xKinsumex

What do you mean by competitively?

Yeah I never played the diplomacy mod until now so those features are new to me, is that tree worth investing in?

Well like I said, my games have only gotten to the mid stages. I'm fond of playing the Huge map with usually 1 or more stars. I keep up in the early game for the most part but during the mid game I seem to fall behind while trying to fight one of them. For example I'll kill off one of the AI's and another AI or two will start hitting me and there won't be much I can do to stop it... am I just over extending?

The missiles for long range frigates are usually the only weapons I upgrade since they typically make up 50%+ of my early-mid game fleets. Hull and Armor are almost always upgraded first though. The way I figure it though, since they are my primary dps in terms of ships, grabbing their upgrades is a good idea right? Granted it slows getting my defensive upgrades a bit, but in AI games I don't really get attacked from multi-fronts early on, only if I'm quite unlucky. As such my fleet c

Again, I understand how TEC is meant to be played mid-late game. I'm fine with that. My issue is when to get what techs, I'm a bit stuck on it. I know end-game what techs I want to have but I don't know what my priority should be in terms of getting them.

What exactly does Ion Bolt do? Is it worth leveling over that passive range/damage bonus thing?

I'm having an issue with what to upgrade in terms of research early game. I get what you're talking about for the fleet splitting, but apparently I'm in a pocket in my current game and am fighting AI on both sides already. I'm number 1 for colonizations though as well as 1st in all resources. My fleet is lacking a bit and I just got my 2nd cap ship a bit late though, went for the carrier one since I like to stack bombers with my main army early on. I remember that the carrier

[quote who="Twilight_Storm" reply="10" id="3228660"]For Labs, I go early Civs only if I've scouted nearby Ice or Volcanic Planets that an enemy can reach quickly. If I see a choke-point, I'll rush it, build a couple defenses, then fill in my territory from there in both directions. (Colony Cap outside, Frig Fleet and colony Frig near homeworld. -Twi[/quote] So you're suggesting that I keep my Colony Cap ship separate from the rest of m

I tend to play on huge multi star maps. I'm a big fan of the last game stages more so then early. On smaller maps I just mass LRMs and zerg my opponents... xD

Yeah that makes sense then and probably will be what I'll try for a pure AI game on the highest difficulty. Can't see myself keeping up with them head to head, so turtling it up is the way I'll go :D As stated before though, I've always tended to play much safer than you are suggesting. I'll give your quick expansion idea a shot and see how it goes. As far as research goes, I'm not really sure on an optimal build there for TEC. As I said before I

Once upon a time when I first started Sins I sat down and played each race several times back to back. TEC just fit my play style so its what I ended up using. I get like that in most of my strategy games, I'll pick one race and stick to it. For example SC2 I have my protoss, Wc3 was my night elves, ect. So while I'm sure the other races have their strong suits I'm jst not interested in sitting down and having to relearn a new race. As for the TEC choices, I

I don't think I ever tech the military stats stuff early on when I play TEC. The way I used to play them was to pretty much turtle up and get a strong economy going before moving out and hitting my enemies. With that logic I guess Loyalists are my best bet right? Mid-Late game TEC I don't have an issue with, I still remember how to build and counter most army compositions. My issue is the early phases... According to what you've said I should start with the

How do I manage my income then? Technically until I level the planet develop thing I'm losing money on new ones right? So I don't see how I can afford to keep those leveling as well as maintaining a small fleet, building minor defenses at each planet, ect.

So I haven't really been keeping up with the Sin's expansions, but just recently got Rebellion. Went to start up a single player game to get a feel for all the new stuff and noticed there were 2 types of TEC now, the loyalists and the rebels... after searching around this section for a bit I decided to just make a post asking, what are the pros and cons for the two types? All I ever played in the original Sins was TEC and thats probably all I'm going to play in this one as well.</