Newbie tips needed

Am a total new player and feeling a bit overwhelmed even though I have watched a few lets plays and have been through all the tutorials.

So I also ask what to focus on early? 

A few quick tips I've found for Advent...

1. Go with one civ lab and one mil lab to begin with...this allows you to get corvettes ASAP, and puts you in a decent position to get colonization techs early should you need them...
2. Especially for Advent, LFs (disciples) and Corvettes make an excellent early game fleet...you will of course need to adapt (a smart TEC or Vasari will counter you hard with flak and LRFs)...however, agains the AI you can get pretty far with just those two ships if you always have numbers on your side...
3. Progenitor is an excellent first capital ship (for colonization) as is the Halcyon...either of those two or the Discoria make an excellent 2nd choice...
4. Presumably you'll need 2 civ labs soon to get ice and volcanic worlds...might as well pick up culture stations and build one to get that early economic boost...
5. Good mil techs to research early are generally prototype techs (defense vessels, illuminators, aerias, corvettes), laser upgrades (which help disciples, defense vessels, and corvettes, your three primary ships for Advent early game), and shield upgrades

Some general tips for early game:

1. Colonize the nearby asteroid and dwarf planet ASAP
2. Scouts (turn on auto attack) are actually really good at killing siege frigates...once you get corvettes this is a moot issue, but for killing the krosovs at the nearby asteroid and dwarf planet, a couple scouts can be really useful
3. Colony capital ships are good leads...carrier caps and the newest capital ship each faction has gotten (Corsev, Discordia, and the nanite Vasari cap) are also decent leads, especially if you are on a cramped map and will be fighting soon
4. Prototype techs are essential...get corvettes, flak and LRFs ASAP
5. Don't bother with trade until you have about 4-5 planets in a line...there are exceptions but this is a general rule
6. As Advent, a single culture center can be really useful early game for an economic boost
7. As Vasari, be on the look out for a good place for a refinery...also, seek and capture neutral extractors with your scouts
8. DO NOT over invest in technology or planet upgrades...for the early game, only get the essential technologies and the first two population upgrades on planets...most nearly all your other resources should go into ship production for colonzing new worlds, rushing a nearby enemy, or defending against a rush

Many thanks will write some this down and practise against bots

Thanks for them tips.  I plan to play Tec Loyalists and turtle with slow expansion, can anyone offer me advice on how to start other than the advice already given?  I have literally only played this game for about an hour

You aren't going to like hearing this, but slow expansion will generally be the death of you...yes, the TEC Loyalists are the best at turtling, but even they don't have the vertical growth potential to contend with larger empires, especially early and mid-game...

I find that for most people (myself included), their lack of confidence when they are learning a new game leads them into an overly cautious mindset...this is bad, it will actually make the game harder, not easier...if you play on a 1v1 map against an easy or normal AI (pirates OFF), you should be able to get 6 or so planets with impunity (ie you don't have to worry about the AI attacking you)...

The best thing you can do is just try to expand quickly...don't start turtling, it'll get you into bad habits and make your life more difficult...I know it sounds counter intuitive but it's true...

I'd lead off with an akkan capital ship and pick the colonize ability...a decent fleet of cobalts and corvettes should be a good starting fleet for wiping out militias...cobalts will kill the gardas (which are bad for your corvettes) while corvettes can kill everything else the militia have)....just grab 5-7 planets as fast as possible, and don't ignore extractors that can be captured (the ones in uncolonizable gravity wells like gas giants, asteroid belts, etc.)...probably 2-4 colony frigates will be needed depending on the number of neutrals and how you expand....

The biggest challenge is getting the logistics of expansion down...ideally, you're colony ships will jump in right after the krosov militia units are killed, and you'll have enough colony ships so that you don't waste time sitting around waiting for one of them to recharge the antimatter needed to colonize...

To reinforce what Seleuceia said, just because the TEC loyalists are turtlers, does mean you should expand slowly at first. It is much easier to expand against the tiny militia forces than to take planets from your enemies later, and since the number of planets you have determines your maximum economic strength and research level, you need to have around the same number of planets everyone else has so you can compete. After the initial colonization phase (I.e. no more neutral planets for you to take, or after an all out attack on you), then you can pick a few chokepoints and build some starbases and repair bays (the AI sucks at taking out highly fortified planets), and either slowly build up your fleet or just rush to Novalith cannon and cripple your opponents with super weapons.

Ah ok

Well at the moment am just getting to grips with what to build first and what the tech trees can do, I will try and get a few planets ASAP at the start.

Of course, and I have the perfect thing to help you. Before Rebellion you used to be able to play a map without any AI. This is no longer possible, but I made a special map that makes it so the AI can't get to you. You'll have an interesting trio of small solar systems to explore that will contain most of the ships in the game to see, all without threat of your planets. Though I would leave the pirates on so you can test your race's defenses, but as they never attack more than one planet at a time you should be able to handle them.

You can download it here.

This is correct, but I'd like to emphasize that the first two population upgrades are critical. Without those, the underdevelopment fees will murder your economy.

