New Player - Am I on the right track?

In my opinon you have way too many capital ships for a fleet of the size you are fielding.  In the old days of Sins it was hard justifying building more than 1.  These days you can get away with more, and Advent likes the synergies of the caps, but you still have too many capships for the numbers of frigs and cruisers you have (but if it is working for you, by all means keep doing what you are doing).

It isn't wrong to have the mothership supporting your fleet.  In fact, as Advent, it would be a heresy if you didn't.  But if there are planets to colonize it certainly isn't a bad idea to have another one out on colonizing detail.  In fact, with the numbers of capships you are deploying, I see no reason why you couldn't spare one.

If you are worried about enemy strikecraft, especially fighters, you should have some flak in your fleet.

As far as breaking your fleet up into subfleets, Advent generally doesn't like to do this.  They prefer 1 massive fleet.  But that's not to say that you can't do it.

Finally, if you are playing version 1 of the game, GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY, please update it and patch it to the latest version as soon as possible!

Yes, a little while ago I actually got to play 1.0 on a friends computer. My appreciation for how well IC has patched this game (already quite high) increased 10 fold, I could barely stand playing for 20 minutes.

Also random advice, Aminosity is a mostly worthless ability, all the Radiance is good for is detonate antimatter. As Kharma said you do have a lot of capital ships and guardians for the amount of total fleet supply you have (especially for 1.0), so for at least the next fleet supply upgrade, I'd only get Illuminators, Drone Hosts, and maybe some flak as you have none.

Do you have Trinity 1.0, or the original game 1.0?  Those are two very different versions.  In any case, the forums are currently a mess because a lot of the influx of new players are bumping posts that are up to two years old and contain completely outdated information. 

Poor choice for a first capital ship.  Good for second or third, though.  Choose Progenitor or Halcyon as your first capital ship.  In general your first three capital ships should all be Halcyons or Progenitors in some combination, but Radiance, Rapture, and Revelation are all situationally viable. 

Secondly, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS get detonate antimatter on your radiance.  If you don't want this ability, pick a different capital ship.  This is 95% of the reason to get a Radiance.

One of them (preferably the first) should have colonize.  Shield Regeneration is your primary ability anyways and malice will be turned off to conserve antimatter most of the time.  That colonize ability is a real lifesaver and its secondary effect can save you some cash too.



That fleet is way too small for 7 capital ships.  That's 370 command in units, but 350 command in capital ships.  Your ratio is completely out of whack.  Unless you're Halcyon spamming (another topic altogether), capital ships should account for 15-30% of your fleet supply-wise.  For a fleet capacity of around 700, that means 2-4 capital ships.  You can go a little heavier on the capital ships in the early game since the first one is free and the crew slots are generally cheaper, but otherwise keep their numbers down.

Now, as for unit types, 10 guardians is overkill for only 30 combat units.  I'd recommend adding more illuminators (or possibly swapping them for destras) to this mix.  I think you're a little too heavy on the carriers, as well, and need to add some flak to round things out.  More illuminators means you have more fodder for the guardians to support, and also to protect your capital ships.  Too few units and it's very easy for an enemy to rush and kill your capital ships. 


If you get that many units, you've already won on economic grounds.  You can do pretty well whatever you like and you'll win.  Most human players will surrender against such a powerful economy rather than fight a hopeless battle against such a huge juggernaught.  More likely, however, is that the battles that decide the outcome of the game will be fought long before you ever see fleets remotely this large.



Animosity is utterly unreliable and in any significantly large fleet battle it's a recipe for a dead Radiance.



These "shock" strategies work extremely well against an AI, because they're absolutely terrible at protecting their capital ships and keeping their defensive fleets well deployed.   Any time you take advantage of the AI's poor ability to manage unit deployment, you've got a good comp-stomping strategy. 

Depends on how many strike craft we're talking about, and how long a battle we're talking about, and what level the Halcyons (and antimatter upgrades) we're talking about.  In general 2-3 is sufficient for all but the largest of fleets.

