[Sins of a Solar Empire] General Tips?

[nonsense]

Here's what I know so far:

1) Your first cap ship is free.
2) The Black Market is incredibly useful, as you'll pretty well always have a surfeit of one resource and a lack of another.
3) Upgrading Logistics Capability is extremely important, for Trade Ports and extra research stations.

Here's what I don't know so far:

1) Is there any reason to have more than one Trade Port in a sector?
2) Are there any particularly important research upgrades? (Volcanic and Ice Planet colonization are pretty obvious, if situational).
3) Are there any significant differences in the factions?
4) Does it make sense to wipe out the pirates, or should I just play the bounty game?
5) General strategic stuff.

[The Fallen]

1) Is there any reason to have more than one Trade Port in a sector?
2) Are there any particularly important research upgrades? (Volcanic and Ice Planet colonization are pretty obvious, if situational).
3) Are there any significant differences in the factions?
4) Does it make sense to wipe out the pirates, or should I just play the bounty game?
5) General strategic stuff.

1) I don't know.

2)Don't remember right now, but TEC had a lot of it's production abilities under research.

3)Each one has some special gimmick, for example the TEC are better industrialists than the others. With the upgrades you get more logistic and tactics points and more production speed than anyone else. Varyar are masters of pulse technology, and (at least in the unpatched version) that nifty portal that summons ships for you to use.

4)Either route has its benefits. Wiping the pirates is really hard, specially if the map you are playing has too many systems. But is doable. Playing the bounty game is easier, but in the end you would get tagged by pirates, no matter how well you do. So, at least try to destroy pirates in your system(s) to keep you safe.

5) Well, I'm no master of strategy myself. But, Sins is more about logistics than actual strategy or tactics (I mean, space battles are won by the tried and true method of "assemble the largest force you can and kick the enemy's ass") Also, take it easy: SoaSE pace has been described as "stately" for a reason, in quiet maps you can even switch between applications when you are playing.

[Polymath]

1) 1 per star system works fine. You have to have at least two to get any benefit since revenue is only generated by trips between ports.
2) Ship capacity is important, but don't upgrade faster than your economy can handle.
3) Their are some neat little differences, but it's usually who can bring the biggest number of ships to the fight. They religious/spritual faction has some propoganda benefits, but I've never seen a properly defended planet flip over just from that. Another faction can establish new hyperspace routes in their space, which can make defense and fleet transport much easier.
4) Destroying the pirates is an end game goal. A pirate homeworld can serve as a nice stop gap in the early game. Just remember to have decent fleet on your side of the wormhole to discourage the little blighters.
5) This is obvious, but pick a choke point and make a stand. Having at least two fleets is very useful to see-saw your opponent. Hangers are much superior to weapons platforms for defense.

[Ratman_tf]

Argh! I finally tried the demo for this last night, and loved it. When the demo timer ran out I was absorbed in the middle of a game.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/elsongs/pics/vader_no.jpg

Do want.

[nonsense]

How do the Vasari phase thingies work? I built two, one in my home system and one off near the frontier, in the hope that I could quickly ferry some ships there. Asking the ships to move from the first sector to the second didn't seem to automatically phase. Is there a hotkey command or a distance limitation or something? (It's in the same star system).

[Korhal_IV]

So, for someone who's reinstalled StarCraft lately, how much would you recommend this game? :o

[adamsmith]

I always build a capital shipyard and build whatever capital ship that faction has that also acts as a colony vessel. They're just so much tougher than their smaller counterparts, and you can level their crews up while you do your colonising.

I tend to research the long range attack craft pretty early too, and protect them with a screen of the basic frigates. Seems to work pretty well.

From my personal play:
The TEC are the quickest starters, and have the strongest long term economy, but their ships are weaker than the others.

The Vasari are a good generalist faction, and very hard to beat when they finally research the returning fleet tech.

The psychics (can't remember their name offhand) have very good ships but start slower; their economy is the weakest of the three as well (although their culture is powerful).

It's an awesome game!

[Melle]

How do the Vasari phase thingies work? I built two, one in my home system and one off near the frontier, in the hope that I could quickly ferry some ships there. Asking the ships to move from the first sector to the second didn't seem to automatically phase. Is there a hotkey command or a distance limitation or something? (It's in the same star system).

They don't teleport ships or anything, they just create a jump route that goes directly between the two planets in question (it doesn't show up on the map, so I can see how you get confused). Your ships AI will automatically make use of the new route when calculating the shortest jump path. One of the most powerful effects in the game.

