Pirates! ARG!

Just disable them and learn then enable them when u know the game and use them to your advantage. Or if u dont want to disable them just pay them off in the right coner of the UI you see bounty on the on with the highest just make sure its not you at the start so u can get an economi going and get an fleet up. Tho you have one capital ship at start and it should be able to handel it with little support + the first capital ship is free just get it first and it should be nps.

Cheers dude. I didn't see the disable option.

I'l keep at it. I think my biggest problem is putting too much money into planets straight away, not enough ships and not enough decent weaponry on them.

Hmmm. Well I managed to get to around 4 planets. Now they have a fleet of over 23 ships assaulting me. I really don't understand how I'm suppossed to get a decent force out by this point whilst expanding enough to actually manage to beat off the main enemy.

Annoying to say the least.

What sort of game are you playing- what map, what level AI and how many, what options?

The classic and most basic defence against pirates is to have a regen unit and three turrets close together at the attacked planet, plus a trade port if possible.  You allow the pirates to attack the turrets before attacking with your fleet.  A trade port will split the pirates as some of them will chase the durable and quickly replaced trade ships.  It may seem odd to have trade defend against pirates, and it is, ho hum.  Also bear in mind that pirates will not chase damaged ships beyond that grav well.  You can often replace turrets as they are destroyed.

You don't want to put credits into weapons upgrades of any kind until you have a fleet with 20-30 ships of one type.  Vasari phase missiles are the only exception.  Defence upgrades may be different as they help your cap ship, on the other hand having a second cap ship may be more important.  Levelling cap ships quickly is vital, this is why the original pirates were scorned by experienced players.

By far the best ship to deal with pirates is a carrier cap, as it doesn't have to approach them to be effective.

When expanding in a game with pirates present, try to take into account the most direct and therefore most likely route they use to attack.  If you can choke them it becomes much easier to defend as you can up the defence infrastructure on one planet, allowing multiple regen units and more turrets.

What sort of force are you using to expand with, as it sounds like slow expansion is part of your problem?

Well I've been playing all day and I've slowly been getting the hang of it.

I advanced some laser and shielding tech and built up a fairly large force. They seriously messed up with my trade ships though, it took forever to get them all. After this though I seem to be doing alright. They haven't sent another force, so I'm assuming that was the bulk. I've also started using the bounty tab to better effect. All good tips, cheers.

(TEC) I now have a fleet of a Capital main battle ship, 6 frigates and some heavy close range cruisers. I'm in the process of making a second one of these fleets as it seems pretty effective at beating down their main force. My second fleet is the long range support one, made up of mostly missile frigates, undecided on a capital ship for it. My last fleet has a Capital spacecraft carrier and a few smaller carriers, kept way at the back. I also have a couple of repair ships, should I add these to fleets or keep them back?

Should I not go so crazy with capital ships? I just LOVE them and end up building the rest of the fleet around them.

Also, any advice on gathering crystal? I've upgraded gathering it, seems to help some, but still never enough. I have so much metal I end up selling it. Better to put it into buying cheap frigates?

Cheers for the replies. This seems a really awesome game. Just found out they are bringing out Rebellion, which I really do hope comes out in shops ( Trinity being the first decent PC game I've seen sold retail in years ) or could be simply brought out as a cheap expansion for those who have the rest.

Do you have the expansions? Have you updated with the patches?

Capital ships have nice abilities, but they're very expensive. Frigates can easily outdo their damage output at a fraction of the cost.

Yeah and Yeah. Although Impulse took forever to sort out.

I wonder how many frigates to a fleet most people use? Currently I'm using about 10 per capital ship. I assume this is an extremely bad idea?

I'd love to get into the multiplayer but I fear I'd be wiped out in an instant.

They just sent a new force twice the size of the last one again. Seems manageable though.

Oh. Important question I can't find an answer to. I've found an area with only one mineable asteroid in it. It doesn't have any place to put a colony. The asteroid is currently in enemy hands, but I can't figure out how to take over this for myself.

I've built a starbase in this neutral zone, I was going to use it as a major defense line before they get to my main defense planet. Then explore the other route from my defense planet with a sizeable force. Is that a waste of a starbase? Is it better to have them orbiting planets? I'm guessing the starbase is on its own, and I can't build turrets?

Awesome game. Might have to check out that StarTrek mod for it after I get bored of the base game. ( It'l be a while )

Although pirates do send a lot of ships, their ships are comparatively quite weak and stupid - they have no shield mitigation. As for what can deal with them... as DesConnor said, building turrets, repair platforms, and a trade port works very well. You probably don't want to be building any frigates to counter the pirates because it's likely at least some of them will die; static defenses work a little better.

Pirates come starting 15 minutes into the game and attack every 15 minutes after that. You have 15 minutes from the start of the game to expand and build defenses before the pirates first attack. A player who's decent at early expansion should be able to have 6+ planets by that time (in 1v1 at least); with an empire base that large, building frigates or defenses or even new capital ships shouldn't be too much of a problem. Whatever you choose to do, you should have enough funds to fight off the pirates.

