 if its purely a Heavy Cruiser/Hoshi fleet but I am a definite Hoshi fan. I usually set Half to Auto Cast Demo Bots and Half to Auto Repair bots and manually target the opposite abilities as needed.

As For your Questions:

- In this stage of the game, can I replace the LRMs with a certain stronger type?-

You don't necessarily replace the LRM, (although some TEC players do this switching exclusively to the Kodiak or even bypassing the LRM for the Kodiak completely), but really the best strategy is to augment them IMHO. Add in Hoshis, Flak & HC. That fleet with a few supporting Capitals (Akkan, Sova & Marza) will be a nice basic wrecking ball that will beat all but the most carefully crafted of enemy fleets.

- Aside adding more research benefits and building more units, is there a cruiser or other cap I should get to make my fleet more useful? Maybe some Cielo's?

See my answer above for making fleet more useful. As far as Cielo's- see Volt_Cruelerz answer as he does a good job explaining the need for this one.

- I seem to lack some siege units. Which one should I get at this point?

Don't bother with the frigate, just build a Marza and level up Raze planet. At Lvl 3 Raze Planet, You will find that you can take out all but Desert & Terran planets in a matter of 20-60 Seconds.

- Also, from the Hoshiko's: build as much as you can or just have 1 for each other ship you have for example?

See my answer above for Hoshiko ratios.

Didn't mean for this to turn into a sermon. Sorry for wall of text, tried to break it up and make it readable. Good Luck from a fellow TEC lover!!