Multiplayer - No Strategy Involved

Play random map Play with friends Yes on smaller maps, rushing will work if the enemy knows where you are, the attrition will mess with you.

Yeah there are not many games up compared to starcraft, but for any rts game to have as many games up at once as Sins does is very good indicator of the game! I been to game lobbies that are dead 24/7. Sadly even great game liek conquest:Frontier wars had very small multiplayer following I am happy that a game is possible in sins!

Sounds like they just used a good Strategy on you.



Long Ranged Frigate's easily counter-act Light Frigate Spam (Only with the support from Gauss/Beam Structures), and as a bonus, are typically Cheaper Metal-wise. Unless you're playing as Advent, where Crystal is more important than Metal, you can just as easily counter-spam until they wise up and start building Carriers to defeat your Long Ranged Frigates.

A few Military Structures aren't that expensive, even if you started off exceptionally slow. Just scuttle your Capital Ship Yard, after your first Capital Ship is built in the beginning of the game.



Thats a problem that can be fixed by making friends, and playing with them. These forums are by far the best place to make friends who play SoaSE.



Light Frigates are LRM, and Capital Ship XP candy. Yum, yum, yum.

Why? Afraid they'll bomb them with their "light frigate spam"? That's why you're going outclassed in colonization.

Pump out 2/4 scouts (set to auto explore) and you to can know where the good resources are and pounce on them.

SOunds like you play people that specialize in a scenario. It's very hard to play a game like that, given the number of scenarios.

My response is to start up game or two in SP, focus just on one scenario. Practice with whatever race you wanna play online, and just do the opening again and again. This will get your familiar with how the generator generates those scenario maps (and they do change slightly, mind you, but they always have the same Phase Land pattern and general resource availability).

You may want to watch replays on the scenario(s) you're studying. Some maps, as you suggest do have a predictable pattern of resource planets, so with little scouting you can just know that there'll be an Ice or Volcanin planet to jumps away or something. This does give you an advantage in play.

Otherwise, like someone said, just play "random maps" the parameters are always random, excepting the number of planets, so scouting will matter because the start system will always be radically different.

To the write of this post.

Please allow me to help you understand how some of this rush strategy works against you and also how it works for you.

First off, its realy not rushing. People call it that but its actual name is "fireline". The fireline is the "wave" of "pressure" you keep sustained
on your enemies front at all times. It is through this line that you need to
return the same pressure, else otherwise you will be swallowed whole by it.

Now think of the fireline like you would a bubble. When two firelines intersect or in this instance two bubbles, two bubbles mesh and create whats known as equalibrium. This equal pressure, aka equalibrium is then deftly manipulated by the superior opponent. Just as in chess you have whats known as a stalemate, this one is more
like live action battle tide. Now, a battles tide can swing to and fro but if its
"vibration" is fairly constant, atleast you can force an admission from your opponent that you understand well how to counteract his offensive.

How do you break your opponents fireline? Well, if you understand the bubble hypothesis and dynamics of sustaining equal pressure, you want to pop your opponents bubble right? This is done by adding more weight to your side of the scale and forcing his fireline to collapse and thus make yours superior....right?

This can be done in many ways, and few will take the time to learn the various equasions that equal 0, muchless positive fireline status and negative fireline status.


Your opponents can overwhelm you for only so long with frigates. You need to learn and practice your research tree so you can keep your bubble atleast equal with your opponents with your own frigate "rush". Once you get the hang of that, learn the maps involved, then start working out ways to tip the battletide into your favor.

SoaSe is meant to be played this way at its best, its up to you and your own creativity to use your faliures to your advantage. Its not about one game, its many.
No one that loves chess playes chess one game. Your time will come if your willing to learn new ways, learn what you can get away with , and what you can not get away with.

My recomendation to you is to learn the art of scouting(with your scout ships) with frigate rushing.

Good luck.

You have two problems:

First, the enemy knew more about the map then you did going in. I shouldn't have to explain why this is a strategic advantage. The correct counter to this strategy is to learn about the goddamn map.

Second, you played too cautiously. You tried to be strong everywhere, and as a result, you were weak everywhere. Rather than trying to cover all of your planets, locate choke points, concentrate your forces there, and let fog of war be your friend.


- Sun Tzu's The Art of War

Basically, make the enemy play into your hands, because these factors are true in any virtual war, except a theological one. If he exposes he Left Flank raid that flank with units. He will then have to expose another flank, thereby allowing for another attack. Once this continually happens, then enemy is unfocused and you can go directly into your own strategy, making the enemy play into your hands (like a game of chess)... If this is done right, the enemy won't be aware he is doing this. This is a simple strategy to use, but hard one to master grasshopper. Crap even I can't use it totally well, yet.

Playing singleplayer games is much different than playing a human opponent, as I don't have much Sins gaming online experience.

Also, another very important part...

Okay latest game played. 3v3. Got out to my own galaxy escaped the one I was in and settled another star. had the whole place to myself. Built up a nice fleet with research etc. A little of every kind of frigate.

The other guy. Had two TEC cap ships and 80 LRMs. My Illums I thought would help but they didnt do crap. So I ask the guy hey man did you build anything else or you just like LRMs he says yeah he built a few TEC planet bombarders?? forget the name. So WTF man what beats a TEC LRM and why do ppl build a fleet of nothing but those?

