the "pros" play?

Generally all settings to fast, teams locked and no pirates. Generally normal size fleets, but sometimes someone sets large.

Yeah..

Pretty much Random Single Star  (Multi Star can take a long time)

Fast Everything

No Pirates

Normal Fleet Size  (Because my Computer is old and starts to get laggy, not because it matters)

Note that the Vassari get a tech that lets them get a % boost on fleet supply. So technically if playing large they would get a larger %, there by able to field a larger force.

However this assume you have enough resources etc...

ok, I get that you don't want to have a game take an eternity.  I also want to know a couple more things...do you play on any specific scenarios and why/how much micro would you say is important?  (I ask because it seems that the game is designed that you can get by with a lack of micro, but a little always helps).

The more micro you can do, the better....the best players have a considerable amount of micro while running their little space empire, and it makes a difference.  You don't have to micro though...it is like the cherry on top.

you mean the micro for (say for example) building more ships for the ones you lost and sending them to the fight and stuff like that?  I know that's a good key.  However, I was talking more along the lines of using ship abilites manually, moving your fleet, telling when to attack what...the list goes on.

That is what I'm talking about too...the best players are doing that while bouncing back and forth to control making more and sending in reinforcements.

building more ships and sending them in isnt really micro, its part of basic play. micro consists of not letting missle ships waste shots, making proper rally points, manuevering caps, forcing ur sc to not waste movements, using scouts properly, managing colo/eco/and a rush at the same time, etc.

at the higher levels of players and later areas of the games micro becomes essential and also less effective at the same time if u can believe it. proper micro early game will allow ur 12 kanraks to kill his 19 javelins and win the rush. proper micro at the higher levels gets very complicated if ur not practiced at it. managing scouts while u beef up or econ and colo further, monitor any change in culture on ur frontier worlds, building repair bays on worlds secondary to the fight, micro'n ur SC and lrfs while manuevering ur carriers away from harm, positioning/protecting/properly casting ur support ships, research, etc. u get the idea it gets incredibly in depth unless ur used to it. all of those things sound fairly simple u may think u are doing it but if ur nose isnt on the monitor and ur not clicking 1000 times a minute then u are not micro'n properly. also if u are fighting on multiple fronts u have to make certain micro sacrifices and thats about as important as what u actually do micro. neway, its more difficult but its what really seperates the players of the game.

-bronze

I will clarify, skilled players are doing micro AND managing to find time to run their empire.  But yes, they are doing micro.

Also, honorable mention to building placement.  I never have auto-place turned on.

Also, due to the amount carriers are used now, know how to micro anti-SC and anti-carrier counters/abilites is wise.  Also know how to micro your own SC is crucial.

+1 agree on both points.

the best way to defend a system is with 2 overlapping repair bays and 1 or 2 frigate factories in the overlap range. putting the structures on the right side of the grav well can be very important as well. sometimes the buildings should be as close to the hostile jump in point as possible as your ships can ambush as enemies jump in (this is a good defense when you expect to be attacked by carriers). sometimes the buildings should be on the far side of the well away from hostile jump in points so it takes longer for his ships to reach firing positions and longer for his ships to withdraw out of the grav well if he wants to retreat (this is a good defense against direct firing ships like LRF and HC).

in any case you'll want to micro your ships to fight in the repair radius, sometimes the auto-ai gets stupid and chases enemies out of the defense zone you've set up. don't let it do that. also get bonus points for being able to trick enemy ships auto-ai to chase your own ships through a defended zone. they'll get chewed up by potshots from turrets or LRFs as they run through your zone. enemy ships are susceptible to this tactic if they aren't being carefully microed by their controlling player.

the second point about microing anti SC abilities doesn't need much explanation. its just good practice in general. don't forget to leave anti-matter open for them as well, you may have to switch the other abilities on a ship off of full auto-cast to prevent them from draining the batteries before you've had a chance to use the anti-SC ability. this happens all the time with Kol's which will tend to spam Gauss Gun or Reactive Shield until they're out of AM. i keep my Kols with nothing on autocast and time the Flak Bursts and Shield activations manually. it makes a huge difference. the counter-point to this would be the TK Push on the Halcyon. That one is actually pretty safe to leave on auto-cast as it has a pretty low cost (and the Halcyon has alot of AM) and more importantly its the only ability on the ship that actually costs AM.

To be honest, the amount of micro needed to be "good" at this game turns me off.  If I wanted to play an arcade game, I'd go play pacman or something.  I think it was a mistake for the developers to even allow micro with certain ships like strikecraft.

 You're kidding right?  Please tell me you're kidding.

In all honestly, you can be decent at this game and never micro anything.  However, something as simple as jumping your cap ship in first, and THEN your 10 LRMs can make or break getting that 2 bar terran.  If you want a "fire and forget" game, I can write you a macro that will order up everything you need.  Than all you need to do is watch the screen while the computer runs the simulation.

really? i mean, this game is pretty low on the micro scale compared to other RTS games i've played. Company of Heroes has MUCH more micro (and much less macro, that game is not very big on eco and base building is less involved than most games). Warcraft 3 has a HUGENORMOUS amount of micro in it. Now that's a game where you can legitimately say its possible to get intimidated by the micro. Warcraft 3 soldiers die REALLY fast against a skilled player who focus fires correctly. You need twitch level reflexes just to make your dinky little Shamans or Mages or whatever actually succesfully cast their 1 spell before getting greased. Now THAT's micro.

Sins micro is tame in my opinion. Its one of the reasons I like the game so much. Ships live a long time. Moving a fleet around a system takes a long time so retreat is meaningful and setting up an efficient reinforcement train (both of those are macro-management, not micro-management) is meaningful. Sins is one of the MOST macro emphasized RTS games I've ever played.