Short game basics

First tip is build cap factory first so your free cap is doing the work (and getting exp), then get the LRMs out ASAP. Hard and Unfair AIs get bonus to their income so you cannot outproduce them at the start - you need to outplay them - generally using LF to clear planets will result in them going boom. A few suggestions to try include getting some hoshikos and flak into your fleet and expanding slowly (but not so slowly the AI colonises the rest of the map). It's a balance between fleeting up, building up defense (which cannot move so you don't want to OVER invest in, but not UNDER invest in either - repair bays for TEC rock at keeping ships alive) and getting your econ going.

Try this:

When the game begins open the logistics construction menu and select the following for contruction in this order:

1 Crystal extractor
1 Cap Ship Factory
2 Metal extractors

Then open up the black market tab and sell 200 metal and buy 100 crystal,

Go ahead and queue up your Marza so it begins construction as soon as the factory is finished.

Build 2 military labs.

Then build 2 scouts and a Colonizer frigate.

When your cap ship is finished building, scuttle the cap ship factory and replace it with another frigate factory.

Send the scouts out and then send the colonizer and your Marza to the nearest asteroid. The marza will be able to clear it by itself and will gain xp from the militia (be careful not to let your colonizer be killed by the militia)

Research the LRM frigate as soon as you have the spare cash as well as the repair platform.

Colonize the roid and be sure and upgrade its infrastructure as soon as you can, forego any other expense to upgrade infrastructure or it will take money from you.

After that you can start pumping out LRMs and build a repair platform at your planets, which will cut down on your losses significantly. Don't bother building light frigates as the only reason you would need them early on is if you were to be scout rushed, which no AI has the capacity to do. LRMs will cut through the AIs light frigates like tissue paper, and if you fight within range of a repair platform, its likely you won't even lose a ship when it comes charging into your territory. Set the rally point for your factories on your Marza so your lrms will head straight to where it is when they are built. Then, when you've built up about 15-20 lrms, your set to mount an devastating offensive.

Most veteran MP players use this build order or some derivative of it because it gives you some good firepower pretty early.

Yeah, do exactly what Deceiver says (in almost any non Quick Start non Entrenchment game).  But there a couple unique features of the the Close Encounters map that you can take advantage of as well.

1.  There are always 2 neutral asteroid belts between you and your opponent.  As TEC, use your colonizer to capture those free, very productive crystal & metal mines.  (Build an extra colonizer if you need, (&) to help hold them.)

2.  Your opponent is only a few jumps away, so it is easy to rush him.   Ignor colonizing the Ice, (and wasting money on civil labs and research).  Just fleet up as fast as possible.  Also use your scouts to attack his constructors.  This map is ideal for a scout rush.  5 or 6 scouts can kill off all of his constructors (on his HW & roid) before he has a chance to build much.  Note, a little known fact: once you kill the constructer, KEEP at least 1 scout kiting around the system, because the game won't build another constructor for 6 minutes while the planet is being attacked, versus only a half (.5) minute wait, once the threat leaves! 

When you rush him, take out his factories first (and constructors).  Then he will be helpless, since he can no longer build ships or structures.  And just finish him off.  Guaranteed Win!

if playing against ai u need 3 steps.

1. build sb

2. wait till marz is lvl 6

3. win

Since you are playing as TEC on a small map, you could try the sova rush. Build as sova carrier as your first cap and give it the embargo ability that steals income. Move that and a small fleet of scouts and lfs to the AI's HW, steal their income and make sure to use this time to capture the neutrals with a colonizer frigate.

Also, make sure that you do this VERY quickly, the sova is not a heavy combat ship and will die rather quickly against most other caps

Good Luck

As Aanderson said, rush with Embargo and scouts.  

If you do not manage to do this because he builds a Marza and kills your Sova or something, there is an odd weakness that the AI have...  Especially, aggressive ones...  These stupid things love to spam Cobalts.  Why is a mystery to me, but AI's tend to build 30-40 of them before building any other frigate...  The obvious response is to answer with LRM's.  LRM's have long range and deal good damage (and splash if later in the game).  If you build a large number of these, they can devastate the AI's fleet and give your capital the possibility to destroy theirs.  Without their free cap, it is very hard for the AI to win.  As you start pushing them back with Javelins, start producing Hoshikoes.  If you have one Hoho for every two-three ships in your fleet, your fleet is going to be healing constantly and you won't die from an early game fleet as the AI spreads its fire.  Without focused fire, only a capital can punch through the 20.0 regen rate of a Hoho.