If you reach the end of that path on the research tree, all jump gates get the ability to regularily summon free ships. With a moderately-sized empire you will never, ever go below ship cap again. It's sort of annoying if you need more capital ships, though.

[adamsmith]

If you reach the end of that path on the research tree, all jump gates get the ability to regularily summon free ships. With a moderately-sized empire you will never, ever go below ship cap again. It's sort of annoying if you need more capital ships, though.

This is a source of some contention within the Sins online community. Players have been commonly scuttling the free ships for cash and materials, which makes it even more powerful. Not sure if they are going to limit this in patches to come though...

[Melle]

Here's what I know so far:

1) Your first cap ship is free.
2) The Black Market is incredibly useful, as you'll pretty well always have a surfeit of one resource and a lack of another.
3) Upgrading Logistics Capability is extremely important, for Trade Ports and extra research stations.

Here's what I don't know so far:

1) Is there any reason to have more than one Trade Port in a sector?
2) Are there any particularly important research upgrades? (Volcanic and Ice Planet colonization are pretty obvious, if situational).
3) Are there any significant differences in the factions?
4) Does it make sense to wipe out the pirates, or should I just play the bounty game?
5) General strategic stuff.

1) No, a single station connects the planet to the "trade chain", more don't do anything.

2) Refineries, trade ports, hangar defenses and culture spreaders should be fairly obvious, in roughly that order of importance. For Vasari, beelining to the phase stabilizers is a good strategy if you face potential attack from multiple directions.
I generally don't bother with any military orbital structures aside from hangars and phase stabilizers.
Minor techs to get early would be Vasari construction cost reduction, and if you play against the computer, the Unity diplomacy penalty reducer (nothing like one of your allies giving you missions to attack your other allies, is there?)

For ships, I usually go long range - carriers - heavies and then backfill the other types when I have time.

3) Somewhat. I like Vasari for their jump technology and Unity for their ships. I don't really like TEC at all.

4) Don't bother them until you have a giant fleet, then judge whether they are being a greater threat/nuisance to you or your enemies, and act accordingly. For the first 50-75% of the game, you *will* play the bounty game.

Or just disable pirates at game start.

5) When you colonize a planet, max out its population upgrades ASAP, so it stops costing you money.

If you play against the computer, a strange oversight in its AI means that it will never attack resource astroids in a planet-less zone. Grab those all over the map for free income and visibility.

Ditto, if you get long-range jumps early on a multi-star map, you can send out a small colonizing force and poach entire star systems. The AI is usually to busy fighting itself in the core systems to do anything about it.

Get the first logistics capacity upgrade early, but make sure that you don't crash your economy by getting more too fast.

For capital ships I usually get the carrier first to help out my tiny starting fleet with the initial land-grab, then a planet bomber or two for fighting other factions. Planet-bombing frigates are really fragile, have high logistics cost and are always the highest priority target; I never bother with building them at all. (Note that all capital ships can bomb planets, but the specialists do it best)

[Tsed]

1) No, a single station connects the planet to the "trade chain", more don't do anything.

Unless this is a 1.05 change, this isn't true. So long as there is a trade port in another system, you get the same amount of income from the 2nd trade port in the system as you do the first. However, it's better to put them in other systems due to the bonus creds per jump.

[Breogan]

Anybody knows a good strategy guide around?

Cause I get more or less most the ideas of the game. But the AI kicks my sorry butt around every single time.

It always, always, always outproduces me.

[Tsed]

Anybody knows a good strategy guide around?

None out there, afaik... and if they are, they'll probably be outdated soon, with a big patch on the way (with new high-res textures and effects! :) ).

In any case, some pointers for SP:

Get the first planet population/tax upgrade asap. That means dipping into the black market immediately, but it's oh-so worth it.

Expand to adjacent asteroids first. You might be tempted to go for the Volcanic/Ice planets, but don't be. They take too much investment early on to pay off. Of course, Terran and Desert planets nearby are definite takers, but again, asteroids are much quicker/cheaper to get to the point that they're not running at a loss.

Take your time expanding. Keep in mind the development penalty. Until you get the population upgrades in place, extra colonies are costing you money. Asteroids will be in the black after one upgrade. Planets after ...2? (sorry, rusty).

