For TEC I'd say on the miltary side.

Gain your lower ship types first...Javilin,Percherion,and garda.

Having numbers is what makes the reserch effective.

The lower armour upgrades and health are cheap. I ussually get em pretty quick.

Remember timing, smart scouting and proper map interpretiation are keys to winning.

The best way to get better is play online and lose. Watch the replay. You can see every thing your enemy does.

Ask questions peeps will ussually give advise.

Ships are only available if you have researched the appropriate prototype and have the requisite number of Military Labs. Flak and siege ships require 2 labs, heavy cruisers and offensive support cruisers (Cielo/Domina/Stilakus) require 5 labs. Depending on race, the carrier, long range frigate, and defensive support cruisers vary in position.

Upgrades to weapons, hull, shields, and the like only improve their respective stat for the applicable ships - they don't grant you access to them (there are however, 2 cases where this kind of research is required to gain access to prototypes - these are the Iconus Guardian, which requires 3 upgrades to shields, and the Hoshiko Robotics Cruiser, which requires Repair Platform and one level of Superior Repair Bots researched).

ou can do what lord_dark_cloud suggested. It is very advisable after all to build about 30 ships early on.

But with TEC you can also go capital ships first. This doesn't mean you shouldn't build any of the other ships. Start with one Akkan cruiser and two scouts. Discover the next few asteroids/planets and conquer one or two asteroids first, not the planets yet. Get one military lab for each cap ship. Get to lvl 3 in the officer's tree so you can have four caps. Delete your scouts. Build either a Dunov if the enemy is far away and the rebels are not too massive or a Kol/Sova if you need more firepower first. It is important that you build all of the 3-4 ships first, then upgrade them first to lvl 3, then get a repair station or two at a choke point or your homeworld immediately. THEN and only THEN go for the armor, hull, shield and weapons upgrades in the military tree.

In case you get rushed (which will be very likely in MP), show the intruders the combined power of 3-4 capital ships lvl 3. You will bust 20 assailants easily even if they force fire because you literally tear their armor apart. If one of your roids gets hurt by enemy planet bombers, send out ONE cap-ship (esp. the carrier), it will certainly be a bluff to draw your main force away. With 3 fighter squadrons they will get eaten up pretty soon. For the enemy LRM/LRT-ships, MOVE through them, so they get a to-hit penalty while you do not because of the akkans ability

In case the enemy shows up with bomber carriers, OUCH. But do not despair. Move inside their combat frame to improve your firepower. You should build about 10-15 light frigates at this point. The enemy will certainly try to down one of your caps by bombing while your light frigates have anti-heavy-armor to counter the carriers.

From then on, you have two options: building 3 Kols and 1-2 Marzas to concentrate on the cap-ship line (which can be a very hard boost against your oponent) or building up a more diversified fleet with carriers, gardas, etc.

Do not worry to colonize one of the nearby planets. But don't do more with the cap-ship strat because you can't disperse your cap ships too much or they will lose their synergies. After all, this game is not Sim City

The downside of course is a lack in initial aggression on maps with more than one player. Yet you get lots of cap-ship experience early on. Who needs a lvl 8 Progenitor early on when it encounter 3,4 or even more lvl 3-5 cap ships. You see that flash of light, yes? ^^

Later on you will have lots of cap ships with lvl 6 + which become quite a nuisance to the enemy if microed correctly. Mind that you are king in your own territory with lots of repair bays and fighter hangars.

As I posted elsewhere, this strat helps very well to combat any AI of any lvl, but maybe that is also map dependent.

Can you get the computer to Auto-research for you then? (aka the auto-choose abilities on Cap ships by right-clicking)

Cheers

8R

What I mean't was how do you get the computer to Auto-Research your tech tree? What do you click?

If its hilighted it means you CAN research it. If it has a border around it with the bottom right corner cut off, it HAS BEEN researched. The background is two different colors. The brighter one means you have enough research stations built/under construction to research these items, the darker color (always to the right of the lighter one) means you need research stations to research these items (note that the ones you cannot research for any reason are greyed out)

Each level is split into multiple tiers. Example: Javelis Prototype has 1 tier. Impact Analasys has two tiers (each providing a bonus), and Insudtrial Juggernought has three tiers (I think) with each providing a bonus.

First off, there is a pause button. Look to the upper right of your keyboard. It's mapped to the button that says "pause." I'm not being a smartass. It's just that a lot of the TB crowd (I'm one of them) tends to fail to notice this. I've seen several reviews bagging on the real-time factor not allowing them to stop and think.

Research depends a lot on environment. In a close map like point blank you can't afford to go too long without upgrading for war. On a huge map with few opponents, you're screwing yourself if you don't boost your economy ASAP. That said, hit pause and examine your tech tree closely. Come up with a plan with one or two ship types to make into your early game backbone and try to match them such that their weapons all benefit from the same set of upgrades. All the races' long range frigates, for instance, have the same weapon as their bomber strike craft.

