I agree with CyberMage, but have a question about the physics of the 'fireline bubble'. The post (and comments from other players) made it sound like you build frigates and send them to the enemy, one after another, as opposed to massing a force and then attacking.

I've just never heard the term before and would like a little clarification.

And Arilias is right, 80 LRMs is a legitimate strategy. And, like every other unit spam in the game, there are several ways to counter it.

LRMs might possibly be unbalanced, just not as severely as some people would have you think.. Don't forget the game is only like two weeks old and Stardock I don't think is quite ready to start nerfing things yet.

Your first problem I think was scouting. Most maps I have played on 2-3 scout ships set on auto-explore can tell me all I need to know about the surrounding planets and phase lanes to determine what planets and asteroids I need to snatch for map control/resources.
They can tell me this long before I am ready to begin colonizing said planets anyways.

Also planetary militia suck. Send in your cap ship with your first 4-5 junk frigates and you'll be more then fine. In fact if there are 5 or less militia ships your Cap ship can take them all and not even lose its shields. You might not have noticed but I don't think militia vessels or even pirates have shields of their own, so they aren't tough at all.

Actually scouting your enemy is HARD. At least for me it is. Probably worthwhile to continually squeeze out scout ships for the entire game whenever you have extra supply and set them auto. Myself I find it too hard to continually micromanage scouting to see what my opponents are up to manually when I need to manage my economy, fight pirates, and build stuff. At least Sins will keep track of what was last seen at a planet and how long ago you saw it.

Oh, did you play at the top levels or even played arm chair commander by reviewing replays by top players or watched those crazy Koreans play games multiple times?

I just assume most players don't bother because their goal isn't good to get good at a game they play frequently rather whine and complain about the game's deficiency while thinly veiling their own inadequacies. My bad.

LRMs are a bit imbalanced, but currently the real counter stands to use flak frigates in conjunction to a balanced armada such as using drone hosts, disciples, whatever else Advent has. If you're Vasari, assailants and whatever else you can get your hands on (chances are you're better off trying to rush Dark Armada)

Also, the game auto saves all the games you play so go back and check it out and see what you could've done better.

By the way, don't play maps that are random because competitively they have and will kill the game. Instead, memorize maps and play on ones that you believe are fair and that you can end without getting into the mad imba. Facing off against 80 some LRMs is just plain silly so try to end the game before that. You have Iconus Guardians, Defense Frigates, Disciples, Progenitor Mothership, Radiance Class, Illuminators, and Drone Hosts. You have those as your back bone, apply and win (but with micro)

Translation- I suck at game, plz stardock hold my handd so i can beat scary pro pple...

Uh...guy...it's been over 6 years since the last post!  This thread is way too dead to even attempt to resurrect.

Yeah seriously WTF with bumping topics lately?

Well, since this thread was resurrected, the topic is more or less immortal. What I mean by that is that in any kind of war (or simulation thereof), knowing the territory/map is a big advantage. And in this case, an advantage that the "pro" side had and the "noob" did not.  Given that I've seen an (ahem) "trainer" for Sins, which is being actively maintained, despite the fact that the dev exe can do more, I suspect that cheats (including full map reveal for random maps) are not uncommon in PvP.

You are going to be hard pressed to find a way to cheat on ICO....the closest is a few theories people have on inducing MDs...

Well, Goa has a very detailed post on Dev.exe in the modding section and I believe I recall him saying in there that a lot of the functions in that exe will cause desyncs.  Finally, as I have learned from testing a mod I was working on with a friend in a LAN scenario, one cannot use the dev.exe while the other is using the normal exe.  You get wrong version errors trying to join the game.

 

Finally, as to this thread (despite 6 yrs old), what I found amusing:

"I guess the guys up top might have known the map. It was one they made."

Yup.  They would've known it alright... and could've rigged it to so the planets the lower folks had to push through would have heavier defenders than their own. Why someone wouldn't have realized that....

The "trainer" I saw is for the normal exe (recently updated for 1.82.5006). I suppose some of the Steam anti-cheat stuff might prevent or catch some of that, but I'm not sure. Stuff that only needs to display on your computer, like the whole map, no fog of war, probably won't desync. Reminds me of the Counterstrike transparent walls cheat (with which one could see where the enemies were hiding.) One can gain unfair advantage in games by accessing stuff that's already in your computer's memory, no need to really modify anything... What Steam does against stuff like that is basically scan for such cheats like an anti-virus, with the obvious limitations that entails.