Tec Starting Strategy?

Well its kind of a shame to only use one faction, but anyways. TEC is the easiest choice, the Rebels are all about offense (with the fastest expansion methods too) and the Loyalists defense (turtlng and then spamming Novaliths).

You definitely got trade too early. No matter what you play as, spend almost all of your early strategy expanding and taking all the planets you can. Only once there are no neutral planets you can go to (or you get attacked) should you stop and either focus on military or trade.

How do I manage my income then? Technically until I level the planet develop thing I'm losing money on new ones right? So I don't see how I can afford to keep those leveling as well as maintaining a small fleet, building minor defenses at each planet, ect.

You misunderstand me. You always get enough planet upgrades to that you have positive income, as well as resource extractors, as soon as you colonize a planet. Its just that doing this to as many planets as possible is your goal early game, as its by far the most cost effective way of expanding your economy, and more planets give you more trade and research potential from the logistics slots later when you can no longer expand.

Also, do not build defenses at every planet. The only time you should do so while expanding is the "turret colonization" trick, when you kill the siege frigates and then colonize the planet, build a turret and move your fleet to the next planet, letting the turret kill the remaining militia. You can then scuttle the turret. Only build defenses once you can no longer expand at the obvious choke points, or if your scouts reveal an attack already coming. If you play your game right, most of your planets will not need defenses.

Also, try to be conservative with your research early on. You're right to go for colonization techs early, and corvettes are a good thing for taking out siege frigates fast, and other combat frigates will of course be needed sooner or later. But most "stat bonus" research is a waste of time early, as you need to have a lot of ships for a 5% damage increase to really be felt. Terran planet size upgrades are an exception if you have extra resources early of course.

I don't think I ever tech the military stats stuff early on when I play TEC. The way I used to play them was to pretty much turtle up and get a strong economy going before moving out and hitting my enemies. With that logic I guess Loyalists are my best bet right? Mid-Late game TEC I don't have an issue with, I still remember how to build and counter most army compositions. My issue is the early phases...

According to what you've said I should start with the colonizing capital ship as usual, typically I build it colonize and targeting uplink, never really saw a point to embargo. When taking a nuetral planet though after I pick off the siege units will 1 turrent be enough? On the smaller planets like asteroids that only have 1 defender left I can understand but on bigger planets I don't see a single turrent cutting it.

Personally, I always go for the colony cap first.  No matter what, I'm getting a cap ship for free, and if I go colony, I can get one or two more frigates to help take out militia. 

I've not done a lot of MP, so I have no advice for you there, but what GoaFan said is pretty good advice, at least in Single Player games against the AI.

You should concider taking a look at the other 2 races though.  I didn't like them much in the original either, but they've gotten massively changed since then.

-Twi

Once upon a time when I first started Sins I sat down and played each race several times back to back. TEC just fit my play style so its what I ended up using. I get like that in most of my strategy games, I'll pick one race and stick to it. For example SC2 I have my protoss, Wc3 was my night elves, ect. So while I'm sure the other races have their strong suits I'm jst not interested in sitting down and having to relearn a new race.

As for the TEC choices, I read somewhere that one of the groups get to put 2 starbases in a gravity well. Isn't that a bit overpowered?

That's the TEC Loyalists.  It's a Tier 8 Research, and it isn't OP due to the fact that this faction is designed to entrench heavily in their own territory and attack with Novaliths.  TEC Loyalists are currently able to build 1 Novalith, for every gravity well they own, and they cost 3 fewer Tactical slots.  Everyone else can build 1 Superweapon for every 4 gravity wells.

-Twi

Yeah that makes sense then and probably will be what I'll try for a pure AI game on the highest difficulty. Can't see myself keeping up with them head to head, so turtling it up is the way I'll go As stated before though, I've always tended to play much safer than you are suggesting. I'll give your quick expansion idea a shot and see how it goes.