15 minutes. Rodger.

Cheers people! All insightful helpfull posts.

On the internet no less! About a game! On a forum! A unique gem this place is!

If I were you, if you have repair platforms at the planet being attacked, I'd consider sending at least the cap carrier and maybe even the other carriers to the front of the gravity well. They have tons of hull, can withstand quite a lot of damage, and the ship they're most weak to (light frigates: the Pirate Rogue) are rarely sent in significant quantities, I think.

Since repair ships need to be very close to your own damaged ships to be used, your repair ships should be up front. If you're TEC, they're Hoshikos: even if they're attacked and die, they'll be well worth their cost.

I would recommend not using "fleets" at all because (among other things) the game seems to often tell ships in a fleet to "reform fleet" even while in the middle of a firefight, meaning that your ships'll move to some new position instead of focusing on attacking enemy ships. Alt-clicking and shift-alt-clicking to select ships and give orders is a little more efficient I think.

Capital ships are nice for their abilities and for their ability to take damage, but often do relatively little damage of their own. Combat-oriented frigates and cruisers do more damage per supply and per cost.

Crystal, being relatively uncommon, is one of the reasons players often try to get close Ice planets as soon as they can, because Ice planets have between 2 and 4 crystal rocks to place extractors on.

Unless you're playing a very long game, I probably wouldn't get more than the first two crystal extraction upgrades, because the research costs quite a lot (especially in terms of crystal) and takes a very long time to pay off.

If you're looking for more crystal, try capturing any crystal neutral extractors in the neutral gravity wells, which give you a significant amount of income. (you know how to capture those?)

If you're TEC, you can research Favored Client Discount and buy crystal from the black market at heavily discounted prices (down to around 320 credits/100 crystal, which is excellent). If you have a lot more metal than you need, of course sell it to the black market too.

If you're finding yourself needing crystal in almost all of your games, that probably means you're researching a whole lot. Unless you're fighting against the more insane AIs (cruel and vicious), not that much research is needed.

Unless it's the late-game, you probably shouldn't have more than 2 or 3 capital ships - everything else should either invested in regular frigates, which have more damage output.

That's a neutral extractor. The only way to capture a neutral extractor is to send a colony frigate to it and use the "Capture Extractor" ability.

If you're going to invest in an expensive starbase, I'd probably put it at a planet because planets with repair platforms can keep the starbase alive indefinitely. If you build a starbase in a neutral gravity well, it'll be more easily destroyed, depending on what kind of fleet the AI sends at you.

Everyone, even those who've played against the AI for months, gets wiped out when they're just starting multiplayer. Playing against humans is extremely different from playing against the AI.

But we REALLY need more people willing to come play online. You don't even have to fight other humans if you don't want to - it's pretty common for there to be what's called a "Comp Stomp" in which humans partner up and fight a number of AIs. But please consider playing online - PM me, I'll be happy to teach you what you need to know to be a decent player.

Wow. Well that pretty much answers all my questions. For the weekend at least

I might look into some of these comp-stomp matches then, co-op vs computer is something I rather enjoy, in all games. Shame to hear the multiplayer isn't so alive and well as I'd of imagined. I guess the sheer expanse of the game is enough to put people off, regardless of wether or not they expect to get slaughtered. Once I get to beating some harder A.I I'l come have a look, or join up when Rebellion comes out.

Cheers very much for the information Wrath, and everyone else. Haven't met such a supportive community since my Jedi Academy days.

You should build your fleets around them as there abilities are extremely powerful, especially against the AI. However, you need to have a lot more frigates in your fleets for them to be really effective. Most of your damage output will come from frigates, and if you fight a force that has twice the DPS of your fleet because you built too many capital ships those abilities probably won't matter very much. I would shoot to have 100 fleet supply of frigates for every capitalship you have (early game this ratio will be lower as you want to get your first free capital ship, but once you get the first few fleet supply upgrades just build more frigates until it you achieve it).

In general, the biggest mistakes noobs make are

A. Not expanding fast enough. You should try and get your free cap ASAP and then max out your starting fleet supply with frigates and quickly take over nearby planets (asteroids first). A cap and 8 light frigates should be able to take everything except desert and terran planets.

B. Too much research. While things like unlocking new ship types, repair platforms, planet colonization techs etc. are a big priority, post of the % stat bonuses are not worth while until you get a larger empire. The very earliest terran population and armor upgrades maybe an exception, but otherwise skip these until you have a several hundred fleet supply worth of units.

C. Too many capitalships. Against near even fleets these can often decide the winner, but 1 battleship and a dozen LRMs will almost certainly lose to 25 or so LRMs your opponent could have for that fleet supply.

Indeed it is. This place looks like heaven compared to hells like gamefaqs, where some poor fools look for *advice*.

For even quicker expansion, I highly suggest using scouts, which are much more cost effective. Use them to attack siege frigates, then have a colony ship warp in and colonize. Build a turret ASAP, retreat the colony ship and the scouts, and the planet will be yours.