Carriers and Fighters eat Long Range Missle fleets for breakfast.

The trick is getting them out fast enough to counter LRM spam in time. This is actually the reason why I use nothing but Carrier Capital Ships, after I've got my initial Colony Capital Ship. They, in addition to the Carrier Cruisers can leave you with a huge advantage over any "Spam" tactic. Bombers for instance are godlike against Heavy Cruisers.

The tricky part is when your enemy starts producing nothing but Flak. Of course, thats why you use Combined Arms fleets. Spamming leaves you wide open for counters.

Whitewolf, post a replay of your idiocy please to enable better critique as to what the hell you did wrong (probably a lot).

Also, do yourself a favor like I did and read the damage charts and figure out exactly what goes where and how. Then after punching a wall or perhaps hugging a carebear go and review the replay of your own game to see where you could have improved and what the enemies were doing the entire time.

I beg you to pay attention to the resource management of your teammate(s) and of the opponents. That being said, your industry failed to keep up and your research failed to cover the gap - both of them directly related to your lack of knowledge of the game. Don't call it zerg till it rolls like zerg.

Of course, you never played Starcraft so your analogy falls short anyways.

Yo Limz,

How do you know I never played Starcraft. Did I say that. Because I sure remember quite a few games of Starcraft getting through the regular campaign and the expansion. So yes I do know the origins of the term Zerging.

Anways TEC LRMs still are in my opinion a bit unbalanced. It takes me longer as advent to start making arai drones and fighter squadrons etc. They cost alot more in metal. It pretty much seems like TEC is turning into the Zerg of Starcraft where all the good players figure out that they are the most supreme and unbalanced. By the time ive got one carrier cruiser out my TEC opponent has spammed about 4 or five LRMs.

BTW I am new to the online play but I was a beta tester. I didn't play against other people though. I don't really know how to review my games. Don't I have to save my game and then it keeps a recording up to that point or from that point on? I'm still figuring out the recording deal. Further if im not the one hosting the game how can I record it for viewing later?

Hey I need to clarify I didnt mean I was guarding my planets. I actually had a planet and an asteriod and I think an ice planet. But the next place I wanted to expand to had a NPC fleet of like 10 plus ships. I look at the other guys though and they already have two planets each and asteroids too. So I'm thinking hey they had to build up a fleet to take out those NPCs too. I dunno a cap ship and a few frigates. WTF? On the 3v3 game we were on the bottom so I guess the guys up top might have known the map. It was one they made. So my disciples are getting ate up and ive got a cap ship getting some exp but it was still crazy how fast they capped the planets near them.

Stop playing like you do in single player against real people....

Advent Illums are way more unbalanced than TEC's could ever be. You could even say that to an effect talking about the Vasari Assailants. In many ways, the TEC LRM sucks.

most likely your fleet had a large ratio of disciples and illums and only a small ratio of defenders and the like, LRM's are made to counter disciples and thus his fleet outnumbered yours in what counters what.

if you had ~3x defenders and ~3x illuminators the outcome would be a lot more in your favour (cannot tell if you would win, cause its about micro and where you position fleets and the caps and abilities...ect) or if it was a lot closer to a long game (most likely was) getting a few guardians and the mothership with the above fleet would help tremendously.

yay for random maps.

suggest renaming thread to "Multiplayer - I suck at strategy"

Seriously. You get beaten in one game, BECAUSE your opponents had better strategies, then you run to the forums to claim there is no strategy. To top it off you call "OMG TEH ZERGING" and say there is no strategy in the most strategic RTS that was ever published so far.

Actually, to be fair, it sounds like his opponents didn't have better strategies as much as they knew the map and he didn't.

I'd stick to playing on random maps, or scenarios you've practised in SP. Playing on a prebuilt map you don't know against people who do and who work as a team is incredibly hard even for the best players.

Dude again let me reiterate. The guy had no strategy at all. Okay the first game maybe a bit but how did they cap the first planets so fast when we all built fleets fast.

The third game though where you encounter that one player who builds nothing but one kind of ship. That is not strategy. 80 LRMS and 2 capital ships?? Again I ask you what can you counter with in sufficient number to take them out. As I repeatedly have stated, Advent cost is higher to field 80 of anything that could counter that. So what you going to do when TEC player builds 80 LRMS and destroys your fleet of mixed ships. I was of the impression that a mixed fleet does well since each ship has strengths, weaknesses etc. 80 carriers perhaps. HMM only if I get a boatload of metal.

Building 80 LRMs and 2 capital ships is a strategy. It is also, apparently, a highly effective one.

To be honest, I haven't really played enough multiplayer games to discern whether the cries of "ZOMG LRMS R BROKEN!" actually have some basis in fact or whether it's just that they're not any good at countering LRMs (as in 99% of cases where something is decried as broken and imbalanced)

Neither my buddies or I build LRM's. Well, I take that back, I might spit out half a dozen but I use frigates as the backbone and cruisers as the punch. Yeah, I got a capital in there.

I have just finished reading all the posts of this thread : highly educative !

You even have a post on the physics of fireline bubbles, and one that quotes an Ancient Chinese master-strategist.

We have this saying, here, in francophone Quebec : « Je me sens maintenant moins niaiseux. »

Sincerely, it's a very educative thread for the too defensive n00b that I am.