First part of the game is all about expanding quickly. Don't focus on getting trade, or researching a lot. Just expand. Getting planets, buying their first 2 population upgrades (1 for asteroids and moons), and building extractors is the fastest way to expand your economy, and gives you more logistics slots in the future for trade and research.

In practice this usually means building your faction's colonizer capitalship and using up the rest of your fleet supply ASAP. The types of frigates you should use depends on your race, but in general for research you'll want 1 military lab for Corvettes or Assailants (for Vasari), and 2 civic labs for the Volcanic/Ice colonization research. Ignore most other research until you've got several planets under your control, then focus on more frigate types and perhaps getting a second capitalship.

I usually have my colony cap go one direction taking asteroids/moons/volcanics/ices, and my frigates with a colony frigate in another, so I have to expansion forces. Kill the siege frigates around a planet first, then colonize it immediately to save time. If there are still a lot of militia in the gravity well, especially flak frigates, try building a turret first, then move your capitalship to the next planet while the militia are still alive. The turret will take out anything but LRMs on its own, and those can be handled with a few corvettes once the flak are gone. Once all militia are gone, you can scuttle the turret for resources.

For large Terran/Desert turrets, your cap might need some frigate support, but if you can kill the siege frigates you can safely colonize the planet, get the population upgrades can clear the rest out later if need be.

I was just giving some tips that the "pro" players of Sins do. The AI is certainly not the model of efficient play. But if you're not comfortable with using those tactics yet, by all means ignore them.

I'm guessing your problem is you are not building enough ships early on. 100 fleet supply of ships should easily take out the militia of all but the most heavily fortified terran and desert worlds. If you're only building your capitalship and 4 light frigates or something, yeah that's why it seems hard.

12 cobalts should be plenty for early expansion, at least for the first 5-10 planets, depending on map size.  That plus even the not-so-deadly Akkan can take out any militia force, with VERY few exceptions, usually with about a 5 Cobalt loss on Desert or Terran if the ships there were heavy on Kodiaks and LRMs.  But with a Cap + 12 Cobalts, that's 110 Fleet Supply, not including your scouts.  You are scouting, right?  If not, there's your problem.  You need to be able to see where the colonizeable worlds are.

I HAVE, however, noticed that the AI seems to be a lot better at expansion than they used to be.  I'm wondering if the AI is scripted to research the first Fleet upgrade right out the gate, because I usually see 3-4 Colony Frigates at random intervals when my scouts find my local enemies.  (I play Aerolian Sector usually, so by local, I mean my starting star).  It may just be that they're expanding faster because they're putting absolutely everything into their early fleet.  Cobalts/Corvettes/Colony Frigates/and their free cap.  I KNOW the AI splits its ships up, making multiple fleets.  This was absolutely irritating me in a game I was playing yesterday.  Not only was I getting behind in credits too far from building my fleet too big too fast, but the Pirates were actually large enough that they were an actual nuisance, and since I was broke, I couldn't pay them off to go after someone else.  All the while the Ai would send 2 siege frigs, a Heavy Cruiser, and either a carrier or a couple light frigates to a random planet I hadn't fortified yet and commence to force me to split off part of my fleet.

Wow...sorry, got a little off-topic there...anyway.

Later, I realized all my credits were disappearing because I forgot to research the planet upgrades after re-colonizing after the pirate raids, so that spiralled down quickly, but still.  The fact that the AI is by default better at multi-tasking means they probably just built multiple fleets and scattered.

-Twi /)

  It was actually a pretty good starting strategy, just not the one most commonly used.  And as for the kol, I'd rank it 3rd most useful as a first Capitol ship.  It's by far the hardest to kill, and if planted in the middle of a militia fleet, can wipe them out no problem with the first few cobalts you can build as support.  The only downside to this strategy is that it ultimately slows down colonizeation unless you build multiple colony frigates, due to their slow AM regeneration.  Personally, for a Starting capitol, I rank them in the order of Akkan, Sova, Kol, Corsev, Marza, Dunov.  (Haven't used a lot of Corsevs, so they could potentially switch places with the Kol.)

  As for getting trade ports as early as possible, I'm not really sure.  It is a good boost to economy, especially if your starting location isn't very good, but can potentially cripple you if you're on too small of a map.  Didn't know that about pirates prioritizing them though, so maybe it's a better idea than I give it credit for.

  And finally, I absolutely disagree with redruby's idea that static defenses are useless.  Every planet should have at least 1 Hangar Defense with Fighters, to repel the tiny siege frigate groups the AI likes to drop in your grav wells when nobody is home.  As well as the fact that the Flak Turrets upgrade can help defend your structures from enemy bombers if you buld them in a close enough group.  Maybe in online play this is a bad idea due to abilitys like the Marza's Missile Barrage, but the AI doesn't take advantage of this on a regular basis.  And the TEC Gauss Turret is a serious threat once you get the Burst Rockets and Meson Bolt added to it.