Thanks for the guide Deceiver, that absolutely did the trick. I just crushed a hard aggressive AI with both hands tied behind my back while operating the mouse with my left foot.

I never suspected that you could bring out LRMs within 10 minutes without depriving your economy of the necessary start-up investments. I later analyzed that during the first 15 minutes the AI had a major economical edge on me, but the firepower of the LRMs far outweighed that and the game became a walk in the park. By the time the AI had researched LRMs I already had 20 Javelins trashing what few resistance was left.

Also, lots of thanks for the other contributions. They are much appreciated and won't go in vain. I'll hopefully get to try some of the other strategies tomorrow evening.

Glad I could help out, this start up works for all races, but is especially easy on TEC economy as the Javelis is so inexpensive.

Also if you decide to go for a longer game on a larger map, swith out the military labs with civic labs and stick a tradeport on your homeworld and asteroid. You may have to upgrade logistics on one or both to give you some more slots, but its a good idea to do that anyway if you're trying to build a superior economy.

Also, Cap ships are excellent at clearing milita, and can handle most planet militias on their own. Some terran or desert planets may have too many ships for a low level capital ship to handle, but you can judge that quickly by how many Heavy Cruisers are there. Generally if there is only 1 your cap ship can handle it solo, more than one and you'll need a supporting fleet or a little finesse.

Finessing those heavy militia- You'll need a Capital Ship and repair platform tech (and a colonizer if the capital ship is not a colonizer).

Step 1. Destroy Siege Militia

Send in your capital ship and target the siege frigates preventing the colonization of your target, ignore any other targets. Fighters are exceptional at destroying siege frigates so make sure you're using your cap ships squadrons to attack them and turn them into space junk quickly.

Step 2. Colonize

If you're using a colonizer frigater, lure the militia to a remote area of the well to give your frigate time to colonize the planet and get out, as the milita will turn their attention to that frigate as soon as it comes out of phase space. Also make sure your frigate has enough Anti-Matter to do so; it requires 90 AM to colonize so you want to make sure your colonizer frigate has at least 120-130 AM before jumping in as the trip will sap some away.

Step 3. Repair platform & Turrets

As soon as the planet is colonized, upgrade infrastructure and start construction on a repair platform somehwere near your cap ship. The platform will keep your cap ship healthy as it fights off the rest of the militia. Throw in some turrets to get the job done quicker. And then BAM, you've got yourself a planet, plenty of Xp for your cap ship, some defenses already up and you didn't lose a single ship.

And if you ever get bored with trashing comps, update your game via Impulse and join us Online. You can organize team comp stomps, or if you want more of a challenge, take on human opponents in team games and free for alls.

Good luck!

Thanks for the hints towards larger games. I'll get to that once I've practiced more with the military aspect of the game.

While successfully harassing an AI with a Sova yesterday evening I noticed that apparently the aggressive variant of the AI isn't the most difficult to beat. Even though all variants of the AI build a lot of LFs the aggressive one takes ages to bring LRMs to the field because it keeps supplying the player's capital ship with cheap experience in the form of LFs. I'll try around with economic or research AIs which will hopefully be able to use their economic advantage in a smarter way.

And surely the Sova is broken... 5 squads at level 7 really isn't helpful. When else can you incapacitate a capital ship with the equivalent of 3 or 4 flak frigates? Next I'll try the Kol a bit. Since the AI is very bad at positioning it's future space junk according to strategic categories I think it'll be rather easy to make a Kol to fight with *all* available weapons, in which case it should deliver a considerable punch. Though I can see that a Marza would be superior since I'm massing LRMs and thus research the 10% damage upgrade for missiles anyway (once over 20 LRMs are flying around).

No, the aggressive varient builds half a dozen siege frigates at the start of the game.  These units are laughable in combat and essentially hobble its fleet.  Moreover, they take up so much fleet supply that it goes higher into upkeep than other AI personalities, crippling its economy.  It also doesn't research much in the military tech tree, and has a woefully primitive army.  Aside from the fortifier, it's probably the easiest AI personality.

Primary use of capital ships isn't for damage, it's for their special abilities.  Just as a Marza isn't a match for five heavy cruisers in terms of sheer firepower, a Sova isn't a match for an equal cost of carriers in terms of the squads it can field.

