InfiniteVoid

The ships the AI throws at you when you try to go on the offensive are pretty much always siege frigates. The AI had this behaviour for a long time already - if you throw a fleet at its planets, it may respond by throwing some siege frigates at your planets in order to try to get you to divert your forces from the offensive. If you also happen to have a sufficiently large force in the gravity well the sieges arrived in, the AI may decide not to bombard your planet and turn a

Trinity does give both you and the AI more options now... At the forefront would the be the usage of Starbases. At this point, the AI is not intelligent enough to devise a way to take down an SB except for throwing its entire attacking fleet at it (possibly minus siege frigates) in the hopes of overwhelming the SB. That being said, provided you can set one up and upgrade its HP to the max and support it with repair bays, it can stonewall many AI offensives. Alternatively, if

You didn't by chance have Cinematic Mode on? That removes all the 2D elements on the screen (icons, gravity wells, phase lanes, etc) for screenshot purposes.

Second-most favourite answer to this question: the Diplomacy Pirates, BEFORE the nerf to their current state. Favourite answer? Try looking for a post made by an Ironclad/Stardock employee.

The Sins maunal (as in the PDF file or the hard copy) does say the colony frigates carry colonial adminstrators for the TEC. I believe the Advent have something along the lines of religious figures trained for conversion of the local populace, and I can't remember what the Vasari have. Probably some sort of group trained for overseeing the enslavement of the local population.

My best guess is to move population around. Again, the reason why is up for interpretation.

Infrastructure in a general sense, perhaps? After all, a population won't grow if there isn't the appropriate infrastructure to support that growth (and if it does anyway, it will return back to that maximum by way of unsupported population dying or infrastructure failure).

Been up for a while, but old news can still be good news!

When watching a replay, either watch with the "All Visible" box checked off or watch from the viewpoint of the AI (click on the faction name above the speed setting until you're viewing as the AI). Otherwise all you see is what you would have seen yourself in-game. Probably one of the clues that you are falling behind is the rankings visible to the right of the portrait window on the bottom of the screen (when nothing is selected). The top number denotes your position in the Empi

Destroyed infrastructure? The actual in-game effect is faster regeneration of planet HP when not being bombarded.

Which map is this, by the way? If it is one of the small maps, you aren't given a lot of room to expand until you meet an AI player. Phase jump detection research is available to all three factions: TEC and Advent get them at Civilian Tiers 2 and 5, Vasari at Civilian 1, 4, and 8. First level of detection gives you the ability to see enemy vessels performing a phase jump towards one of your planets (notably, colony frigates do not generate a visual/audio warning, but are sti

Hm... first thing I notice is your mention of building a Kol with "five fighters". Last I checked, the Kol has a maximum strike craft squadron capacity of two, and that's at level 9 or 10. If you intended to say five strike craft (not squadrons), then that will make more sense, since the TEC Bombers come in squadrons of five (Fighters in squadrons of six). Kols don't get squadrons until level 2 or 3, but I notice you maxed out purchaseable levels anyway. Repair bays are a good de

Various people have found that the siege capitals (Revelation is considered the Advent siege capital, but its only siege ability is available at level 6, so this may not apply) with one point in their siege ability is roughly equivalent in terms of bombardment damage to three siege frigates. In other words, 42 supply of frigates can do approximately the same damage as 50 supply (1 level 1 capital) to a planet.

1 hr : 1 sec makes sense. As much as technology has probably developed, I highly doubt that anyone can load/unload trade vessels in a few seconds/minutes, but it shouldn't take days to do the same task.

If you find it, mouse over it in the Artifacts tab in the Research window. I can't remember the description off the top of my head, but it has something to do with managing and optimizing the administration of the populace of your planets, leading to increased tax income and population growth rate.

For the colony capital ships, you need to assign its first ability point into Colonize, otherwise the capital ship will not be able to colonize planets.

In-game descriptions and such describe it as a massive nuclear warhead propelled via a railgun apparatus. Given Extended Range Missiles is a requisite research subject, the warhead itself may have its own propellant supply to accelerate itself towards its target once it drops out of phase space. The warhead's kinetic energy alone is extremely destructive, but adding a nuclear payload to it just makes it absolutely devastating. Effects are known to reduce the overall habitability of a

You seem to like asking questions that don't have a definitive answer... My take is that the bombardment that destroyed said planetary administration and infrastructure would have killed large portions of the populace, any remaining survivors are forced to survive on the land.

Nukes more or less blow up/burn/pulverize anything that's within a pretty big area around the point of detonation. Kinetic Bolts are "cleaner" (no nuclear fallout or residual radiation) but without the same degree of heat damage in areas away from the point of impact. Siege Beams are precision weapons that could pick off small targets, but take a longer time to destroy a large area. Nukes probably would be best for destroying vast tracts of land (farmland perhaps?) as Siege Beams

Keep in mind you need to keep enough labs to keep the ability to build a cruiser - researching the prototype then scrapping a lab will not allow you to build the researched ship.

[quote who="Emperor_VI" reply="10" id="2823916"]I had no idea that there was a Aluxite Dynasty in the official lore. Where can I read about it? [/quote] To be more precise, the narrator states that in the opening cinematic for Vanilla Sins.

A little unfortunate that this doesn't follow the portion of the lore which stated that the Trader Emergency Coalition was not formed until the Aluxite Dynasty fell. Nonethess, keep it up!

An interesting read... but is this supposed to have any sort of relationship with Sins? This hasn't matched up with game lore so far... unless that is to come later.

Given a target the AI determines it can destroy easily, it will eventually send a fleet over that it thinks is sufficient to overcome the planetary defenses. What you can do is pull your fleet out one phase jump away to another one of your planets, but have them ready to jump back. Given time, the AI will send a scout in, see the fleet defending the planet is gone, and will try to take the planet by sending its fleet in. At that point, you can jump your own fleet back in to take on the AI fle

If you happen to read the Sins manual, their capital ships are very heavily loaded - the title of the most heavily populated ship in Sins belongs to the Jarrasul Evacuator, housing 15000 Vasari. The other four capitals have fewer crammed in, but are often over 10000 onboard. Judging from the huge numbers of Vasari onboard their capital ships, they're probably using them as vessels to move large portions of their remaining populace, and probably shuffle personnel around to establish co