JamesP81

Reply to Build all your ships before you start to upgrade them. in Strategy Sins Forums

This is usually what I do. I find that I get better results from getting a bigger fleet earlier than getting a better, but small fleet early. I start pouring on the upgrades once I have a fairly large fleet (around 40 ships). As the OP pointed out, tech upgrades are worth more the bigger your fleet is. I also tend to go in for the hull, armor, and shield upgrades before the weapons upgrades. A weapon upgrade will only help certain ships; but hull, shield, and armor upgrades helps al

Reply to LRMS counter the wrong unit! in Strategy Sins Forums

I wouldn't lose any sleep if they removed siege from the game altogether. If I need to siege a planet down fast, I use a siege capital for a capital with a good anti planet ability (the evacuator's drain planet ability, for example, or the Marza's siege guns ability).

Reply to Sins of a Solar Empire v1.04 planned for this week in Sins News Sins Forums

Great work guys! And I'm in for the game night. Sounds like a blast.

Reply to Nerf Returning Armada in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]Advent and TEC don't have anything that even remotely compares to this[/quote] Advent might have a chance if they have a pair of lvl 6 Radiance's with cleansing brilliance and a progenitor with lvl 3 malice. Problem is, the Advent player has to play it perfect in every single engagement. If he screws up and loses once, he's done. The Vasari player will just get a new fleet again, and again, and again.

Reply to The Best Capital Ships in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]I have to give some kudos to the Marza. It has abilities which ignore damage mitigation such as radiation bomb and incindiary shells. Furthermore, those weapons do DoT and in the case of radiation bomb have AoE. IIRC, the incindiary shells and their DoT carry over to its standard armament,missles included. While I believe that the Kol is the better overall combat vessel, no other TEC cap ship can take down an enemy face to face faster than a Marza.[/quote] Agree completely. The

Reply to Advent Superweapon in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]Hopefully someone can confirm the exact percent bonus from the game files.[/quote] Actually used the love cannon a few days ago, and my info cards were telling me it's 15%. Not earth shattering, but a significant, worthwhile tactical advantage. The strategic economic effect takes a while to kick in, but can be devastating. Also, with appropriate tech, the love cannon will also give you vision of the enemy's systems, so it's a good intel tool. Much more subtle

Reply to Some Capital Ship abilities I don't understand how to use or why you'd use them in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]Kol Class ability Flak Burst: - It seems like this is very ineffective and not worth the antimatter...[/quote] At levels 1 and 2, it's not too impressive, but at level 3 it's darned good. I usually take it instead of gauss cannon since I rarely used the gauss cannon (I save the anti matter for adaptive forcefield, which is the Kol's best ability, IMO, besides Finest Hour). The trick is to wait to use it until lots of enemy strikecraft are within it's blast radius. I've wip

Reply to Refinery vs Trade center in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]So maybe I'm missing something and am fantastically wrong, but given you want to use up all your slots to the best benefit, I'd not bother researching refineries and add a ton of trade ports instead.[/quote] My experience is that this is sound advice.

Reply to N00b Question in Strategy Sins Forums

You have to use a colony frigate. Colony frigates have two abilities: one to colonize planets, the other to capture neutral extractors. Unfortunately, the colonize ability of the Progenitor won't work on neutral extractors. It has to be a colony frigate. Neutral extractors are nice because they aren't effected by allegiance and they also tend to have higher base resource extraction rates as compared to planetary extractors. Plus they also give you vision of the gravity well they're

Reply to Nerf Returning Armada in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]My English skills would be of a far lesser nature if I hadn't secluded myself from this socialized education and played a ton of English languaged games. Back in the good old days, I actually once wrote an essay for my English class using "u" instead of "you" throughout the entire essay... One of the reasons why I keep responding to this thread is to brush up on my English grammar, since I expect to begin studying a subject teached entirely in English. So if you've noticed any grammatical

It works even better than I thought it would.... in Strategy Sins Forums

Recently, playing against the AI as TEC, I found out that the Kol battleship's flak burst ability is far more potent than I'd thought. At level 1 it isn't so great, but at level 3 and fighting an enemy fleet that had 30-40 light carriers...it was obscene how many fighters the Kol could destroy with this ability if I waited to use it when a large number of strikecraft were in range. Destroying strikecraft gives your capitals a smidgen of experience. Using thi

Reply to Do not use repair abilities. in Strategy Sins Forums

I can see the point with TEC late game, but Advent Subjugators do more than just repair. Their buff can make a ship temporarily impervious to stunning attacks. Very useful if your opponent is Vasari and he's loading up on subverters.

