I haven't been on recently, but Rebellion is moderately active. Couple hundred players on during Weekends, some of them are friend only games but you should be able to find a game, especially if you're willing to host yourself.

That can be true, for exactly those reason. The lack of a ladder means you can get absolutely anyone in games, so there is no easy way to ease yourself into the higher levels. If you can find someone good to give you tips in a comp stomp that's a good thing to do. You might want to try this thread, though it seems not to have gotten far.

Well the good thing is online games tend to finish up faster. Bad thing is latency becomes an issue. Also at the start of the game for some reason goes much faster online, some sort of "negative lag" maybe, so getting a build order you like right away fast might be good to have.

Well currently most competitive games have Vasari Rebels "banned", though we'll see what happens after the patch on Tuesday. The only issue is that a lot of the good players use Vasari Loyalists, its sort has become a custom that a teams best player or two will use them. If you do play them, make sure another Vasari Loyalist is on your team, and don't rely on striping planets unless the other VL players okays it.

It really is all because of phase jumping Starbases. They are a great faction without them thanks to the best phase missiles and defensive research. But the Starbases are obscene. No amount of research prerequisites and labs can keep a good player from getting it, especially if he has feed from his teammates, and its truly a game changing tech. A common opening move by both Vasari factions is to starbase the opponent's homeworld ASAP. This doesn't always work, but its a great delaying move at best, and can inflict a lot of damage if you don't see it coming. From there, a VR player can quickly get Starbase mobilization up, and if you can't beat an "Orkulus Rex" at your homeworld, defeating it at your other planets is unlikely. Thus this one starbase can potentially take out an entire player, and you can be assured every assault from that player will have a fully upgraded starbases backing his fleet up.

Even worse is if the VR players ends up in the "Eco" slot, that is he is surrounded by teammates, allowing him to expand without pressure. These players tend to avoid getting fleet research until later as the fleet upkeep hurts their economies', and instead give resources to players on the frontline ("feed") or occasionally try rushing a titan or Novaliths etc. Starbases do not take up fleet supply though, so VR players can build several fully upgraded starbases and jump them across the map without sacrificing their economies. Enemy players will have to fleet up to counter them, hurting their economies, by which point the VR player can keep a steady stream of replacements.

VL are probably overpowered but they are not banned, they tend to be at the heart of their team's war effort instead. It may simply be banning all the Vasari factions would be boring, but in my opinion it takes a fair amount of skill to pull of the VL, and speed really is everything for them, so that's why the best player on each team tend to use them. Also having a team fully of VL players would cause them to cannibalize their world striping potential, since they must share among each other the limited supply of worlds. Multiple VR players do not have this problem, as the starbase limit is 1 per player, so all 5 players on a team could  abuse jumping starbases.

Probably TEC Rebels. They have some good strategies that don't affect anyone else if they fail (Ragnarov is a beast, Truce Amongst Rogues can lead to rapid expansion if you're eco, TEC trade means you can always provide economic mussle, Sova Rush can cripple new players and annoy veterans, and building a few Novaliths can often cause a team to quit if they're already losing). Advent Rebels would be the other main option, though you'll need to learn the strategic uses for Wail of the Sacrificed and keep eyes on adjacent planets at all times to ensure you use it at the perfect time.

The activity is pretty much restricted to the Rebellion game server.  The most active times are during the North American gaming times, say from 1 pm to Midnight U.S. Eastern Standard Time.  There is also activity outside of that time, say between 10 am-1 pm U.S. EST and Midnight-3 am U.S. EST but it won't be as heavy.

Honestly, for various reasons this game has always been a failure for online multiplayer in terms of attracting the number of people it deserves to play it in online multiplayer, which is a shame because it's a terrific game and a mostly unknown gem.  It deserves to have over 2000 people online at any given time 24/7.

I don't think the situation is much different from most other games.  You just have to suck it up and take your nooby lumps.  The biggest problem is a lack of a ladder or skill-based matching system, but this game just doesn't have enough people playing it online to support that.  If you've been playing Sins for four years now then you're more than ready to try it against human players.  However, you are going to get beaten at the beginning because humans play very differently from mindless AI.  Don't expect real people to suicide themselves on starbases or your titan for you, and they will focus fire your capital ships to death.

You may experience some lag, but it's really not that bad.  It tends to become an issue later on in larger games on larger maps where large fleet sizes become practicable.  One of the problems with Rebellion is that the swarms of corvettes can result in earlier lag.

As of now, most game hosts ban the use of Vasari Rebels online, and they probably will continue to ban them even after the next patch is released.

Yeah the Vasari Rebels are still banned.

I don't know which senior developer wants to keep the obviously overpowered VR starbase jumping im the game.

That developer should realize that every ship that can jump to an enemy gravity well requires logistics slots and some require capital ship slots.  This keeps balance.  This keeps from VR players from building up a ton of starbases prepped to attack one after another in succession like an assembly line of unstoppable death.  Considering the sheer size of the things, I recommend that they also require a capital ship crew to man it, to further limit the amount of these starbases.

All a vasari player needs is just 1 of these.

Once you get 2-3 you will really just start facerolling 2-3 people at once, depending upon their fleet composition.  

  Hmmm... I think the great enemy chasing the vasari just entered my thread......

And if theirs a way to close this thread SOMEONE can. All my newbie questions have been answered. (Karma to goafan and sanchezz)

Ya.... I'm already trying to rally the online community against them......... DON'T FIGHT, PREPARE for the invasion