Lazy Hoshiko Robotics or Lazy PC ?

Sadly this is a pretty big fallacy with Sins. Super awesome gaming PCs like you have will not be able to use all of its firepower on Sins, since its a single core, 32 bit application. Especially if you're building strikecraft heavy fleets lag should be expected on a map that size (though that's a fairly low number of AI should help somewhat).

As to the hoshikos, if they're not repairing anything then that could be a problem, but I'm not sure what. More likely might be that they will autoattack different targets than your HCs will, so that is what is keeping them out of range. Also its probably a bad idea just to move a ship near hoshikos and hope it gets healed, manually order a hoshiko to repair. They will heal any ships with X amount of damage, but they don't prioritize beyond that, so they might heal a moderately damaged ship instead of one that is about to die. Also some low HP ships like corvettes might have so little health that their max health is below X, so it doesn't every trigger the repair ability.

Hi Goafan, 

Apologies for the late reply.

That's the strange thing. If i just move them into formation (with no enemies in gravity well) 60% of them are out of range, and 40% are barely in range, it's really annoying. Not only that, but they can't keep up with the HC's and sometimes linger half a gravity well away.

I'm at a point in my current game where i really need the Hoshiko's to function properly. I've been trying to siege an Advent planet for ages, but as soon as they go into a battle-ball, i'm screwed because my Hoshiko's don't respond in time and i don;t have time to micro-manage each individual heal.

Ive had to resort to Hit-and-Run techniques, where i phase my Carriers in and try to nuke their Proginator ships before they can battle-ball me to death. Once they battle-ball, it takes 105 bombers roughly 5 minutes to take out one Proginator, even if i focus the guardians, there is simply not enough time, while they can nuke all my capital ships in about 20 seconds  (this is with maxed Military research) it really is quite ridiculous.

So the despondent Hoshiko's are really killing me here.

Are you actually using fleets and formations? Support cruisers do tend to stay in the back of a fleet. I never use the official game fleets, and I know that's pretty widely followed advice among long time players here. You can control your ships pretty well just by adjusting the attack rage to fit circumstances.

I'm not quite sure. I just select my HC and some Hoshiko's and select "Create fleet" then it doesn't make a difference if i set them to loose-tight or standard, they are still out of range and don't repair properly. Other than that, the whole fleet is on hold position.

How can i make it so the Hoshiko's mix in with the HC's ?, and how do i set attack range ?

I just wanted to add that, the balancing in this game is god-awful. It forces certain faction conflicts to rely purely on outnumbering the enemy, well such is the case in Trinity. TEC has no effective counter against Advent BB, other than overwhelming numbers. It's lunacy that Advent can just spam ships that can disable your capital ships INDEFINITELY, (take them out of range and they no longer support the rest of your fleet, which are required to be where they are, provided you can actually move you ships at all thanks to all that Advent CC.

I guess this accusation needs no justification when you look at Vesari and their mobile starbases.

That's what I'm saying, never create fleets. It's more trouble than it's worth.

Same screen as the fleets I think, the options are "Gravity Well", "Local Area" or "Hold Position".

You know, the Advent have been considered the overall worse base faction since the middle of diplomacy right (Advent Rebels might be considered better because of only their titan and wail)? In competitive play the better TEC economy is a huge advantage early game, as a battle ball is no good to you if you get taken out by superior force before you can get all the ships for it ready. And with Rebellion a battle ball is not the force it used to be. Putting a bunch of frigate close together is just asking for an enemy titan to annihilate your fleet with AoE attacks. To be sure, a battleball is extremely effective against those heavy cruisers are hoshikos you're building. But other builds like LRM + targetting uplink, or using armistice to get a marza into missile barrage range, can handle it better.

That's exactly the point where it fails. Play against Cruel or Vicious AI and TEC's one and only strength is nullified. Plus, true skill based game play should never rely on quantity over quality and cheesy balancing mechanics there-in.

It could be that i'm just used to games with a higher priority/requirement for balance. While some of the balancing sets may be cool/interesting, they are in now way doing the game any justice in terms of strategy or skill. In that respect it fails to be a true RTS. 

I hope rebellion is much better, although it's doubtful i will buy it, since i can expect the same terrible performance as i get with Trinity.

Sorry for my bitching, but i get annoyed when a game shows so much lost potential.

Thank you again for all your help mate.

this should definitely be looked at. i replied to a similar complaints about hoshis and support frigates support roles. my reply falls under the up coming 1.041 patch that yarlen posted. so i hope that the devs reads your post and my reply for similar issues using support frigates and also i mentioned about repair bays not auto repair at all.

I'm hitting up against the same thing in Rebellion.  At levels of Cruel or higher, I'm getting clobbered as TEC vs. Advent.  I played a game last night as TEC Loyalist vs. Advent Rebel.  I quickly got a superior economy set up and got my Marza up to level 6.  I was able to fight it to a draw for a while, but eventually got snowed under against wave after wave of superior Advent ships.

I'm guessing why Advent is considered underpowered in MP is that they don't have enough time to get that late game battleball up and running.  (Also, the Vasari have a couple of good tools to deal with them in Rebellion - Phase Missile bombers, Loyalist Titan, etc.)  Playing against a higher level AI, they seem to hit that gear before I can do serious damage to them - at least when I play TEC.

That is exactly it. If you let the Advent get to late game with all of their toys and synergies, yes they are tough to beat, especially as TEC. My experience has still been that a high level Raganrov still will kill the frigates in a battle ball rather easily though.