TEC definitely have the most choice in terms of what capital ships to pursue of any faction.  I personally either start with an Akkan or Marza.  The Kol isn't bad, either, but I'm not particularly a fan of Kol first.  The only capital ship you should never lead with as TEC is the Dunov, which is better suited as a side-kick to a bigger and stronger capital ship.

The Marza can be used in a similar way to the Sova, except you use its "Raze Planet" ability to kill population rather than embargo to steal income.  It's not as effective as the Sova rush, but the Marza is a more powerful capital ship in combat afterwards.

You don't use capital ships for damage.  The Marza does indeed have the best base damage of any TEC capital ship (in fact, it has the highest damage of any capital ship in the game, plus all its weapons are forward facing!), but in a big fleet battle your LRM's will be dealing collectively ten times as much damage as your Marza.  The high damage of the Marza is useful for quickly cleaning up militia, but otherwise you choose based on the special abilities you want.

During my very short games the first encounter happens very early and thus the damage output of the capital ship is important. Just this evening my first battle was begun with a capital ship and two LRMs. Every dps counts here.

I didn't use the Kol though. While studying the capital ships' abilities I had an idea and used the Akkan colonizer. The first obvious advantage was that I saved myself the colony frigate and thus could field one more LRM, offsetting the dps deficit of the Akkan, but the second advantage was that in the two asteroid belts on the map Close Encounter the Akkan improved my ships' chance to hit. That means just a few minutes into the game I had repair stations in my colonies and a 12.5% dps advantage over the enemy in the two neutral gravity wells, from where on I could harass the AI freely.

Just a few more days and I can switch to the unfair AI.

Special abilities still outweigh the DPS of your ships.  As Vasari, I'd still pick the Jerrasul Evacuator in these situations despite its low DPS; its nano-disassembler ability is well worth the small price of a little damage.

Common misconception:  Akkan is actually a high DPS capital ship, only a hair below the Marza and Kol.  The catch is that most of its weapons are on the sides, so they can't all fire on the same target.  For clearing militia, that's not a big deal.

Actually, it's closer to two more because of the high metal and crystal cost on colony frigates.  As well, this enables you to easily colonize planets without having to first kill all the militia, just the siege frigates.

Unfair AI isn't any more intelligent, just cheats more.

Is it possible for anyone to add an advent build to this list?

Thanks for the good info so far. Very helpful.

For Advent:

Use the same build order as i stated above with a few minor changes-

Instead of building a second frigate factory after scuttling your Cap Ship factory build a thrid military lab so you can research the Advent LRM the Illuminator**

The progenitor mothership will be your best option for a Capital ship to begin with. Its a colonizer so you wont have to build a colony frigate, its shield regen will help you keep your ships alive, and its lvl6 ability resurrection will allow you to bring back any following cap ship you may lose.

** Do not scuttle your Cap ship factory if you are playing on larger maps. One of the Advents strengths is that their Capital ships synergize making their power multiplicative, rather than additive as with most other Capital ship combinations. Instead build a third lab on your asteroid.

Also note this build order is for a military start, for economics build civics labs instead of military labs, and research tradeports and culture beacons instead of LRMs and Repair bays.

Thanks alot Deceiver,

Another question would be:

Approximately when do you upgrade to the next fleet level, and when do you get your second capital ship? After you have two capital ships do you split your fleet or do you still combine it?

Also I think this strategy forum could benefit from a list of general build orders and research orders for each different race (and each different strategy), to further help out those who are new to the game. If there is already such a post I haven't found it...

Cheers.

The fleet supply upgrade is something that should be waited for.  

Once you establish where the front lines will be, you should build 2 frigate factories there.  This will allow you to manufacture an army at a moment's notice.  Combine that with some turrets, repair bays, and hangars, and you ought to be able to hold your own against an incursion.  Make sure to buy the emergency structures for the planet.  When you combine these things, you still will need to bring your main fleet in to defend against a major offensive, but you will buy yourself the necessary time.

If Vasari, put a phase gate a jump behind the front line so you can get your fleet to the front as soon as needed.