Animosity is very finicky.  If the enemy units ever receive a new order, the effect ends (this makes it worthless against human players since they can override it with a single click), so I believe repulse would end its effect.  Strike craft are not affected by animosity at all.



10 guards to 30 combat frigates is indeed too high a ratio.  Five guardians to 40 combat frigates would be a much better ratio.



Depends; in big fleet battles, I often find myself alternating between two Progenitors with 3rd level shield restore.

If you're running v1.00 of the original game, i.e. a vanilla Sins retail copy straight out of the box, your fleet should be a Rapture(for Concentration Aura) with 100% Drone Hosts, toss on a Halcyon for Telekinetic Push.  Carriers were broken in the original game, with full build speeds and enough ship speed to circle a gravity well out of harm's way until the enemy died.  It wasn't unheard of to get enough bombers to kill entire capital ships in one pass. A Guardian, or more, with Repulsion would keep ships away from your carriers if you needed them to remain close to the Rapture.

If you're running a current build of the game, that no longer works.  Motherships are good choices for starter caps, IMO.  Colonize and Shield Restore get you up and running.  A Halcyon should be tossed into the mix before too long.  While battleships used to be a good choice for starter caps in small maps, they're toothless tigers in the early game these days.  This is especially true for the TEC's maligned Kol, often called the 'brick' for all the good it does in combat early on.  If it were up to me, I'd probably triple the output of its forward lasers and leave the rest alone, making it the reverse of the damage-propagating Marza(but that is a matter for another day).  As stated, the main use of a Radiance is for Detonate Antimatter.  This denies abilities to enemy capital ships.  Let your Disciples use Drain Antimatter on the enemy's frigates. I personally tend to favor the Rapture over the Radiance though.  Vertigo does well in big battles, really helping the Guardians and Progenitor's deal with incoming damage.  Domination also lets you steal heavy assault cruisers for your own use.

It is kind of hard to describe how to build up a fleet.  In most instances though, Illuminators will become the backbone of your fleet.  Everything else is just support to keep them alive and shooting.  The Halcyon has awesome synergy for this, keeping strikecraft at bay and increasing the firing rate for all of your ships.  The Progenitor works wonders with Guardians, keeping their shields restored to mitigate damage away from your ships.  Other ship types are mixers based on the enemy's fleet composition.  A handful of flaks is usually recommended to deal with enemy fighters, and they do decently well against bombers, and can be sent after enemy LRMs.  Likewise Disciples are good for busting enemy flak and support cruisers, and will drain antimatter from them all, so a few handfuls of those are good.  This also keeps Guardians up and running with Repulsion when necessary.  Subjugators and Crusaders also help round out your fleet.  A properly kitted late-game Advent fleet is a beast to be feared.  They also do surprisingly well on defense in the late game, thanks to all the love granted to them in Entrenchment.

Wow, I’ve never know such support from a gaming forum before.  I’ve heard of many of you (after reading through the last 2 years of posts) and am honoured to receive such a response.  Thanks.

 

Now, there’s been a few developments since writing my last post.

 

I’ve started again, this time on a random (huge) map in a FFA with locked teams.  I decided it was best to avoid getting into the bad habit of ‘playing the map’.

 

Radiance – I initially settled on this as my first cap after experimenting with the others and discovering this ship kept my frigates alive the longest.  I intended to use it’s Animosity with the Rapture’s Vengeance ability as mentioned by others as part of the Advent ‘battle-ball’ strategy.  I’ve since abandoned the thought of this as my first cap in favour of slimming down my current fleet size.

 

Progenitor – This has now become my starting cap.  It performs nearly as well at keeping my initial frigates alive, but I still can’t bring myself to abandon the ‘Malice’ option in favour of the colonize ability (plus I still need a colony frigate for neutrals).