One thing about the defenses though is that the AI rarely passes through a grav well you own, so you really only need to heavily fortify a couple of choke points around an area of the map that you decide you can't lose.  (At least 8 planets is preferable.)

-Twi /)

In online game the marza outclass the corsev and the sova imo.

The amount of bombing time u save with planet raze is huge and if ur fighting over a roid or moon denying the enemy the opportunity to build repairbays/facs is great.


I also think playing vs Ai is stupid and mindless. Any retard can beat the Ai coz it's just so dumb and consistent.

Any strategy u implent vs a Human can be implented vs an Ai with alot more effect because it doesn't know the best way to counter.

So anything I say will hold true in both offline and online play.

As I normally play with AI on Free for all mode they take time and attack each other. I know my expansion method leans to the more n00bish style, but against AI it works. first go for colonisesr cap, make sure resourse asteroides are being built on/have mines on them, 3 or 4 scouts and max the rest of fleet cap on basic ships. go for asteroids first and do the pop research (or whatever its called) for em and build lab. take other and upgrade other locals that dont need research, do research and take over an upgrade those. I normally have about 5 or 6 planets before the first pirate raid and a fair income.

5 planets is normally enough income to justify increasing fleet supply.

research, scouting, building up, scouting and taking planets oh and did i mention scouting?

they tend to help.

the AI pulls "The Brave Sir Robin" maneuver, as MS, puts it way too often. out number them say 2-1 or more and they bravely run away.

Its rare for me to run away from a fight, unless i know im not going to win. the surrender button dose not exsist either. its total victory or total annilation. that being said, is there a reason the AI seems to surrender at the drop of a hat?

Thats not exactly what I meant, though its nice to know. There's been a couple of times on Rebellion when an AI will just surrender (quit the game) even when not in any serious trouble. I played a 4 way last time and took a couple of an AI's planets and it just surrendered, did not even attack their homeworld.

I agree about no surrender, but too many people whined about having to totally annihilate a faction, and how long it took. I dont mind AI surrender if the AI didnt surrender when it still had a fighting chance, or worse. Surrender while it has a superior force.

The AI will never be as good as a human opponent. I dont know what to say other than the AI needs more work.

Thats what different victory conditions are for, don't want to have to completely kill an AI faction then put Cap ship victory or  homeworld victory on. besides if your playing against more than one AI you normally have to kill off their remnants to get more planets anyway. A lot of RTS games I've played require total or near total annihilation of the enemy, and some have different victory conditions. In  Starcraft you merely have to blow up all their buildings, so why not have an AI surrender after it loses all its planets. besides differing victory conditions are what make games more interesting....then again the current ones were only added in rebellion.

I think if you are losing to the easy ai, you lake the mental facilities to ever be good at this game.  Use common sense, build multiple colonizers to start the game (2-3).  Use corvettes to kill siege, lrm, cap the planet, build turrets to kill the rest while you are working on the next planets.

Also don't waste money early on building cobalts for expansion purposes.  This is wrong.  Since you really only need to kill siege and lrm before capping planets, corvettes are much more efficient on a cost basis.

Also since some idiot said that the Kol was the "3rd most useful starting cap" I wanted to make sure I gave you the real list before you let crappy players pollute your newb brain.  The Kol is tied for the least useful capital ship starting as TEC, and one of the worst in the game as well.  It might be decent if you have a little bit of skill and experience, but never as a starting capital ship and never for newbs.  I have to stress this over and over again with baddies, just because it says 'battleship", it is not the best capital ship for killing enemies.  That would be the marza.

1. Akkan - colonize, ion bolt is great for FFing caps, TU good for outranging immobile starbases with ogrovs.  Armistice nice and makes your capital ship invulnerable if you are not retarded.

2. Marza - rad bomb good for targeting low health sbs, raze planet useful for adding siege power, IS ok but not my favorite, and MB is fantastic.

3. Corsev - disclaimer: need to be pretty skilled to use effectively, but can counter corvette spam (if i remember correctly, i never build these)

4. Sova - embargo is great against braindead players and all levels of AI, missile platforms provide free dps, and rapid manufacturing is awesome for pumping out a just-in-time fleet.

T5. Kol - only good for late game counter to mass strikecraft.  need more than one kol to enhance the flak burst ability.  by itself early game, you are doing it wrong.

T5. Dunov - i mean.... can be useful, but mostly for supporting other capital ships so it really isn't a good starter choice