I'm missing Something Here (Losing on Easy)

what version you playing on?

your trade port usage is most likely incorrect.  you want to make the the farthest route possible between your two furthest trade ports.   that means it may even be a benifit to not have trade ports on certain planets to force your trade chain to be longer.  and you can and should build more.   no reason at all to stop at one per well.  on the planets with trade bonuses, you should be building 5 or more, once you get the +logistics research.

and... the mid and higher tier mining boosts are genarally not worth the money... expecially when your only on 6 wells.

thats economics...

as far as battles... did your enemy have subverters or overseers?  those support cruisers are fantastic, and you need to take those out first....

as well, you should have a decent quantity of support cruisers your self, the command frigs are not that hot, but you need lots of hohos.  i am sure you had 3-4 repair bays as well? repair bays + hohos = 60 hp healed per second.   not easy to crack.

you should post a replay of your game so we can see what you are/were up against.

 Id love to post a replay showing you how to expand... give me a sec.

file uploaded: http://www.mediafire.com/?8vnpa51a6ai6nnq

you will want to place this here: C:\Users\<username>l\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Record-MultiPlayer

and then you can watch it under an option in the single player menue.

as you can see, i skipped over 2 volcanics to colonize a ice near my oppoenet.... it didnt work out so well, but as you can see, i initially skipped over the tougher planets, and colonized them in later, and sent colony frigs to other astriods out in the system.  dont forget the neutrals, they are important to grab as well.

I was playing the original game, even though I have the trinity set. I played Entrenchment just now, and it was a cakewalk! Therte's quite a difference in the AI, huh? I focused on building my fleet more this time, and fewer static defenses. I researched economy later, and better frigates/cruisers sooner.

or your just learning.  I lost my first game as well... it was a ffa between me and 3 easy Ais. haha.

no point in really ever playing origional or entrenchment if you have trinity, diplomacy has bug fixes, better ai, and stuff that entrench and vanilla dont have, while, ofcourse, including all the stuff from entrenchment.

you should still watch that replay, itll give you an idea on how the ultimate sins goes: multiplayer.

more like they don't know how to handle star bases

You have to know all the races ships and what they do. For the Vasari kill the assailant and carrier cruisers firsts. dont attack the capital ships cos those 2 type of ships will tare your fleet to pieces with phase missiles that bypass shields. Once u kill em u can win.  

Dont forget to have the rapair cruiser: Hoshiko cos it uses drones to repair other ships and u can upgrade it to have demolition bots to attack enemy ships. Remember know your ships first.

In addition to everything else that has been correctly pointed out, You may want to rethink your choice of Cap ships. If you have 4 Caps with TEC, you should probably have 2 Sova's, 1 Marza & 1 Akkan.

Instinctively its natural to think, "The Kol is the Battleship so I should get that first!" Sadly this is not the case. I like to open with 1 Akkan & as quickly as possible a Sova to back it up. If you use those 2 plus 10 or so scout frigs, you should be able to clear most neutral systems with ease. Just remember to scout ahead and if you are going to a system with Kodiak's, make sure the Sova has at least 1 bomber squadron as this will greatly help against HC's.

As far as upgrades, a few of the basic Laser, Armor & Hull upgrades can give TEC a quick military boost for a relatively low cost. Realistically speaking though, the quickest upgrades that can have a dramatic impact on TEC early game are the Repair chains ie Repair Platform-Superior Repair Bots-Hoshiko.

Or you could go with pure win and 1 Akkan and 15 Dunvos.

Just saying.

I never thought I would hear the words "pure win" and "15 dunovs" in the same sentence...

man are you kidding? 15 donovs means like crazy shit awesome!

your enemies will have no shields! no strike craft! no antimatter! and you will be all like, this is almost as good as having 45 overseers!

Really?

Oh my.

TEC Commanders these days....think Dunvo's are only good for Sheild Restore. Tisk Tisk.

You tell him Leadhead....you tell him! 

I am a TEC Commander who know what the Dunov can do, I simply don't use them that much, and instead primarily use the Sova and the Akkan.

That sounds great in Theory but how many times will you really have that many Dunovs?

All the time.

I only use Akkans and Dunovs.

Pb is being sarcastic.  Look at his last comment: "this is almost as good as having 45 overseers!"

45 Overseers is a fraction of the expenditure of 15 Dunovs, and ironically they're much better at keeping units alive than those Dunovs using shield restore. 

Anyways, the bottom line is that if you go for 15 Dunovs, I can counter that with 100 squads of bombers (you won't survive long enough to use magnetism) or 75 heavy cruisers or 180 LRMs or any other combination of brute force frigate power.  Those Dunovs will die because my firepower is several orders of magnitude higher than your's.

