I don't get this game what so ever

1. There when you set up the map there is a button for game options, there is pirates disable/enable button in that menu.

2. With 3 planets your resources are going to be a bit slow. Helps to also upgrade your resource ablities. Time is also a factor. Its not like other RTS where you get an instant boost. Like credits take time as your pouplations increase. Also depending on what your fleet upcost is this effects your income.

3. Welcome to the 4x part of the game. You can look on the fourms for particular methods of maximizing your upgrades.

4. Welcome to SINS. This game is not ment to be played fast. Just not. Its a bit overwhelming at first cuz its not your average RTS. There more to it than just build one base and pump out units. On average a typical game for me takes 5-6 to hours to do. Small map maybe 2-3 depending if I try hard to kill my enemies. When I play the AI I tend to take my time and smell the flowers.

Welcome to our little RTS galaxy. Its fun and different. It will take you some time to get familar with all of it but when you do it tends to consume you a little on the inside. Got any other questions there are people who love answer them.

1. Turn them off. At the moment all defense is a waste of money. Build ships instead.

2. Resources, as long as u're researching Civilian Infrastructure you should be fine. I would recommend putting all the options to "Fast" as anything else is just too slow.

3 Don't waste time getting research for defense. If you're advent colonize, and go for Illuminators. If you are planning on going online, those are the most effective save in certain situations..such as carrier cruiser spam.

Also, realize that upgrading your max fleet slots takes "upkeep." Eg, a percentage of your total income.

4. You're obviously doing something wrong because, 1. you're getting beaten by pirates...which is really bad. Also, in case you havent noticed there's a Pirate bounty button on the top right. (Make sure you have the latest patch v1.1) 2. For even a new player, 1:30 hours you should have a decent size fleet, say 250 fleet points, and that's conservative.

Additionally, you coulld try asking some of the more experienced players to send you game replays of online games so you can see what is possible when the game is played properly.

Make sure the game is up to date as well with patches.

You can also bid with the pirates to make them go attack your enemy.

Not sure if that's covered in the in-game tutorials, but they're probably worth a look.

I can't believe someone can find the time to write all that, and not have the time to actually go thru game menus.

If you don't like the Pirates, simply turn them off in the game options. But personally, I think the pirates are fine. Eventually, maybe later when you have more experience, you should play with pirates.

Reaserch Civ tech tree to do better at resources. If you feel it is still poor, try playing TEC instead which (compared to Vasari/Advent) are more renown for their economic prowess. Still, this is challenging - limited resources do force you to make difficult decisions - defense, attack, research, upgrade? How? Can't afford to do all of them, but yet you need them all, and right away too! There's the test of your leadership and strategy

One of my first games lasted over 15 hours real time. So yes, it starts off slow. But once you get more experienced, you'll do much, much better. You can do small maps 1v1 against AI in 30min Have patience, don't worry, it will get better.

Also if your playin the ai you can speed up time by hitting + -

Thks for all the help. I just won my first 1v1 SP, took me six hours. In the end I just scouted until I found the pirate planet then started expanding around it. I used a trade beacon to draw them to one planet first, then just took over the planets surrounding the pirates and pinned them in, with heavily fortified planets, didn't even need to have a fleet to kill them in the end, hangers and turrets cleaned then up. Its just a little strange that the Pirates are harder than the AI opponent, well on easy anyway. I might have a couple more goes at easy then graduate to normal and so on. My apologise for the rant. I haven't played a 4X in quite some time so I wasen't use to how long it takes to get rolling. Once again thks for all the help. I can't get the patches yet because every time I try to put in my activation key it keeps saying internal server error, so I'm playing v1.0.

In the same options menu where you can turn off the pirates, it is also possible to set the speed for research, ressources and some other stuff.

The options mentioned are added in patch 1.03, so won't be available.

6 hours on a small map? You gotta be turtling or something .

If you want to win "fast" (an hour to an hour and a half), you should try to get 6 or so good planets at the very beginning, while making sure you aren't losing too much profit on each planet.

Try to colonize in a way that keeps openings to your empire limited, so you can focus on having your fleets at the edge of your empire, instead of having to devote protection to each planet and asteroid.

This lets you focus a lot more on offense.

Make sure you are up to date.

My first tip is to think you are the ruler of the empire and make the big calls and the little people do the rest.

You can micro manage only to a limited degree. Since time never stops during play while you are trying to micro one area the rest or being ignored. Or that is how i find/think of the game.