 

I’ve taken to sending out more scouts at the start (though I still manually explore with them) and I’ve split my number of fleets to 3.  Typical fleet composition looks something like this:

 

1 x Progenitor – Malice/Shield Regen

3 x Halycon – 2 with TK Push, 1 with Amplify Energy Aura (both with Adept Drone Anima)

1 x Rapture – Vengeance and Concentration Aura

10 x Disciples

5 x Aeria Drone Hosts

5 x Guardian

5 x Subjugator

5 x Destra

30 x Illuminator

 

You’ve probably guessed from my fleet composition that I’m a bit of a carrier spammer.  I’ve found this the easiest strategy to adopt due to my poor micro skills which amount to me just about being able to withdraw ships that are getting focused.

 

With 3 such fleets, I’m left with 1 spare cap ship which will be a ‘Revelation’ with 10 supporting siege frigates.  I’m guessing my ratio of cap ship to frigate/cruiser is still way out, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to balance out the numbers once I actually reach my ship cap in this drawn-out experimental game.  Does anyone know of a ‘fleet-calculator’ I could use or am I gonna have to resort to my sub-standard maths skills?

 

You may have noticed that I’ve still not got any flak.  This isn’t me being stubborn….well, maybe just a little.  I’ve just found that earlier encounters are dealt with by assigning my strike craft as fighters.  During later encounters (after I’ve switched to bombers), I rely on TK Push and the fighters from my hangar defences.  It’s probably a fatal strategy in multiplayer, but I’ve found that pushing to get a decent number of planets, turtling and only attacking as part of a counter attack after the AI is licking it’s wounds seems to work fine (and I’ll try anything but field flak).

 

Being the kind souls that you are, you’re probably still itching to help out a n00b that shares the same passion for the game.  If this is the case, I’d appreciate some suggestions for fleet composition using the 5 capital ships above.  (If this could exclude any flak frigates I would be even happier!) 

 

Thanks again,

 

Shedz

 

P.S.  Just to clarify, I’m running the original ORIGINAL version 1.0 of Sins.  I had updated it, but encountered problems doing the same for my laptop.  So I downgraded again in order to play some multiplayer with friends.

God help you!  You MUST, I repeat MUST, upgrade to the latest version!  And either make your friends do the same, or shoot them and put them out of their misery!  The early versions of the game are just awful!  In fact, I'm not sure how much my (or anyone's) advice would even help with version 1.

Siege frigates were ridiculously OP in version 1.  So just spam the hell out of those.  You probably won't need much of anything else.  Also, Carrier cruisers sucked in early versions of the game.  I think light frigates (disciples, cobalts, etc) really sucked in that version too, so I wouldn't build any at all.

Really, I will stop giving advice at this point.  I can't imagine playing with that version.  GOOD LUCK!

There are lots of compelling reasons to get colonize.  The biggest one is antimatter; colony frigates get drained dry after 2-3 jumps, which can slow down your colonization to a snail's pace.  Unless you're rushing (always lead with Halcyon for that) your capital ship will actually be clearing new planets faster than your colony frigates can regenerate antimatter to colonize them. At best, those delays will cost you significant cash and opportunity.  At worst, the enemy could show up and capture it before you colonize it and build defenses. 

Colony frigates are also expensive and slow.  Every colony frigate you don't have to build is money well saved. Not having to colonize planets cuts back on the antimatter consumption of what few colony frigates you do have, allowing them to capture other planets or neutral extractors sooner and more efficiently.  Most of the time you'll still need colony frigates, but you won't need as many because your capital ship can handle most of the colonization itself.

So yes, I would definitely pick colonize as my first ability every time on the Progenitor.  If you don't want colonize, you're almost certainly better off with a Halcyon for a pure combat capital ship in the early game.

When I first started, I was doubtful of this ability, as well.  However, once you get more experienced you'll realize that most of the time victory and defeat all comes down to how you establish your empire in the first 10-40 minutes of the game (depending on map size).  Every tiny advantage you can get here is critical.




One or the other, you typically don't mix both destras and illuminators.

