MP seeking advice- replay

Unless his allies are feeding him, the easy way to counter that is to strike before he has it.  He needs to invest in 5 labs and lots of research to unlock these unit types, and you can easily be at his doorstep ripping up his empire before he even gets these units on the field, much less in significant numbers.  If he does get them, heavy cruisers are countered by bombers, so you'll need carriers.  You can also use light frigates to hunt down Hoshikos.

After reviewing the replay, I think your problems are very clear.  In chronological order:

1. You didn't scout or expand very efficiently, as a result you colonization speed was very slow.  You should have sent your capital ship straight to your second asteroid and left a few light frigates and a colony frigate to take the first one.  You spent too much time going back and forth.
2. You had a lot of cash that you allowed to build up rather than turn it into a fleet.  You needed to have been building those illuminators (and potentially other units as well) much earlier.
3. You needed to attack and claim that terran planet.  You had a profound military advantage at this point of the game and could have easily stolen it out from under him before he even had his first heavy cruiser on the field.
4. You failed to scout your opponent to find out what he was up to.  You would have seen all those labs and known to expect heavies.

After this point, I think your position was pretty well screwed, and I stopped watching.  While I might have missed something important, I think you really needed to press your advantage much earlier or at least scouted him to know what was coming.  You could have at very least put up a starbase if you'd been scouting and known what he was cooking.

Nope, you saw all you had to see... The rest was as predictable as a soap.  The only reason why I didn't get completely rolled is because my only other surviving human ally was getting three-banged and we just shut it down from there.

You probably noticed from the chat log that I was contemplating taking the terran but hesitated.  Fatal mistake, turned out.  I was actually in a pretty good position to only have to worry about that one opponent, disco-ing ally's not withstanding.

I did get the starbase up and running at the desert planet but he essentially ran around it and pressed towards the roid next to it.

Oh, amature question, but I can't figure it out... How do I keep ships that are built in a contested well from leaving the factory and heading straight into battle via auto-attack mode?  I was content to park my fleet next to the SB and wait for him to either attack or leave, but my newly built ships kept kamakazi running into his fleet and getting blowed up.

This is exactly what I am looking for.  Thank you!

You have 1 of 2 options.

Option 1: Select every frigate that comes out of your factory and set it to "Hold Position"

Option 2: Select a unit to designate as "flagship" by selecting the unit, going into the fleet menu and clicking "create fleet". I would recommend selecting a unit of the same type that you are producing. Then set the planets production waypoint on that flagship, and set the flagship to "hold position".  Created units automatically have "auto-join fleet" switched on, and will take on the same behavior of the flagship. Using fleets is tricky though as ships in the fleet will follow the flagship in formation and will often stop fighting to return to formation. You may select your Capital ship as flagship, which may be a good idea if you're producing different types of units, but I highly recommend disbanding any fleets you create before engaging enemy units, especially if your flagship is your cap ship (because your entire fleet will follow your cap ship if you need to retreat it, resulting in unnecessary losses and possibly losing your cap becuase your fleet isnt killing whats killing your cap).

Many folks are trying to get the Devs to have a menu to select what kind of behavior your ships take on when they are produced, but until such a time as they do create that menu, these are your only options.

The fatal mistake was going back for that ice, as it turns out.  What you need to do is scout, you need to know where your opponent is and how far away he is.  If you'd have sent a scout over there, you'd have known he had just taken the planet.  You could have literally walked in and started bombarding before he got any defenses up, and because your fleet was already on the field he'd have been forced to retreat and leave you the planet.

His economy was primarily neutral-extractor.  There were multiple uncolonizable gravity wells near his start position that were littered with extractors, and these are big money.  If you could have taken the terran, you could have gone one step further and started grabbing his neutrals, which would have absolutely devastated his income.

That's the normal response.  You have to be prepared for that, but on the upside he loses all antimatter and 20% of his remaining hull points by bypassing a starbase.  This is a huge blow to his fleet and leaves him very vulnerable to counter-attack.  You have to be ready to deliver that counter-attack, or the antimatter and health will just come right back.

After every ship is built you have to manually switch it to "hold position" behavior.  It's annoying, but you have to do it.

Krath here! while ago I got bored and put together some interesting replays, some skilled games, some 1v1s, a few good pugs and what not. The treasure trove of sins gaming experience is located here: http://www.filefront.com/14912939/Various%20Sins%20Replays.zip

Enjoy!

-Krath

It isn't so. Don't go fleetless, that's a very bad idea.

You can (and should) engage the enemy with your units fleeted up. This will have them distribute firepower optimally. What you do if the leader needs to flee is to simply select the unit, have it leave the fleet and you are free to retreat it. This can be done even quicker using keyboard shortcuts which by default would invole, d, f, and shift-R keys. A new fleet leader is then appointed.

It is, however, advisable not to simply chunk all units into one single fleet. Don't group scouts with capital ships unless there's a good reason or you won't be able to take advantage of the scout's speed or their mine clearing ability.