As far as research goes, I'm not really sure on an optimal build there for TEC. As I said before I usually rush 2 Civ labs and get the quick bonuses to my resource production, planet type colonization and trading ports. From there I usually get 2 Mil lab for those missle ships, then my fleet consists of pretty much just them and light frigates for a while. I go more into Civ, with some into defenses here and there and just focus on turtling and economy.

For Labs, I go early Civs only if I've scouted nearby Ice or Volcanic Planets that an enemy can reach quickly.  If I see a choke-point, I'll rush it, build a couple defenses, then fill in my territory from there in both directions.  (Colony Cap outside, Frig Fleet and colony Frig near homeworld.

-Twi

I tend to play on huge multi star maps. I'm a big fan of the last game stages more so then early. On smaller maps I just mass LRMs and zerg my opponents...

So you're suggesting that I keep my Colony Cap ship separate from the rest of my fleet and just leave a colony frigate with my main fleet body? I can see how that would help me expand quicker, but I could also see that causing me to lose alot of ships if I run into anything..As for rushing towards choke points, I see how that is a good idea assuming my scouts find some while I'm moving out. Do you ever make more than the first 2 initial scouts?

no, I mean send the 5-10 Cobalts you should have at the beginning(Or Javelis if you want to go that route early) with your Colony Cap, and build the first tier of expanded fleet for the interior.  No more than 1st tier that early though, as that will eat heavily into your economy.  The second fleet only needs 10 or so Cobalts, and 1 Protev 1 jump behind.  Link up the fleets to take Terran or Desert worlds, and split them back up for the rest.

If you're woried about Neutral extractors you could build 1 protec to send with your colony capitol, but I usually wait and gather those last in my own territory.

Even in single player, it's never a good idea to leave a capitol ship alone unless it's deep in your territory.  If it takes out the local militia, and a small enemy fleet jumps in, it's dead due to the damage it will have taken.

Keep in mind though, this is just a Single Player strategy.  I doubt it's as effective in multi-player unless you start far from your opponent.

-Twi

Edit:

I generally like to have 5 Scouts out in the early game, moving up to 20 in the later game once I'm settled.

I'm having an issue with what to upgrade in terms of research early game. I get what you're talking about for the fleet splitting, but apparently I'm in a pocket in my current game and am fighting AI on both sides already. I'm number 1 for colonizations though as well as 1st in all resources. My fleet is lacking a bit and I just got my 2nd cap ship a bit late though, went for the carrier one since I like to stack bombers with my main army early on. I remember that the carrier cap plus like 10 light carriers all with bombers can pretty much decimate the enemy cap ship I focus on, meanwhile the rest of my forces can fight theirs.

In terms of research I'll tell you what path I've used thus far this game, insight on what I did wrong/right would help...

Started with the 2 Civ Labs as usual. Got my 2 levels in both the metal and crystal bonus production, researched volcanic and ice planet colonization and got my trade ports. Then I tossed in 3 Mil Labs, got my repair bay researched, my javelins researched, 2 weapon level upgrades for them. Then I went up and got the first 2 hull upgrades and then the first shield upgrade maxed. It seemed like a pretty well balanced idea at the time but I'm pretty stuck where I should go from here...

Currently researching for the siege and flak ships so I'm capable of making them when need be, I don't really want to invest into light carriers this earlier so I'm thinking either more Civ Labs and going eco heavy. Not sure how much in the Defense tree is actually worth investing in.

Some things that are relevant to competitive MP...

More and more TEC players are beginning to abuse the Titan + HoHos with dem bots combo...it's a complicated relationship but suffice to say the implementation of titans and revival of dem bots actually makes missile barrage on the marza more viable...titan AoEs and dem bots can now allow a marza to sit in one place for 30s while it uses missile barrage (something you could not have done in the past without serious risk)...combined with the fact that Corvettes have little HP and flak have less HP than they used to, and missile barrage is super deadly (more than it was in the past)....lots of people are leading with Marzas simply so that it can be their first level 6 capital ship....

The thing is, if someone has a titan and a lvl 6 marza, their opponent is very hard pressed to figure out which one they want to snipe first...I won't say it is the best strategy but if done well it is very effective....

