Game Speeds

they play on the fast setting, though they may move up to the faster setting when diplomacy comes out, as for the 2x that is single player only

Oh great, thanks bud. Should be ok then The AI is a bit fail so will hopefully get my first game online this week when i can find the time.

yeah, the current AI is lame (I beat 4 unfair regulary, some can deal with 9) though the next update should help

The standard settings for Sins online are:

• Locked Teams
• Pirates Off
• Quick Start On
• Normal Fleet Sizes
• Fast Everything
  

pirates off? weird. why do people play without a feature of the game? I'm probably missing something as im new heh, but there are techs and stuff relating to the pirates. thanks for the info, tho

the pirates are more of a nusiance and dont really add anything, Diplomacy is trying to change that

oh fair enough i guess. i kinda like them in single player tho, although i know this doesnt relate to online games in pretty much any way at all heh. got caught out a few times in my first few games but after a couple more theyre getting less relevant. i guess after 500 games i can see them becoming annoying heh.

Pirates aren't particularly dangerous.  If you have a proper defense waiting for them, they won't kill anything and in fact will level up your capital ships, and that's a big deal.

In singleplayer, the AI is rather careless with its units and gets the killed more often, and this means your capital ships level up much faster than they would in multiplayer (where a good player will retreat and repair and reuse his units rather than letting you kill them).  The AI is also pretty poor at killing your capital ships, so you rarely lose them.  The result is that it's easy to get high level capital ships and keep them in operation.

The opposite is true in multiplayer.  Human opponents guard their units carefully and won't give you freebees, and they are much more ruthless when it comes to taking down your capital ships.  Most capital ships won't live to see level 5.  Every scrap of experience you can get to level up your capital ships is a big deal, and this means that getting attacked by the pirates is often a good thing for you. 

As mentioned, pirates are more of a nuisance.  They are not dangerous in any significant way and are easily defeated by a very moderate defense.  As a result, most players won't even place bounty.  If they're the target of the pirate raid, they don't care.  It's annoying, but it's not dangerous and in the long-run you benefit from it.

Do note that many capital ships survive past Level 5.  It's not at all uncommon to look at the stats at the end of the game and see that a bunch of people had capital ships that made it to Level 7, etc.  Note however that Marzas have a huge bullseye painted on them and are less likely to make it past Level 5.

Oh yeah, not saying capital ships don't reach high levels.  However, the odds of any given capital ship surviving to be a high level are pretty low.  Your first and second capital ship has the advantage of getting "easy levels" from militia, but once that option is gone they have to enter the fight at level 1 and survive battle after battle to level up.  The more vicious the battle, the more experience, but also the lower the odds of survival.

hah carnage, sounds like fun i'm learning the game with vasari at the moment, i'm kinda enjoying it. prolly get owned the first few (hundred) times i play online but gotta start somewhere :p

If you've got the patience to work through those first few games (will be 10 or 20, not hundreds) and you pay attention to what's going on, you'll be find.

Multiplayer IS pure carnage.  In an even match, you have to be ready for capital ships to die.

yeah, its fine by me heh. havnt played an rts-game yet  where the single player is anything remotely like multiplayer heh. just need to find the time to set aside to play some games :p

Everyone who plays online had their cherry popped at some point.  It sounds like you have a good attitude for it.

wow. what a way to put it whip. lol

yep, have been truly rolled haha did get a high level cap once so far though, although at the stage i was at hitting planets wasnt exactly an option