I'm brand new to Sins.  I like this style of game, but seriously suck at them.  I set my first game to easy and was outpaced by a large margin in everything (based on the efficiency conveyed in the end game graphs).  I think AI in easy mode could use some random arbitrary delays to somewhat mimic a new player *thinking* about what to do next.  Maybe that could help a little.

On my second game, I picked a 3 player map and then created a locked alliance for my self and left the single AI to fend for himself.  Luckily the AI has been battling itself and it's given me a chance to learn a thing or two.

As you're a new player, you could always use the pause button while playing against AI. It's the actual 'pause/break' button on your keyboard. Pause the game when you need to and have a think about what you want to do before un-pausing. You can do a few things while paused, look around, select things to be build e.t.c., nothing will happen until you un-pause though.

I would recommend looking through your different tech tree's and having a think about what your general strategy wants to be. Do you want to play defensively? Offensively? Economy centric? caster/ability focused or mass attack strength offensive? e.t.c. e.t.c. e.t.c. Think about this stuff, and have a look at tech skills and what they do, see which tech prerequisites are required for certain buildings central to certain play styles (culture/trade/ship type/ship ability e.t.c.). Take note of the civ/mil research buildings required for said tech and cross reference that with the logistical capabilities of planets within your sight so far. You can get this information from the info cards when you hover over planets (or anything else).

You can judge fairly well how efficient a given build order will be considering the margin of deviation regarding metal/crystal/civ/mil capabilities that you've got in a given match up. After a while you can feel out what the best idea would be given what you've got available.

Given all that, it's usually best to begin a certain way no matter what you're going to be doing later on. equivalent to the very early build order stuff in games like starcraft 2.

I play vasari, so I wouldn't know about other races as such, but this is what I do: Build a Cap Ship Factory then set an Egg (vas cap ship capable of colonizing planets) to build, 2/3 Scout ships (depending on how many branches from my first planet) when they're built CTRL-Q them to set them to auto explore,  2 mil research buildings, Colony ship (That'll give me 2 branches of possible colony). Research corvette. Hotkey frigate factory to 4, set it's destination to Colony ship once it's built. Hot Key Cap Ship to 1 and Shift-F it to add a fleet marker to it, and hotkey colony frig to 5 shift-F it aswell.

At this point you should have gotten sight of the first few planets, send your cap ship to the one with the most pirates, send the colony frig to a planet with 2 or 3 pirates and head straight to the planet/asteroid to colonize it. With your cap ship take out the ships that can attack the planet, then colonize it, then take out the rest of the pirates. With colony ship colonize the asteroid/planet and immediately build a defense structure while keeping the colony ship close enough to the ship that would agro the planet instead agro-ing the colony ship while the defensive structure builds, once it's built send the colony ship back to your capital.

By this time you should have begun to build 4 or 5 corvettes by simply hitting '4'-'d' then 's' a couple of times, they'll automatically fly to the colony ship and join it's fleet, send the cap ship further down the route to the next planet and repeat the process, colonizing and taking out the pirates. while doing this, stop building ships once you have 4 or 5 and upgrade the planet populations and build the resource extractors asap. Place 2 civ research buildings where appropriate and research the arctic/volcanic colonization abilities, whichever is needed and then the terran population upgrade.

The Idea is to colonize and upgrade your income capabilities asap while teching to maximize income. The more you colonize the faster your income will be, the faster your income, the bigger you can become quicker, it's an exponential process where-in the idea is to gain a momentum and increase that momentum throughout the match.

after a while you will begin to get a feel for the balance between adding to your army and teching, regarding infastructure/economy and warfare tech, and after that you can begin to worry about unit counters, choke points and general strategy.

There will come a point where you come up to another empire's 'front line' at which point heavily fortify the planets next to that front line and keep your army near those points. Space Stations are a great way of fortifying entry points to your empire, the idea is to asses where those 'entry points' are and heavily defend them, keeping ships poking in to judge unit composition and army size. Scouts are great for this.

A large brunt of the game now will be a lot of too and fro-ing between the planets on the front line trying to overpower the enemies army and defending your own front line, here is the arena for a lot of the clever strategies, pincers, dummy attacks, decoys and so on, this is advanced stuff so I'll not go into that.

The general idea is to pump all your army to the front line and overpower the enemies, at which point your momentum will over power theirs and you can move in to take over more of their planets. At this tipping point there's nothing they can do to stop you bar some seriously colorful and innovative playing. (things get complicated here regarding diplomatic ties in games involving more than 2 players, which is where the fun really lies.)

Hope this helped. Peace.

build kols as soon as possible! get 6 or 7 as soon AS POSSIBLE and you will be untouchable!  - dont spend money on research, and rush the enemy with all you got right away, do fleet supply research to max! send your scouts directly to the pirate base so they can spy on them!- so pirates dont attack you

p.s. no need to colonise planets (as long as you have your main planet), scuttle the mining structures for more $

hope this helps

Mecha will find you....

A post chock full of good info for tonight's run. +1 and thanks

could not resist lol shhhhh dont tell

Good tips Selecuceia