Hi.

I don't get what you're saying...a penalty for setting AI opponents to "easy"?  That can't be right.  Easy is for a reason; to help me learn the game and get smoother and faster working the UI.  How can I learn the game if "EASY" is really reverse-compensated to still be "normal" or "aggressive"?

I've basically been building everything as fast as I can and also trying to spread out.  But I only get to 3 planets/asteroid belts and bam!  That's when they come and cream me. Mining facilities first, but quickly afterward I add military labs, a capital ship factory, hangar defenses, and then some civilian labs after I've built a few ships.  They swarm me, like I said, with heavy frigates and capital ships, before they SHOULD have them.  I still think there is a bug or misbehaving setting, because the AI aggressiveness is over-the-top even when set to "easy".

Thanks for the suggestion but I don't think there is a "defensive" setting for the computer AI.  I'll check again, though.

I read one of the guides here and it seems to help some.  I'm able to defend my planets a little bit better after reading the guide, but there seem to be a lot of uncolonizable places that are also useless (no available metal or crystal), so I never seem to get a chance to get a stable economy or build solid defenses beyond a few hangars and missile or beam platforms.

I can't seem to spread and build ships quickly enough to defend my territory when I've set all opponent AIs to use "easy random".  Really, that should work, and I should OCCASIONALLY get a non-warmongering AI, but so far they all want to kill me. And the missions are terrible.  Give money or kill ships or kill structures.  How can I do that when the AI starts out so much bigger and more powerful than me?

I've also shut off the pirates, they just gang up on me with the other factions.  Again, seems over the top.

Where can I get the manual?  I bought this license on Steam and can't seem to find a link to the manual, either on my hard drive, in Steam, or on the SOASE site.

You are making huge mistakes in the beginning, I am pretty sure too. Easy AI can never get heavy cruisers in 10 seconds, and you don't mention to build your own FREE capital ship. Your first capital ship is free, and helps much. Easy AI does not get the research cheat harder AI gets, and it needs 5 military labs for heavy cruisers, and a research, he can get it harder than you, and I am serious about it.

DON'T BUILD DEFENSES. Just don't do that. Only if you reached the AI and think the frontline world needs some help. Fleet is almost in every occasion much better, so don't stop building ships until you see you have bigger fleet than the AI.

If you sit on your home world building everything there instead of spreading (don't upgrade anything on homeworld, maybe only population limit), instead get nearby planets and build things there. Don't upgrade anything on planets only Civilian Infrastructure to increase population. Instead colonize planets around you, as fast as you can, and every type (volcan, ice too).

Start on a BIGGER MAP... Random medium for 1v1 is good for beginners as it leaves you enough space, but still if you play really inefficient even easy AI can easily kill you. On the smallest map don't be surprised you are beaten in the very beginning.

Build scouts, and use them. Always have an idea about what big fleet your opponent has, and try to keep up. Get his ship's counters and build them.

Easy AI is extremely easy as it even gets a negative income bonus, and AI in this game uses resources in a very inefficient way. If you do only colonizing and build fleet you can defeat it in 100% occasions on all maps.

A horrible mistake new players make: they forget to upgrade newly colonized planet population (named civilian infrastructure) to the level where the underdevelopment tax reaches zero, so you don't lose credits on that planet anymore. Asteroid and dead asteroid needs 1 upgrade, other planets need 2 upgrades for having 0 underdevelopment tax. Other than this they build their colony ships very late, they should be first choices to build, andbuild a capital ship in the first second (you need capital ship factory for it, BUILD IT in the first second and queue your capital ship). Sometimes they also forget to build extractors, these should be queued in the moment you colonize the planet.

Hi guys.  Thanks for the advice.  I'll take this under advisement the next time I try the game. 

Gofan, your point about the "neutrals"... are they the grey ships that appear when pirates are turned off?  If so, yep; they are sometimes the ones who swarm; other times, it's the color of one of the factions that started the game with me.

Also; when starting the game via Steam, I was being presented with these three options:

Sins of a Solar Empire Trinity

Sins of a Solar Empire Entrenchment

Sins of a Solar Empire

I WAS choosing the last one, thinking that was probably the earliest one and maybe the best to learn on.  But last night after I wrote my 2nd post above, I decided to try the Trinity option.  I see it has split military research into "defense" vs. "military", and it also adds some other things.  My key bindings didn't carry over from the third one I usually played, so I had to redefine my zoom keys. 

Sidebar:  I use a trackball that does not have a scroll wheel and I'm left handed, so I have defined "pgup" for zoom in and "pgdown" for zoom out.  Works well because pgup and pgdown are near my shift, ctrl, and alt keys on the right side of my keyboard which get a lot of use by my right hand.  I also watched tutorials 3 and 4, which helped me with some UI hints. 

And it helps that the gameplay on Trinity seemed to be better balanced than Sins of a Solar Empire (the 3rd selection), but that was only one game; hardly enough to know for sure.  And pirates kept attacking me and I could swear I did shut them off.  Maybe it slipped my mind that time.

Going forward, I will try to play my next game on one of the medium maps and I'll hold off on building defenses for the homeworld in favor of more exploration.

And I'll build the capital ship sooner too.

Thanks, I'll report back once I've spent more time.

There's neutral ships on every planet, the pirates should only activate and attack someone about every 15 minutes, you can find out how long and even bribe them to go after AI under the black market tab. naturally the pirates are only active if you chose so in the setting tab, they cant turn on themselves.

I build a capital shipyard and colonizer capital as soon as the game starts along with getting the metal/crystal asteroids and usually the research labs needed to do ice and volcano research. having 2 or 3 scout ships and 6-10 of the light frigates. take over asteroids nearby first, then go for planets. static defense is not really needed. on original sins static defense is next to useless.