Beyond that, armor and structure help just about everything for combat. For economy boost the collection of whatever resource you have in greatest supply first (you can sell off the excess and buy the other one through the black market. Once you have 3-5+ planets, try to get trade ports and culture centers up ASAP unless you're playing Vasari who need more labs.

It also helps in a big way to build the right cap ship right away (first one out of the factory is free if you hadn't noticed yet). People are free to argue but I don't think you can go wrong with the Dunov (shield regeneration and EMP) for TEC, the Mothership for Advent (colonize, mass shield regen), and Evacuator for the Vasari (Colonize and that nanite attack which drops armor). The latter two can colonize which is handy since colony frigates run out of antimatter quickly and cost more crystal than you want to spend early in the game and the cap ship colonize abilities add temporary bonuses to the colonies they build which can help get them off the ground quickly.

Hi all,

Thanks for the thoughtful posts!

I am a TB person, and I had no clue at all there was a Pause feature. I read the manual a few times looking for it and saw nothing (but may have missed it). This will help a LOT!

As to auto research, in my first game on a medium map (4 opponents) I built at least one civ and mil research base at each planet and had lots of research. Eventually almost the entire tech tree was lit up so I just assumed the techs were researched. I had tons of money, mins, and crystal by mid game so that was not a limitation. So, having the tech lit up does NOT mean it is researched? I did notice that I had to click on it again to unlock some later techs, though. At least now I have a better idea how the system works.

It did take me a while to figure out how to increase my fleet limits and how to get more cap ship crews/captains. I got frustrated when the AIs were showing up with several cap ships, and my poor Kol and basic frigates (since I didn't know how to get better frigates, much less cruisers) had very hard fights on their hands. Building dozens of orbital platforms in key systems/choke points helped, of course - I played creeping crud, since once I advanced in a system was MINE.

I think my next task is to map out a few tech strategies, keying in on ships I want and needed eco upgrades.

Thanks again!

HydroAC

BTW - whenever I post I get black font on a black screen adn nothing shows up. Do I really have to change the font type to white (or as in the case of my first post, blue)? That seems a bit odd - obviously I'm missing something.

Ok Hydro, here's the scoop:

There is no auto-reserach. Deciding which techologies to reserach and when to get them is a big portion of the game, you must learn how to do it yourself. For every research center you build, it will highlight one teir of the appropriate tech (civillian or military, depending upon the type of station you built). That does NOT mean you have those techs, it just means you have the ability to reserach them. You then must spend money and click on the specific technology you want to have before it will research. After clicking you will see the progress bar on the button slowly go by, once it finishes you will have that technology. Some technologies will have 2 or 3 levels to them, you can tell when there is a number (1, 2 or 3) in the corner of the icon. To upgrade it to the second level, just click it again. To reserach teir 2 technologies, you will need to build a second reserach center of the appropriate type, for teir 3 you'll need 3, and so on.

Military tech grants you technology to build new ships types and ship upgrades. Civilian tech grants you the ability to colonize new types of planets and increases your mining capabilities along with some other goodies.

I hope this helps.

Must play more mp online games and then watch replay...After uv had ur ass handed to u a bunch of times and u see how it was done, ul get better.............and ask questions when u play...most r pretty cool.

It depends. On big maps go for Trade Ports and econ techs early. If its a small map, dont tech much. Focus on making ships and if you must tech, tech on ship upgrades. The only tech that is absolutly vital is Vasari's Phase Missiles, since each 5% increase in phasing is equivilant to a 8% damage bonus, which is huge considering there are 6 tiers.

Why doesn't anyone like the Akkan as the free TEC Cap ship? 

Wow!  Pretty informative post.  Thanks.  The reason I asked is because until last night I just had the demo and only played TEC.  I liked the flexibility of having a cap ship that could colonize as well as Ion Bolt.  Sometimes I run two of them around together with a bunch of Cobalts and the Ion Bolt on both caps, when upgraded, makes it easy to take out the enemies cap ships when encountered.

I'm just now starting the Vasari to see what they can do.  I've heard from several people, as well as read on these boards that the Advent are probably the all-around best balanced race to use so I wanted to play them last.  I wanted to get a feel of the other two races first.  I haven't played multi-player yet, so my SP strategies will be null I know once I get to MP.  Humans are ALWAYS better opponents than AI.  I might need to get a new computer though, because I played a 50 planet campaign and about 45 minutes in, it was pretty lagged, even with everything set to "Minimum".  Heh heh, I've got a pretty decent internet connection, but the bottleneck is my motherboard/RAM.  Computer is about 6-7 years old.  (Ancient in computerese).   LOL