Simply put, expand as much as possible and add light guards (structures other than SB's) to the worlds that will form the border.  Continue with your expansion fleet (the only fleet you should have at this time) until you have as many worlds as you can reach.  Eventually, your econ will boom (unless you get attacked before this at which point you do it then) and you should then get the command supply upgrade.  Then, get the first fleet supply upgrade and build a second cap.  Put it where you believe there is most likely to be an attack.  Create a fleet to go along with it and perhaps an SB.  You may want to wait on that until you know which planet they will attack.

Oh, and if possible, try to ensure that the front line will be a desert planet.  They have huge amounts of both tactical and logistic slots.  This means more repair bays, more hangars, more special structures, more factories, more turrets, etc.  This will help.  Remember, defending is far easier than attacking.  If you've played Risk, remember, if the numbers are the same, the defender always wins.  Defenders are more likely to win.  If you set a trap by adding inhibitors and moving your fleet one jump away, you can cause huge damage to the enemy fleet and without their fleet, they would have a harder time defending against your counter-attack.

I will usually only increase fleet supply when I need more, never sooner. The first upgrade should be done ONLY when you've reached the limit and need more. It's difficult to say exactly when you need to upgrade, but one should always consider one's economy when deciding. The first three fleet logistics levels can be purchased without economy upgrades as long as you have enough planets to support. Beyond that you will need economic upgrades like trade ports, extractor upgrades and culture beacons to prop up your economy. The best thing to do is to keep an eye on what your enemy is building. Research and build a few of the counters to whatever your enemy is building until your un out of available fleet supply. Then when you've hit the wall, start upgrading your economy and your ships stats-Hull/shields/Armor/weapons/abilities. When it comes to the point where you need a new counter unit or significantly more of a certain counter unit, it's time to upgrade fleet supply and build more units. Its Ok to be a little behind your enemy when it comes to fleet size, so long as you have the economy to support yourself if you take some hits and your ships are as strong or stronger than your opponents. Remember that repair bays are a defending fleets best friends, the more the better.

As for research and build orders beyond the first 10 minutes, not many can tell you exactly what to do because it depends so largely on your opponents and your surroundings. For example- Advent have cheap upgrades for planet population on Desert Planets, which is great if you have a couple of desert planets nearby you plan on colonizing. If not, than its not necessary to purchase these upgrades. There are some things that are always useful to research like terran population increase, health/armor/shields, structure build rate increases etc.

What I CAN tell you is what ship upgrades you'll want to get first. For TEC you'll want to put your money in Health and Armor, and health especially if you're against a Vasari opponent. For weapons, you'll need to decide whether you're going to stick with LRMs as your main damage dealer for awhile (Miissiles) or you're going to tech to HCs(ferro-uranite rounds) pretty quickly. For ADVENT go Health (especially against Vasari), Shields then Beams. Advent have really weak hulls so you definitely want to upgrade their health to compensate, also put some points into Knowledge Aggregation if you plan on doing a lot of research, especially on ship boosting tech as it will speed up research considerably. For VASARI I usually go Health+Reintegration and Phase Missiles. It's nice to have reintegration ready by the time you bring out HCs which will use it frequently to stay alive, and Phase Missiles are on Assailants, Flak, most cap ships and all your strikecraft, and will deal more and more damage straight to your enemies hulls the higher you upgrade it.

As for your second Cap ship, there are a few 'milestones' I look for when deciding to construct a second. Here are some of the indicators I use:

1. If my fleet has defeated my nearest adversary's at their HW and my first Cap ship begins bombing the surface.

2. I see an enemy Marza reach level 5. (need those ability interrupts against Missile Barrage)

3. If I've reached the 4th fleet supply upgrade and don't have one yet.

4. If I've got the spare resources and fleet supply lying around.

If there are planets nearby that you havent colonized, send your second cap ship with a couple of lrms (say 5-10) and colony ships to grab them (unless of course you need the seconds' abilities on the frontlines ASAP) If there isn't any uncolonized worlds nearby, include the ship in your main fleet or construct a secondary assault fleet so you can hit two places at once. Also, once your fleet reaches a reasonable size, attack the pirate base to gain a lot of XP for your caps, exclude any caps you have that are already Level 6 or higher.

Certain offensive opening strategies can benefit by building 2 cap ships before building a fleet (sova rush for example). But you should note that you will be unable to defend yourself against attackers for a dangerous period of time. If you DO decide you'd like to try a Cap Ship rush, you've got to make sure you know EXACTLY what ships and techs you will need and when to build/research them, and you'll need to make sure your attack is deadly if your opponent does not defend himself promptly.