Reply to The Best Capital Ships in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]in TEC my fav is Marza. Walk two lvl6 marzas into a pirate base, lure the pirates into range, and unleash dual missile barrage....goodbye pirates[/quote] I find that Kol / Dunov in concert is pretty tough. Get the Kol to lvl 6 and if they FF on it, fire up adaptive forcefield for damage reduction, finest hour for splash damage and hull repair. Use the Dunov's shield recharge on the Kol. I swear, a Kol with those buffs can absorb the firepower of an entire fleet. And while the

Reply to Strike craft newbie doubts... in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]Hopefully the strikecraft/flak balance can be shifted or changed somehow in the next few patches to make strikecraft more fruitfully used without being massively overpowered (which is what they would be, honestly, without a very strong flak counter and other mitigating factors).[/quote] I've been experimenting with a simple mod that changes the dynamic with strikecraft a bit. It increases the amount of squadrons a carrier cap has, especially at higher levels. It does not increa

Reply to Hosiko Counter? in Strategy Sins Forums

Two solutions: use focus firing to destroy them first, or use abilities that can reduce their anti matter. As mentioned by silverace, your two best choices there are cobalts or EMP charge from a Dunov. Personally, I prefer the EMP charge route, but cobalts are also effective at destroying support cruisers quickly, so that's definitely a viable counter to them.

Reply to Are there any plans to allow the player to modify the priority target list of the unit AI? in Strategy Sins Forums

I think this is a great idea. I've never seen it done in an RTS, but it'd be great if we could get it implemented with Sins.

Reply to Defense 101 in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]i don't want to derail, but i'd just like to point out that in WW2 defense was pretty weak compared to offense.[/quote] Indeed. In WW2, and every since then for that matter, defense has meant attacking first.

Reply to Need help with Fleet Capacity in Strategy Sins Forums

In the research window, there are several options on the left hand sidebar: Military Civilian, Fleet Logistics, and Artifacts. Fleet logistics has buttons that will allow you to research higher fleet capacity and slots for additional capital ships. Be careful, though. Once you start increasing your fleet capacity, you start incurring increasing maintenance costs for your fleet. At the beginning, you don't incur maintenance at all. At the first level of increased fleet capacity, you

Reply to What's the best counter to destra cruisers? in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]And if you're Vasari, don't forget the Subverter. Heavy Cruisers fleets tend to become very compact during a charge and at the start of battles, so they can make good targets for the Subverter's special ability.[/quote] On a related note, if your opponent is stunning your HC's with Subverters, then using the Dunov's EMP charge ability to remove the Subverters anti matter is absolutely priceless. In fact, I used to think that EMP charge wasn't that good until I realized I could e

Reply to Defense 101 in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]I play this game for about two weeks. I defend my planets with as many defense hangars as the planet can support. With the right tecnology planets can support up to six hangars. 4 frighter hangars and 2 bomber hangars after that I build one or two repair platforms. In addition to the structures I build up to 20 Illuminator ships, create a fleet with them (so that they stay close together), place them near the repair platforms and say them "only defend local area"...I am very succsessful w

Reply to What's the best counter to destra cruisers? in Strategy Sins Forums

Best counters that aren't also HC's is to use support ships to disable or otherwise reduce the effectiveness of his HC's, bombers, and capital ships. If you're TEC, the Kol battleship supported by some utility cruisers and a Dunov or two if you can afford them is potent against masses of HCs.

Reply to The Best Capital Ships in Strategy Sins Forums

[quote]The Kol is my hands down choice for a first Cap. The 800 point level 3 main gun is it's main selling point.[/quote] Actually, I find that I prefer adaptive forcefield. When the Kol's shields get low, fire up adaptive forcefield, if it's level 6 use Finest Hour, use an accompanying Dunov to recharge it's shields, and have your Cielos and Hoshikos use their hull repair and shield regen buffs on it. With this set up it's effectively invincible. It can soak up the entire enemy fle

Reply to Mod loading problems - any thoughts? in Sins Modding Sins Forums

I'll give that a try and see what happens. Thanks for the info.

Reply to Mod loading problems - any thoughts? in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Update. I made backup copies of the files I modified and copied my modded files into the original game directory and the modifications seem to work. I would hazard a guess that the issue has something to do with Windows permissions and security. I ran Sins as Administrator though, but that didn't seem to help.

Mod loading problems - any thoughts? in Sins Modding Sins Forums

I just whipped a very simple mod I wanted to try out. What I did is bumped up the number of command points on all the cruiser carriers from 1 to 2 and I bumped the number of initial command points for carrier caps to to 4 and upped the rate at which it gains more as it levels. However, when I try to load my hastily whipped up mod, I get a mini dump every single time. I was wondering if anyone has seen this and knows what to do about it.