Using this sort of strategy lets me expand much more quickly. If I get very lucky with map layout, I can get 5 planets by 6 minutes using this strategy: 5 planets by 8 or 9 minutes is the average though. But most people (using light frigates, maybe LRF) seem to take much longer.

The micromanagement is tough though, especially if you don't want to lose any ships - it depends on what you can keep up with. Using light frigates is much easier and might be good for those just learning the game, but eventually learning to use scouts is great, especially in more spacious maps (like 1v1).

If the neutral gravity  well is a chokepoint, it is worth to put a starbase there... by example, if there chokepoint can lead to 4 of your planet, it is cheaper to put a starbase in the neutral gravity wheel that at the 4 planet...

And nothing stop you to have a little support fleet with your starbase... seem that you play TEC... think about Hosiko cruiser, the TEC mobile "repair platform"...

Expanding too much fast is not good too... best to have a few planet upgraded with a good trade chain that plenty of planet not upgraded who generate no income...

Rushing is only good on small map where ennemy is only a few jump away... but it will not work on a huge multistar random map with 10 player !!!

As for the pirate, don't feed them to much with bounty... your money make them stronger... they are usefull early for slow down the development of your ennemy... later, let them come to you and use them like training for your capitalship... they usualy come always the same way, so use 1 or two capital along a few hosiko for repair... in no time, you will be able to upgrade your capitalship...

Point is that with sins, you have mutliple way to reach victory... in fact, with team multiplayer, member of one team use different tatic too... you can have one guy who is more on the eco who feed a other one who is more on the attack... single player will allow you to find at what you are the best...

True, but not necessarily likely. In general, it's better to put a starbase at a planet where it's within reach of stationary repair platforms, unless there's a neutral choke point leading to a lot of your planets. See below:

Of course that's a possibility, but the difference in being able to repair 20 hp/sec max (in neutral) and 60 hp/sec max (on planet) can be very significant.

It's possible to expand very rapidly while also upgrading infrastructure to get planets out of the red. Although trade ports would have given more credit income, the planets give more extractor income - and having more planets also means better positioning for building repair/factories/culture later, as well as denying enemy colonization unless they've quickly built a significant fleet.

Rushing works best in huge games like 5v5 where players are 1, 2, or 3 ish jumps from each other. Rushing doesn't work as well in more spacious maps like 1v1 where players are 6 or 7 jumps from each other. (online, we always play single-star random huge)

Cheers people.

I've got the hang of the general game, but I'm still having major problems with these damn pirates.

It seems that unless I upgrade my fleet cap, or upgrade my frigate weapons I'm unable to simply destroy pirates on a one on one fight.

They appear first of all with literally 10 pirate cutthroats and over 10 rogues. The pirate cutthroats just decimate my 8 frigates, whilst I take out about one of theirs. Anyone have any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Simply put, you have eight frigates. You need more.

Look at it this way. As TEC, a halfway decent early-game fleet to use when attacking another player has a capital ship and perhaps 40 or 45 frigates, using only the first fleet supply upgrade. Build more frigates, as Kitkun said, or, a better idea would be to either use no frigates, and instead have a single capital ship in the gravity well along with a few turrets and a couple repair bays.

Or if you don't want to do all that and have the funds you could just build a starbase, if you're OK with the overkill.

Upgrading your fleet cap for the purposes of fighting pirates would be a waste of money: so would upgrading your frigate weapons. Building more ships is almost always a better investment than researching weapon upgrades, except when you have 30 or 40 or more combat-oriented ships of one type.

Noted.

Time to make some damn big armadas!

Too many StarWars and StarTrek films probably. Big fan of Spaceflying sims, so perhaps I'm in the wrong frame of mind.

Speaking of which, does anyone know of any decent ones? I was looking at X3, anyone know if it is any good?

Yes indeed. In late game Sins, even with normal fleets on, I will usually have 2-3 "Large Fleets" each consisting of 3-4 Capitals, 50-60 LRF, 35-40 HC's, 25 ish Fleet support healing ships and 25 ish Flak Frigates. This is generally my preferred but if Im going more SC heavy then I will have 3-4 Caps, 35-40 Lrf, 15-20 HC's, 15-20 ish carriers and 15-20 fleet support/healing ships.

So you usually will have 2 or 3 fleets of 1000+ supply each on standard fleet sizes.

Usually 2 around 1000 each. Granted I also usually play multi-star maps against several cruel AI with a typical empire of 20 ish planets so I max my fleet supply pretty regularly.

I likes me some epic space Battles

Also, Im a turtler. Freely admitted and owned. So I usually draw an impregnable line in the sand and then build overpowering fire power to start taking out worlds. I fully recognize that probably on average, most people use several fleets of around 500-700 Fleet Supply when they play.

ok the easyest way to get rid of pirates is too get them to attack other people,

call me a noob but it works!

It works.

It costs a bunch, especially if you're playing against the harder AIs, but it works.