kicking

Pretty much this.

Sins online community is so damn small that everyone who is a regular is paranoid as hell to not have a n00b to ruin that 5s they worked so hard to get arranged.

It's been this way for a long time. You'll have a pretty painful time to get into the community on your own without asking a regular to teach things and vouch for you.

I had an interesting post written for you but it was eaten after submitted so I'll try again...

suffice to say if you join a "skilled" game and your not skilled- prepare to be kicked.

Try hosting small 2v2, 3v3 or FFA (3-4 player max) for practice.

Try and join 4v4 or 5v5 as you'll sometimes get in games where another noob is present. Some hosts won't kick noobs either to help grow the player base. You need to be willing to learn though if you want to keep joining skilled games.

Watch your replays (emplies you edit your settings file to turn on recordings).

Play simulation games of 5v5 against all insane AI for about 1 hour max.

Attempt to rush the nearest AI with one capital ship and all LF and/or Corvettes. Capital ship should be Akkan, Marza, Prog, Egg or Kortul only. Only research necessary unlocks (maybe only 2-4 research items only). Skip planets that don't support your rush.

If ECO practice rapid expansion and trade port spamming and start feeding an AI engaging the enemy after your basic trade line is setup. Try feeding only credits while you upgrade planets and build out your trade ports. Keep expanding and feeding for the hour. DO NOT upgrade your fleet supply as you'll be double taxed on feeding. You need to learn to expand with a colonizer capital ship and a small frigate fleet expanding in a different direction.

It's hard to practice suicide because the AI doesn't rush well and you won't get any feed.

Is it to much to ask for hosts to ask you to leave before kicking?
 

if they're willing to kick you for someone else why would it matter?

I recently played a "5s" game with a noob...

He was stacked up against me on the frontline, and incessantly complained that I was attacking him without giving him a chance to play the game...this was in a game that was actually 4v6 (he was on the team of 6 and I was on the team of 4)...we were fighting for our lives (one team member got tripled at the beginning) in a heavily unbalanced match and here is this noob complaining that I killed him too fast...

We could have easily kicked the noob and played a 4s game (our host filled the 10th slot with an unfair AI), but we let him stay...so that they could be killed in a few minutes while our chat was filled with complaints...

When noobs stop making all new players look bad, I'll get into some multiplayer. In the meantime I'll mod and solo comp stomp in the hopes of that preparing me for my foray into multiplayer (unlike your noob I expect to get served my first 5 plus games online).

Noobs should also read https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/433802/page/1/

But who reads nowadays when they can whine and complain like a 5 year old who just dropped all his sweets.

EDIT: Since I doubt noobs will read much of the above thread, they'll probably miss this webpage by GoaFan77 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=116451419

In my games I generally never kick anyone without a wisper or an explanation in chat. However i do know that many hosts get annoyed when noobs join "skilled" games. They dont understand that by being in the game they basically ruin it for the rest of the players as they would be dead in 10 minutes. Also bearing in mind that games can take up to 30 mins to fill up and get capped (more if you are in the game where Grimm capping vs Doci).

Saying all that, there are plenty of normal 5s hosted nowadays where everyone is welcome to join and we ve had a lot of new players over the last 2 months. Some of them have become quite decent in a short time as well. We even now have new players like Seleuceia able to hold their own and contributing to the teams success.

Unfortunately there are also noobs who join 5s or 5s skilled without even having beaten or even played AI. They tend to leave within 5-10 mins of the game as well. So its always a gamble with new players.

@OP If you have a blank account on ICO just tell the host how it is and ask not to be kicked and most of the time you wont. Help is there if you seek it! There are several people on the forum you can ask to help you transition into 5s if you so wish.

thanks all for your advice

This is a bloody lie and you know it.

Apparently I joined a game with noobs and they immediately kicked me without an explanation! What gives do people hate skilled or something?

Ironic I know- right?

Well, when it says "2v2 -- Noobs only"....

well I got kicked from two. The funny one was a skilled player hosting but only want noobs in the game with him. He had like 150+ games. lol.

I've noticed a lot of those...and they blame me, me, for stacking my record with "mod games"...

It also seems the price to smurf isn't real high for some people. Lots of accounts with 0 wins that play like Koreans.

Well I got kicked (numerous occasions), from noob only games without explanation within 5sec of joining, and I am a noob. Go figure.

Its not and never has been.

I kick idiots, because I don't like them.. the only person in my black list is sleeper...

aside from that, I made it a personal mission to talk down any host who kicked noobs. Personally speaking I could do the same to them when I hosted, unless you can beat me.. you're a noob and need to be kicked. If I did that over 90% of ico would be on my black list. It's not nice and doesn't help the community. 

Just got to deal with it and stick around. Play a few more game and once you have some record, people would stop kicking you. 

Newbies kick me out of their games and I ain't complaining. I'm on their side in any debate because I'm a noob myself (of sorts) but they kick me anyway.

I posted a similar complaint in this forum several months ago.  Long story short, I had played Sins years earlier and just got back into it again and figured I was still good to go.  Nope, I sucked.  I got kicked, and rightfully so because when i did make it into games of 5s, some of the more aggressive folks were killing me within 15 minutes.  I could either whine about it or I could learn and now I don't get killed so easily.  I'm not up to the levels of Doci or Grimm by any means, but I'm better than i was before.

As for me, on the off chance I'm hosting a 5s, it depends on how much traffic there is.  If it's primarily a lot of skilled folks I know and others are joining the channel after it's full, I'll probably make room.  But if it's slow, sure I'll let noobs play.  But I can count on one hand the number of times I've kicked a noob from one of my games.

Look at it from a noob standpoint (which I am).  You wait for 10-15 mins for a game to start, then you wait another 10+ mins for it to fill up and just as you're about to get a chance to play . . . lobby.

No explanation.  Just gone. 

I don't fault people for kicking noobs (although I think it partially explains why the MP community is so small), but give them a heads up when they try to join.  If I know there's a decent chance I'll get booted, at least I can decide whether to hang around or not.  I tend not to log into MP much just because I don't want to invest the time without knowing whether I'll actually get a chance to play. 

It would be really nice if this game had a matchmaking feature.
 

I agree with this.  IMHO, any game where someone is liable to be kicked for being a noob should have the word "skilled" in the title or something like "minimum 50 games".

I play exclusively against the AI huge random maps 10 player all hard sometimes adding in economy, research or aggressive.  And I know that I am playing against an AI so I try not to exploit that fact (for the love of the game).  And usually I am playing SOA 2 mod. These games can stretch over several days.  It's an epic space opera (and no one can hear you scream).  

If you are so constrained when playing a multi-player skilled game that you have to know build orders and only play a certain way, like one guy on a team is the "eco" guy, then why play?  How is that fun?  If you played any Starcraft you know that being "rushed" or "cheesed" is the coin of the realm at the lower levels.  It's just not any fun after a while.  

So what's the attraction to want to play in skilled multi-player matches?  (And I get the social aspect.  I hear having friends can be nice.)

I'll take my answer off the air.

backs out of the room slowly...  

The attraction boils down to enjoying the more intense match of skills vs. a human rather than a predictable AI. It's more alive, more exciting, more stimulating, etc. It isn't just about "rushing" - it's also about defending against a rush and countering. It also helps you improve your gameplay in ways you can't imagine if only playing vs. the AI. It all depends on what kind of experience/game you enjoy. What some people find stimulating, others find annoying or stressful.