I'm not that good at the game but I have some experience, anyone wanna give it a spin? Just us noobs so the leets don't rape everyone?

Also: Do you need an Ironclad account to play online?

 

Those mother fucking, mother fucking (repeat 100 times) goddamned PIRATES!

So I kept them off me for like an hour. I used them to wipe out one enemy in a 2vs1vs1 map, medium sized. Then the one time I missed bribing them due to having just spent all my credits on my seconds cap ship, I got zerged by what had to be 30+ of them. Barely took them out, they went through my mines, my cannons, hangar defenses like butter.

Rebuilt a huge force, and said screw it, let's check out their home base, and jumped into a screen so full of pirates it brought my PC to a halt almost. At 1680x1050, the entire left hand side of the screen was full up with the pirate ship icons in the vertical scroll bar.... My cap sip, no joking, died inside of maybe 20 seconds max. Seriously, what the fuck are you supposed to do about those goddamned guys??!!

And I'm playing on easy, so hell... My buddy I was teamed with was somehow snatching up planets left and right, so I got boxed in with 2 asteroids and a planet, and quickly lost one of the asteroids to culture? Once I wiped out the base next to my asteriod I got it back, but it was at very low loyalty and quickly rebelled again. I need to figure out the best way to structure my stuff, cause it seems how fast I was going, versus the damned Pokemon gotta colonize them all mentality the computer had, I was failing hard.

 

If you're running Entrenchment then Starbases are decent pirate-killers, especially the Advent ones with area-of-attack Meteor Control and the Vasari self-repair from wreckage shtick. That said, I usually play with them inactive or off, especially after the massive boost they got with Diplomacy.

And yeah, a big staple of the game is mastering the early expansion. Your capship alone can take out the defenders of the first asteroid, and can probably take out the defenders of the first ice or volcano world, though a little help would definitely speed it up.

And culture comes from (in the case of the TEC) radio towers, and gives you a boost to loyalty (and therefore income) on all your and your allies worlds up to a maximum dependent on distance from your homeworld, as well as dragging down the loyalty of enemy worlds. If the loyalty of a world drops below ~0% it rebels and turns neutral, and can only be colonized by the culture it's in. The Advent are the best at spreading culture.

 

How do you counter act culture being spread to your world, just by throwing up the towers? So far it seems to me like it's one of those games that's hella complicated, the research tree and the ships really need to be looked at, instead of just trial and error like I'd normally do I guess.

Also is there some sort of mod to fix the icons, cause they be making my eyes bleed, they all look the same to me

 

Yeah, a single radio tower on the front line and one per ~3 or 4 worlds should be plenty unless you're facing a culture-rushing Advent. Of course, you have to research it first, but culture spread is slow enough that if you see it start trickling down a phase lane, you can easily have it researched and built and turning the tide before your planet gets cultureflipped.

 

So I don't need to put one on every world, just the front lines?

Any tips on optimal planet build? I've been doing 2-3 of gauss cannon's oriented towards the phase lanes in, mining them, 2+/- of each research station if possible, a hangar bay, and hangar defense, if I even get that much. Annoys me to no end that it seems the lanes are just suggestions, I always come in close to the line, but the pirates can show up a good inch or two to the sides of them right around the mines =/

 

You're doing it wrong if you've got your gauss cannons spread out. What you want are two hangar bays full of fighters, with gauss cannons within their sphere of influence. That way you get the bonus from the hangars (which is anti-aircraft weapons for TEC) and the gauss cannons are there to protect the hangars from enemy anti-structure ships. Preferably these should be around the core of your asteroids for that planet too, to protect the extractors.

Mines should be spread out as much as possible, and positioned so that if they do go around they head straight into the gauss cannons. In any case though, the only real way to defend properly in this game is with a fleet. Static defenses just don't compare to the power a fleet can bring to bare, especially if you're playing against a human opponent.

 

Hey Middy, I could give you a long winded speech about TEC strat. But the easiest way is probably to get a game replay off of Tehan or I. A quick and dirty strat that I use is:

1) Build cap. colony ship.
2) Max out of frigs.
3) go get some planets.
4) focus on civ. tech until I get Trade outposts.
5) Research the increased planet pop. tech early game for more money
6) Build and research military tech until it's equal with Civ tech (2nd tier)
7) Trade off military/Civ tech
8) Ramp to "Pervasive Economy" as soon as fucking possible.
9) Steamroll everything.

 

Culture from one building can spread two, maybe three phase lanes before it peters out if there's no competition for it, so if you've only got a few worlds then one on the front line works fine.

And you should only be building static defence if you need to ward off siege ship rushes or to fortify once the front line is nailed down. A single turret is worth maybe three or four frigates.

And you can enter phase lanes from anywhere across the 90 degrees facing the destination, so predicting where they'll enter is tricky. Better to mine either the entire facing or to build a starbase or a cluster of turrets and hangars and build mines around it so anyone trying to blow it/them up gets exploded.

 

As a side note, the official forums (specifically the strategy one) helped me immensely in learning what the optimal build orders were for the various factions.

 

Wow, turning pirates off it's a totally different game. A medium map I snatched up 2 asteriods, a volcano planet, and 2 different empty sectors with crystal in them. Managed to get up to star bases before I got raped by a mass chunk of fighters, carriers, and like 4 capital ships while I was unprepared.

About to stick Distant Suns in there now, hopefully the graphic upgrade will give it some umph

 

I've found that it's best to quick expand to the closest viable mining areas near your home planet, build a large fleet, and do your best to take control of your solar system.

Once you have that, it's just a matter of holding the gate while you tech up and get upgrades.

 

Distant Suns gives a nice graphics tweak to the battles, would never recommend playing without it. Without it, the game still looks alright, but the battles are pure shit, with it, lots of nice booms.

 

Alright guys. It's game day. First up on our roster of games will be EPIC DLP SINS. Make sure to joint he DLP SINS Hamachi network with the pass of dlp.

I'll throw up the game now and anyone can join. Kick off is in 3 hours.

We are playing:

Sins: Diplomacy with Distant Stars Mod.

Edit: In the meantime, I'm going to grab a quick nap. I'm on IRC, so if you need me, just query me until I respond.

 

Anyone fancying a game tomorrow at any time after 1pm GMT is welcome to one. Post a response here if you have the will/time to play a game.