The Dunov has some great abilities, EMP being the strongest of the bunch, but on their own they just don't carry this ship.  Currently, I regard the Dunov as the weakest capital ship in the game. 

Oh Darvin buddy, you cant just build only Dunov's 

But the game does give you 16 cap to use...

And besides we are talking Comp stomp not pew pew PvP. 

Bombers indeed.

Overseers are disgustingly good: 250 instant hull regeneration with an addition of +2 armor is not a joke.  

Dunovs are silly.. they are only effective against advent/tec players . Vasari crush them with phase missile bombers. 

That is why the Dunov is a support ship, not a frontline warship; not that the Kol is much better, because she drains AM faster than Milky Way Replicators can get out of a time dilation field by putting it in reverse.

You can do pretty much anything and pull out ahead in a comp stomp.  Doesn't make it a good strategy.

I'm well aware we're not talking about "only" 15 Dunovs.  Rather, I'm talking about what you could have instead of 15 Dunovs.  The bottom line is that if you invested those kinds of resources into strike craft or frigate power, you'd utterly steamroll the AI.

Their shield regeneration is their weakest ability by a considerable margin.  Magnetize/EMP is the way to go. 

Sadly, its abilities all necessitating putting it on the front lines.  All of its abilities have relatively short range and the two good ones require you to target an enemy, and the third to target a unit under attack.  Without any unit like subverters or guardians to cover a retreating Dunov, this guy will never survive to reach an appreciable level if you're actually using it. 

No kidding, one of the reasons why I generally use a Sova or an Akkan in the early game, and later field the others when needed.

Nothing wrong firing with a few radiation bombs early on: im just saying that Einstein fellow created something really special with atom bombs. It ain't bad as a starter. 

The one benefit I see for Shield Regen is that at higher levels, it represents the only "burst" type of healing/instant protection that is available to the TEC. Albeit a very inefficient and costly one. The same funds invested in hoshi's would represent a much better ROI but if I had to look for a positive for Shield Regen I would say that's it.

Ok im new to this game only been playing it for a few days now, and I must say its good, love using the TEC till now.

Im not sure if its just me or it is just the TEC but they are hopeless, I research everything and build fleets and fleets of ships, most with 1 or 2 of each the Kol, Sova, Akkan and Dunov plus 30 Kodiak, Percheron, Garda, Javelis and Cobalt and they die, get totally destroyed and its not because of other capital ships, its bomber wings. Vasari and Advent bombers destroy TEC ships. And somthing I should have said at the start, im just playing the first Sins, waiting to get the others

What am I doing wrong do I need more Garda ships, hope not, do they even shoot anything?

Fighters and flak. Bombers do a lot of damage, especially good for taking out caps. Be prepared to repair them or even retreat them.

I'm sorry u feel that way. Its not about just building a big fleet... Esp against the Vasari who are hard to take down. I like playing vasari and tec .. One fundamental u need to uderstand is the Tec are the vasari downgraded and the advent are the tec upgraded. In essence your research should lead towards armor, hull , hull repair ships and kodiaks.  As advent your research is still armor and hull if against vasari and shielding if against tec where u go for either a shield restore cruiser or rush to get the hull repair cruiser.

To win is to be offensive and defensive. Hoshikos , lots in a fleet with packed armor and hull and anti fighter frigates to support the cruisers and lrf is your win win card. Another thing dont build 1 fleet... build 1 big fleet.. various medium and small fleets and harrass your enemy so he falls back and forgets about attacking u. Best way to make him pull back- ai or human is planetary siege ships. 1 or 2 in each small/medium fleet. your main fleet can tug it out while u sneak behind enemy lines.. include 1 or 3 hoshiko in each medium or small fleet.. believe me does wonders esp vs ai's they always pull back and let me re-organise, build and attack.

Echoing Kitkun, Fighters and Flak frigates but Hoshiko's as well as Kol's can be helpful. Flak frigats with the appropriate upgrades will shred bombers especially if you are using Flak Burst on multiple Kols to help you as well. If you have 2 Kols with at least level 2 flak from each, you should be able to shave off at least half of the life on most bombers attacking your fleet before your Kols run out of AM.

Also, against Vasari bombers in particular, Dunov's with high level Magnetize work respectably against bombers since their squadrons have fewer numbers making magnetize proportionately much more effective as anti-bomber vs anti-fighter.

The point is, while TEC arguably must prepare a bit more to handle large swaths of bombers, they can do it. Their economy is specifically structured to help fund an overwhelmingly prepared fleet.