Personally though, I still prefer the akkan...ion bolt is your counter for any level 6 marza and the colonizing ability is great...

What exactly does Ion Bolt do? Is it worth leveling over that passive range/damage bonus thing?

It disables a target for a few seconds. Great for keeping caps from escaping or preventing abilities that require several seconds to fire (like Missile Barrage).

Also just FYI, while the TEC Loyalists are for turtling, you should not ever turtle early game. You should try and have at least as many planets as everyone else by the time all the neutral planets are taken. In that case, then you can start fortifying your front line, making trade routes and go for Novaliths.

Ion bolt completely disables a capital ship, frigate, corvette, or planet structure for a brief period of time...during that time, the target cannot move, shoot, or use abilities....additionally, any "channeling" ability being used by the target is canceled (this is called "ability interrupt")...

Missile barrage is a channeling ability...if the marza is given another order or is interrupted by something like ion bolt, it stops using missile barrage...missible barrage does like 3000 total damage, but it accomplishes that by doing a small amount of damage every 1.25 seconds...if you interrupt the missile barrage with something like ion bolt really early, you basically will avoid all the damage...

Personally I always go for ion bolt over targetting uplink (which I find to be pretty useless now actually)...

The thing is you can get the ability interrupt feature of ion bolt at level 1. There isn't much extra to be gained in having it disable longer other than antimatter efficiency. Targetting uplink on the other hand gets far better with each level. So my Akkans are usually 3 colonize/1 ion bolt/4 targetting uplink/2 armistice.

Tec Loyalists:

Expand as fast as possible, and then fortify. Build your defenses to a point where the enemy just keeps breaking his fleets against you. That's what you want, a war of attrition. Once you have your titan, you can start doing raids on poorly defended planets. Expand slowly, and use your Novelith to weaken the enemy from afar.

Also, naturally, you want to build 2 star bases in all key grav wells, and use the Big Red Button to destroy entire fleets. That will hamper the enemy's economy for a bit and soften them up for a raid.

Deploy mines around your star bases to soften the incoming fleet so your starbases can take them out and you can avoid using BRB for as long as possible.

Don't really know how to play Tec Rebels, sorry.

With the increased viability/importance of bomber spam and the decreased viability of flak late game, I've found very little use for targetting uplink...the range bonus really is moot since you using bombers to deal with SBs....the accuracy bonus is moot since it doesn't affect SC and you can't rely on flak when titan AoEs come out...

I'd rather have a better version of ion bolt that disables the ship longer....

Again, I understand how TEC is meant to be played mid-late game. I'm fine with that. My issue is when to get what techs, I'm a bit stuck on it. I know end-game what techs I want to have but I don't know what my priority should be in terms of getting them.

Generaly, you dont want to bother with any weapon upgrades until later stages of the game. They tend to make little difference.

Instead, you should buy hull and amor upgrades.... they are very cheap and make a lot of a difference.

The missiles for long range frigates are usually the only weapons I upgrade since they typically make up 50%+ of my early-mid game fleets. Hull and Armor are almost always upgraded first though. The way I figure it though, since they are my primary dps in terms of ships, grabbing their upgrades is a good idea right? Granted it slows getting my defensive upgrades a bit, but in AI games I don't really get attacked from multi-fronts early on, only if I'm quite unlucky. As such my fleet can usually get back in time before any serious damage is done.

Now I've only played 3 games since I started back up on Sins with rebellion and in each of them only barely made it the mid stages of the game before I started questioning my build due to being behind. Is it just because I'm facing the hardest difficulty AI that they're so far ahead? Do they get special bonuses or something?

Yeah, if you're holding your own against Vicious and Cruel AI you're not doing bad. All AIs above hard get at least some economic assistance, and those two probably get some other non combat bonuses as well.

Well like I said, my games have only gotten to the mid stages. I'm fond of playing the Huge map with usually 1 or more stars. I keep up in the early game for the most part but during the mid game I seem to fall behind while trying to fight one of them. For example I'll kill off one of the AI's and another AI or two will start hitting me and there won't be much I can do to stop it... am I just over extending?