I love sins for that aspect order big fleet, build a captial ship send them off to war. I almost never directly get involved in mirco managing a combat other than to usally set the first target i want them to take out then let the fleet AI do the rest.

I turn on auto placement for buildings most of the time if the planets are back from the front line but i place defense buildings where i want them. the auto place button has the infinite sign [side ways 8 ]

I love and hate the Pirates since the AI has a sneaky habit of raising the bouny on my head so i am the target of the attack at the last second even with that i leave pirates on just for the spice of it.

Resources are slow turning up the speed on them will help with all hurry up and wait for resources moments. Resources are only gathered directly from gold or crystal mines till you research orbit refinery tech or racial egual as they send out litle ships automatically to gather more resources from near by systems you own. There is also a trade port that does the same but for $. You can buy resources from the black market as well as sell them it is roughly 2x to buy the resource as it is to sell it and it is in batches of 100 unless you are below 100 then it takes what is left.

There is more but that should give you some ideas to start with

That's great Like I said, as you gain more experience, the game will get shorter, because you'll be doing better You don't really need to encircle the pirate base, soon, you will be able to predict which planet the pirates will attack Hint, think like a pirate - they want the most bounty, so they will head for the nearest planet to them which provides a large enough bounty.. And yes, that is the strategy to handle pirates - 3-5 repair bays + 3-5 hangers + 2-3 frigs + 2-3 LRMs and you can almost completely ignore pirate attacks.. Soon, you'll think of pirates as a kind of annoyance (like pesky mosquitoes) or as a useful distraction strategy to opponents

You should try to get 1.05 patch, that is available as an offline download.

https://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/update

Login with your account and you can download 1.05. To get 1.12 patch, you need to use Impulse..

Nah, give the guy a chance, he's new to sins.. We all know that 1v1 on a small map against an AI can be done in 30min, but you need to be a more experienced player before you can pull that off..

"6 hours on a small map? You gotta be turtling or somethin"

Yes I was. I wanted to see what all the different vessals, including Caps where, as well as all the stuff in the tech tress. So once I had the Pirate Planet totally pinned I left the game running for half an hour and went and did other things until I had a huge resource boom, spent it all, rinse repeat. Then I just mucked around. Lots of fun in the end working out what does what, I still need to check out lots of other buttons ingame, like auto place etc.. Plaiyng TEC seemed to be easier than Advent. I might try to get the hang of Advent as I like to look of their ships. I think I could of made a push about an hour in, but I like to turtle and you can get away with it in SP.

Edit:

You should try to get 1.05 patch, that is available as an offline download.

https://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/update

I tried and it still asks for my serial number, I enter it and get the internal error message.

Another way to learn things is to use the replays.. First, do a 1v1 against the AI, but make sure the AI is the same race as you (the one you want to learn). Then, do your best, but do not be afraid to lose. Once you lose, watch the replay and see what the AI did.. The AI is not exactly the best player out there.. If you surf these forums, you'll find ppl defeating 9 AIs on Unfair in FFA. They make it sound easy But given time and patience, I believe all of us human players can defeat the AI. So, give it a try.. who knows, one day, you'll be the guy posting how you whacked 9 Unfair AIs in FFA

Hmm, that's a bit strange.. I can't remember what I did (was quite some time back). Send an email to [email protected] with your serial no, and ask them what's up with that. If you provide proof of purchase (eg. scan of reciept, etc) they should be able to manually connect your account with the serial no.

EDIT: Another thing to try is to register your S/N through Impulse. So download/install Impulse

http://www.impulsedriven.com/impulse_setup.exe

and register your serial through that. You probably want to do it eventually anyway, since you need to use Impulse to update to 1.12..

Impulse is the best option.  Once your game is registered you can download updates from there with no hassle.

Let begin by the end... contact Stardock for your key problem... you will need it for upgrade from 1.5 to 1.12...

For previous upgrade, you can find them without problem... some time ago, on the main page of these site, it was a link to the solar.filefront.com... unfortunaly, the numerous ardward news have make it dissappear... so, go to http://solar.filefront.com/files/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire/Official/Patches;10369 and download the official patch... never try download and install these find on torrent site... since sins was in the top of numerous "game of the year 2008"... torrent file have begin to pop-up... if you see something like "sins 1.12  patch + crack", run away... original sins is not protected and don't need a crack... usually, the illegal version are filled with virus and worm...

