I'm new to this game and I'm finding this to be a little tough to get into...

When you start your game, (new game), there is a button for game options.  There you will find quick start, fast income, fast build speed, etc.  Also, if URa newb, turn off pirates until you get the hang of the game.  Pick a small system and lock your ally(s) in to start off.  And, you can make your enemies (and ally's) dumber or smarter, too.  TEC will start faster with more money, but peak early.  There are a number of threads (search strategy) outlining how to play each faction and how to use the entrenchment upgrades.  Best thing to do is play.....play........play.  This game will suck a lot of hours out of your social life, if you have one to begin with, that is .

pek

When starting out load up a huge random map with teams and close one slot on the enemy team. You should end up with a game of 5vs4. Your 4 allies will be an even match for the enemy team. This allows you to sit and practice your skills. You can help your team when you feel up to it and if you make a mistake they can cover for you.

This is the way I learned and it only took me 3 days or so to get into the swing of things.

Thanks for the replys so far guys/gals.

Does anyone have a reply for #'s 2-4?

You should not be having income problems at all unless you are doing something wrong.  I'm guessing that you are forgetting to upgrade your planets once you colonize them to take them out of the red?  An asteroid requires 1 upgrade to take it out of the red - all others 2.  Don't forget to build your mines for minerals too.

-to make the opening more fun, don't waste your income in fortifications and expand straight to your ennemy. Usually, i am attacking the ennemy in less than thirty minutes and i am sure i am kinda slow compared to really skilled players here. By the way, put everything to fast in the game options. Trust me, once you have tried fast speed, you will never go back to normal or slow.

-The differences between the three races is a fairly large subject.

To summarry, TEC are good in a the beginning of a game, thanks to good eco and cheap LongRang Missile unit and can become petty though once armor upgrades are researched as hoshikos cruisers prevent your fleet form dying. For capital ships, the kol is strong and the marza is incredibly powerful thanks to the mighty missile barrage (ability level 6) and the dunov is great too.

The advent, well, they have a hard time at the beginning with a fragile disciple vessel and the illuminator vessel needing 3 military labs but when they have started, they are incredibly powerful. All their capital ships can combine their abilities to make great combos, they have a really powerful support cruiser, the guardian. Combined with the halcyon cruiser that reduces the cooldown of ALL of their weapons by up to 22% and the mothership that regenerate shield, well, they can get through a twice bigger fleet if they are used skillfully. Really freaking firepower.

And then the vasari. They have good first units to begin with : the assaillant can be researched with only ONE military lab and is a pretty good unit. Later in the game, they can have a battle-winning unit, a cruiser that disables your fregates and your cruiser : get 10 of them and you can disable a whole fleet. They have other useful toys like phase gate but they are pretty expensive. To summarize, they deal less damage than the other two (particulary the advent) they are more about some tactical tricks. By the way, their mothership is their greatest capital as it can eat other Capital Ships with nano disassemblor and razing planets with its ultimate ability as well as colonizating.

Ah, i almost forgot, vasari scout can take control of neutral extractor around gas giant or in some asteroïd belt! It is just great ! (huge boost to your economy, the neutrals, check them out)

I advice you to start with the TEc, then going advent and finishing with vasari as they are the more difficult to masterize, at least for me (but vasari mothership and assaillant rush do not need to be a genius).

Yeah I would also reccomend TEC for learning. TEC units have very distinct roles which helps when learning how different ship types interact. Advent units are very heavy on micromanagement and Vasari units have exotic abilities that need a lot of work to figure out.

Thanks for the new replies people!  

Although, I'm still looking for the Superweapon replays and the mods for the ships.

I agree with Tamren, i have been playing for months and months and till now, i am still playing TEC trying to explore the best way to play

Till now, how u guys really play Advert and Vasari so well....

I only recently got this game and im finding there are just a huge number of tactics,

Personally i hate to spread a bit and then hunker down and amass an army, just reminds me of age of empires,

I've found its fine to use fleets not containing capital ships early on, also its fine to lose planets, by this i mean early on strike out, colonise for mines, and basically farm them and use this little boost to build your interior so when the enemy does come he can take your shitty buffer zone while you fall back and plan your master stroke form your empire proper. Obviously this depends on your opponent and your playing race and the map size.

With this game i also really feel their is big distinction between your tactics and your overall strategy, just love this game.

Not if they have fighters. First thing to go is subverters to my ships can function!!!

I dunno about any vids of what each superweapon does, but I can give you a rundown of each. And if that fails you, you can always play a large single star map against one easy enemy to test it out.

TEC Novalith Cannon: the most straightforward of the three, it's a big bomb shooting cannon. It hits planets for damage, and more than 3 in your empire can focus fire any planet. It's got it's uses, namely to break choke points, but against a good opponent it's pretty much negated, as they will learn to keep colonize frigates near. Still, hitting one then moving on is a decent way of winning a resource war if you fould yoursel losing it (which, granted, as TEC you shouldn't.)

Bottom line: Planet shooting gun, fires even across star systems (but slow), can be nice to help give you an advantage in late game stalemates.

Advent Deliverance Engine: In essence, a bi gun that shoots culture, it fires a "signal", and when that hits a planet, enemy culture disappears, and friendly culture spreads from there for awhile. This thing really plays off being an advent, if you neglect culture before this point, it can be an easy way to get back in the game. If you haven't, it can be an easy way to reduce hostile culture before or after attacking a planet (before gives you a slight culture bonus, which might fade, but's still nice; after speeds up the process as you don't wait as long for culture to spread, and gives you a slight boost.) It's nice to have one, if you can afford it, and certainly helps in multiplayer, but not vital to winning as Advent.