Your Trade Port/Refinery strat varies a bit by race. As TEC, spam the hell out of Trade Ports. I wouldn't bother with refineries, as if you get the TEC's econ going, you can own the black market. Vasari, on the other hand, I play the opposite. Trade ports are high on the tech tree, and Vas gets resource bonuses as it is. Throw refineries around, and instead of buying to the market, you're a supplier. Advent... eh. I don't really have a feel for their econ, but their trade ports/refineries are a combined building. I tend to put most of them on trade and switch to refineries as needed.

Defenses -- don't bother with the early options. They aren't stopping anything and are poor investments compared to more ships. Hangars approach usefulness later on, but even then, only as support. Repair bays are a much better investment for planet defense.

Don't neglect the military tree! There's an awful lot of neat stuff on the Civil tree, which leads to a lot of players investing in it too heavily, when the military tree tends to be the more "bread and butter" of the two. Civ techs tend to be flashy, but Mil techs win the battles.

Uh... just the first things that come to mind :o

[nonsense]

Awesome! Thanks.

[Breogan]

Will have to try, but I dont see anything Im not trying to do already

Meaning your guide is very good but I suck :D

[Li of Orchid]

If you want to make capital ships and defense worth more in your game, make sure to set your fleet sizes for "small." That will de-emphasize the use of hordes of frigates and cruisers.

[Jeremy Cole]

I've only been playing a little while but the big lesson I've learned is that you will lose if you're forced to send your fleet scuttling from system to system chasing after enemy raiding fleets. As the larger maps tend to be built around chokepoints the success I've had tends to be based around only ensuring there is a well protected planet and decent sized fleet at every chokepoint, and only expanding when I've built a new fleet to move to the next chokepoint.

To keep myself busy while I steadily advance I have a raiding fleet specialising in planetary bombardment, that moves from system to system looking from something undefended to bomb the crap out of. I'm not sure it makes that much difference but it's something to do while I build new fleets.


Meanwhile, it seems the AI doesn't fight much amongst itself. I sent my raiding fleet to a planet yesterday and there were forces from four computer players just sitting around chilling, not fighting each other. They spend a pile of cash on bounties on each other, but the only one they ever want to fight is me.

[Melle]

Unless this is a 1.05 change, this isn't true. So long as there is a trade port in another system, you get the same amount of income from the 2nd trade port in the system as you do the first. However, it's better to put them in other systems due to the bonus creds per jump.

Huh. I guess I was misinformed.


Edit: The thing to note about refineries, that I don't think has been mentioned, is that they work not only on the system they are built in, but also the adjacent systems. Also, only 3 refineries can work on any single system. So if you have a planet linked to 3 other planets that all have refineries, it won't benefit from one of its own. But its neighbors might benefit from it, if they have less than 3 connections themselves.

Generally, I just say to hell with the fiddling and build one refinery per system.

[Li of Orchid]

Huh. I guess I was misinformed.


Edit: The thing to note about refineries, that I don't think has been mentioned, is that they work not only on the system they are built in, but also the adjacent systems. Also, only 3 refineries can work on any single system. So if you have a planet linked to 3 other planets that all have refineries, it won't benefit from one of its own. But its neighbors might benefit from it, if they have less than 3 connections themselves.

Generally, I just say to hell with the fiddling and build one refinery per system.

That's only for the TEC. The Advent (and I think the Vasari) refineries aren't as good.

I've seen some posts on the Sins forums to suggest that building Trade Ports are always superior to building refineries, unless you are truly, truly hard up for a particular kind of resource. Otherwise the extra money you get from having a lot of Trade Ports makes more than enough to buy an equivalent amount of resources from the black market. For what it's worth, after I have enough research bases on my planets, I build nothing but trade port structures on most planets, and a single culture structure. It seems to work pretty well... I'm usually rolling in cash.

I've found the AI often doesn't want to fight amongst each other. Unless you set the game to locked teams, most of the AIs will ally themselves against YOU. At least, that's what it seems like.

[Albert]

On Medium difficulty, at least, the enemy will go after my trade ships and refinery ships. Meanwhile, my many bomber squadrons are busy ass-raping the ships that are obsessed with commerce raiding. (After they take out any siege ships, that is.)

So, yeah. Put up a repair bay, then cluster everything around it.

My roommate really likes putting up a bunch of orbital cannons though, since you can have, what, 4?, for the slots that a hanger takes up.

One tip? If you're going to attack a pirate fleet, bring along a few of your capital ships to soak up the xp.

-Albert