Stardock have a very good support, and you will be able to update to 1.12 without problem once the key problem is resolved... some delay can be needed since they are a little team and the success of the game is so big...

Now, about the pirate, make them work for you... in early game, i put bounty to other player/ai... so, they don't attack me and attack other... it give me time to develop my planet and make research...

Mid game, same method... planet around pirate base have almost no defense ( no need since the pirate base is like a bunker ) but you need to give them a escape way for attack your ennemy... in some case, they will only pass to your planet, without attack you... if you have ship in auto-attack mode, they will attack and of course, the pirate will defend themself...

Late in game, pirate base become a training base... i build capital ship, train them to the max allowed and visit the pirate base for earn experience point... if i become to much damaged, i can flee to one of my near planet for repair, they don't follow you there... i never fully destroy the pirate base itself but ship and structure for experience... i can come back later, when they will have more ship again for a new training...

When you game a multi star map, once your have all the planet around a Star, destroy the pirate base... so, if other player put very high bounty on you, you are secure because pirate only attack in place where they have a base... they never jump from one sun to the other if they have no base in the system...

Rebels are more annoying that pirate... pirate can be used at your benefice, rebels are always bad news and they pop up anywhere... sure that pirate have allow me to win several game... they can make the dirty work ( allowing you to put money in research in place of buy numerous ship who will be destroy soon of later ), the base is a buffer who block the ennemy, and you can use them to train your capitalship since they don't follow when you retreat...

Also, I suggest turning on "LOCKED TEAMS" as opposed to having Unlocked Teams because eventually multiple AI will gang up on you and you'll be fighting a 1 v 4.

How's advice in four simple steps:

1. Goto impulsedriven.com and download and install impulse
2. Use impulse to update Sins to v1.12
3. Start Sins and play the tutorials
4. Focus on building ships, not research, for the first 10-15 min.  Suggest LRFs (LRMs, Assails, Illums).

Strategy vary with the map... Huge multistar map will give you time before encounter some ennemy... you have always a asteroid near you planet that you can colonize but after, for ice planet and vulcano one, you need research...

Since every gravity wheel is with rebels, for take a new planet, you need not only a colony ship but some ship able to fight...

Little map are in some way more difficult... ennemy is near... and research ask time, ressource and laboratory... a good initial defence is important but again it depend on research... so, the only solution is Frigate... with only one planet, be carefull with your resource... a mistake and you are out...

It is all the fun of sins... no one perfect solution exist for win the game... you need to adapt in function of the evenement...one detail changed and everything is different...

One last thing... if you are new at the game, put the AI on easy... once you become better, rise the level

well i just finished my first game, small random on normal, 6 and a half hours later i admit i got interrupted a few times after i'd established a good foothold, and just left the game running so i could raise some cash and explore various options i hadn't looked into.

my only real issue was missing the bit in the tutorial about raising the fleet size, which had me confused and feeling a bit overwhelmed until i realised what the other two tec trees were for...

the pirates never really became much of an issue for me, except for their habit of turning up at the same time as the ai. i used the bounty for a while to control this and harass the ai, then after a while realised that i hadn't touched the bounty button in ages and was doing fine, so marched over and obliterated the pirate base as i wanted that well for tactical reasons. though tbh game could've been won before i did that. i just like to own everything i guess

To the OP - not to be rude, but RTFM.  Jeez, man.

star wars empire at war is hardly a yardstick for knowing RTS games

I am not sure, it is so long ago... but with the original sins, from the boxed version, i think that it was not possible to dissable the pirate...

And the guy cannot update due to a serial key problem... once he have a key and can update, he will have a complement from the manual... really, so much thing have changed from the 1.0 to the 1.12 that manual is not a great help... tactic based on manual data will fail too... data of ship have change for the best of the gameplay... by example, the LRF spam have almost dissappear...

"star wars empire at war is hardly a yardstick for knowing RTS games"

I totally agree with that, if you would like I could spend the next 10 minutes listing all the RTS games, beginning in 1994, I have played, but I'm sure you have better things to do Got impulse, nearly up to date with patches. Have a couple more games under the belt and things are getting easier. Thks for all the help. I might even venture into MP in a little while after I work on some builds, watch some replays and read more threads. Is RTFM read the expletive manual? I did, but until you can work out builds and counters, the manual isn't that much help. It has nothing on pirates.