Bottom line: Speeds up a game you've already won, and adds nice bonuses to areas for you, but if you have the creds to spare, probably best to just build a few more ships.

Vasari (Returning Armada?): I don't hardly play Vasari, though they're great fun, so I don't know much about their tech tree, but I'm assuming the ultimate weapon of theirs is RA. You get out what you put into RA, again, it's a very good mirror to what a Vasari empire should be, full of phase gates. If you've a large empire with many phase gates, this is the key to "not losing" I've yet to see a player in an evenly matched game lose once they've a good RA groove going.

Bottom Line: in smaller maps it's not necessary but nice. In larger maps, you've already got the infrastructure there, just buy it, and you're not going down without a fight.

So, I guess superweapons are exactly what they imply, powerful weapons that were primarily designed to break stalemates and decide a winner.

vasari superweapon is kostura cannon, temporarily disables and damages everything in orbit except sb's and turns the planet into a temporary phase stabilizer.

There are a lot of good tips here, but one of them I don't completely agree with giving that you're new and just learning.

If you turn the game speeds on fast, it's going to amplify any pauses or mistakes you make.  If you're used to clickfesty games like Starcraft etc, yes this is a slower paced game, absolutely.  It sort of falls in between RTS's and 4x type games, hard to properly compare it to them as a result.  But if you're still trying to figure yourself out, keep in mind the computer doesn't have pauses or have to click around figuring itself out, and it's only going to allow it to do more against you while you are doing these things.  Plus in single player you can change the game speed on the fly with the keyboard. I know each player to their own etc... but generally I find the "has to be fast speed or I won't play" types are the first ones to drop out of a game if something doesn't go their way, or they're forced to use any amount of patience in playing... it's not a desirable trait.  Honestly if a player has so little focus they can't wait 5 minutes in a game lobby for players to join before flipping out and leaving, neither I nor anyone I play with wants them in our games.  I'd suggest slowing it down while you plot your moves, then speeding it up for the times you're 'waiting' for things to happen; but you can't do this in multiplayer so at best it's a crutch.  Game length issues; play smaller maps.

For good tips and strats, review the  strategies forum and read everything you can, especially on the race that you prefer...you can learn a lot from the seasoned players on here.

All 3 factions are very unique and have their own styles of play.  TEC are more economy based, Advent are more culture based, and Vasari are more "Masters of Phase Space."  The only way to find which suits you the best is to play a game with each faction and find the one that you like and can see yourself being.  For me I played the TEC and Advent once and then played the Vasari and feel in love with them.

Check the replays section on this site under the tab for downloads...watch the replay all the way through and you should see some superweapons working.

This is basically dependent on what type of game you are planning on being a part of.  Basically you want to play as many different types of people that you can right now to learn different strats...and record all of your games and re-watch them and watch how the different players run their game...you will learn alot that way.

These I don't know...the only mods I play with are the SinsPlus and Bailknights mod.  Bailknights is a purely graphical enhancement mod and SinsPlus is a mod that adds a whole bunch more planet types to the game.

Hope this helps you out some.

And yes, this is a very slow-paced game.  It is definitely not like other fast paced RTS games like DoW or CoH.  This is alot of the appeal to this game.

For me, the really slow pace is a huge plus.  It feels more turn based, which is exactly what I want...

I'd be happy to give you a multiplayer primer/introduction/tour. Send me a Private Message or add me on Ironclad Online:

CommanderAdama

I'm on quite often (addict).

That and the hot Advent chicks.

Only you Anny...only you...<sigh>...you do make a pretty good point tho', (some of them are pretty hot...till they bring out the torches and pitchforks)  LMAO

The AI doesn't build superweapons, and typically multiplayer games rarely reach this stage.  Either someone wins before the game reaches this point, or someone has to quit because the game's taking too long. 

The superweapons aren't meant to be instant game-winners, they're supposed to be stalemate-breakers.  They exist to give you an offensive edge to make a decisive push into enemy territory.

O.K., I've read a bunch of strategy guides/tips, looked over the mod section and whatnot; and I've gotta say that this is really shaping up to be my favorite strategy game EVER!

I've found a vid on the Novalith cannon on youtube, just type in "Sins of a Solar Empire-the Nuke" (for some reason, I can't paste in the web address...)   

I found that if I make a map with no enemies, the neutral colonies are still there to test stuff out on.

2 questions (I'm asking because I can't get on until tomorrow because of college, or else I'd try this out myself):

1. Can you go to other stars from the planet border or just the centeral star (because of the antimatter costs)?

2. Does the phase stabilizer go to different systems or just their own system?

Anyways, thanks for all of the help, you guys/gals are realy nice.  

1) just the central star

2) I don't know I never played the ugly Vasari much because i am too fond of the mighty and powerful Unity of the Advent

nope, phase stabilizers only make paths within their own star system.

What is the weapon that the Vasarri use on their capitals to bombard planets (because the frigates use kinetic bolts)?

This may be a bit off topic, but what do you guys think will be the startegy of the race that's hunting the Vasarri down?  VERY heavy fighter/bomber use?  Defensive structures? Maybe their super weapon blows up the enemy's planet (at the expense of the super weapon so you'd have to build a new one.

I'm still in lust with the voice of the domina subjugator.  Of course, the name goes with the voice, now that I reflect on it.  Regardless, I play the Advent a lot just so I can hear her voice.

pek

The vasari use energy lances (BIG LASERS) to bombard a planet on both their frigates and caps. i think advent are the ones that use the kinetic bolts, while the TEC use nukes.