Otherwise your fleet is still too capital ship heavy.  I'd cut out the Rapture altogether and replace it with more illuminators or destras. You need more firepower in that fleet.  It's all about firepower; in big fleet battles the only way to protect your capital ships is to torch anything that gets within firing range, and you don't have enough firepower to do that. Carrier spam is another alternative, but such a strategy should be highly dedicated to carrier use and be very minimal with capital ship presence (a Rapture and a Halcyon, no more). 

One of the big problem with too many capital ships is that it spreads your xp too thin.  Against the AI you can get away with this because it tends to suicide its units and is bad at killing your capital ships.  Against a player, you will have to fight hard for every kill and you'll lose capital ships from time to time, and combined with those set backs having too many capital ships can leave you with level 2's and 3's when your opponent has a few 5's and 6's.

Secondly, I'd consider either going with 3 Halcyons or with 1-2 Halcyons and some drone hosts on the side.  Unless your enemy is making lots of bombers (in which case extra fighter support is well worth your time) three Halcyons are more than sufficient for all your strike craft needs and you're probably better off putting that 100 command points into heavies or illuminators. 



Just eyeball it.  Once you get an idea of proper ratios you can tell these things at a glance.  Because we're here on the forums I gave you a rough number to go by, but in reality I don't pay attention to those sorts of numbers, I just eyeball my fleet and decide what I need more of.



Flaks aren't only good against strike craft, they're pretty decent damage support against long range frigates, plus they actually have the best health:cost ratio of any unit in the game.  They're great for whittling away enemy strike craft, particularly if they come in staggered groups.  Human players will stagger their strike craft assault so that they don't all get slapped by one use of telekinetic push.  As well, fighters will often dogfight outside of Halcyon support range.  If you can get your enemy to fly his fighters over a couple flaks, it will thin them out greatly.  Very useful units, you don't need very many.



Five capital Advent fleet? That's a little odd since when you research the 4th capital ship upgrade you get 6 crew slots, but anyways, here are a couple options.


Classic illuminator swarm:  2 Progenitors (both with SR, one with colonize), 2 Halcyons (at least one with energy amplification), 1 of your choice.  For units:  80 illuminators, 14 guardians, 14 flaks.

This will give you one hell of a punch.  Fleets of primarily light units will simply get minced by this in seconds, and capital ships... well, focus your beams on one target and they'll melt in 15-20 seconds.  Make sure you research repulse. 


A more strike-craft oriented fleet might be like this:  1-2 Rapture, 1-3 Halcyons, 1 Progenitor.  For units, maybe 30-40 drone hosts, 10 guardians.  That'll give you over a hundred strike craft squads, enough to vapourize entire enemy fleets before they can approach.  Use your guardians as sacrificial lambs to make your retreats back to friendly space if the enemy successfully closes the distance, keep falling back and picking off enemies as you do so.


Now, usually you don't see this so late, but a Halcyon spamming strategy is also viable.  You'd have 5-6 Halcyons with maybe a Progenitor, Rapture, or Radiance. Mostly adept drone anima.  If you can get those Halcyons up to level 3 each and put two points into ADA, that gives you about 30 squads worth of capital strike craft.  That's pretty devastating early on.  Mix in with a big swarm of disciples and/or illuminators and it can be pretty devastating.




Oh, then just play as TEC and spam nothing but Javelis LRM's and a whole bunch of Krosovs.  Or play as Vasari and research returning armada.  It's all about overwhelming the enemy with sheer overpowering frigate power in that version.

Also never use adept drone anima; before its version 1.18 buff it was a complete waste of a skill point.  You're better off putting the point into energy amplification in case your other Halcyon dies (which is still a good idea even after ADA was buffed).  Adept Drone Anima is a solid ability now, but only after the 1.18 patch that changed its effect (it now gives +1 squad per level, rather than +1 fighter per squad.  This both increases the amount of strike craft the capital ship can support plus the speed at which it replaces dead ones).