Need help starting out! (Rebellion)

First part of the game is all about expanding quickly. Don't focus on getting trade, or researching a lot. Just expand. Getting planets, buying their first 2 population upgrades (1 for asteroids and moons), and building extractors is the fastest way to expand your economy, and gives you more logistics slots in the future for trade and research.

In practice this usually means building your faction's colonizer capitalship and using up the rest of your fleet supply ASAP. The types of frigates you should use depends on your race, but in general for research you'll want 1 military lab for Corvettes or Assailants (for Vasari), and 2 civic labs for the Volcanic/Ice colonization research. Ignore most other research until you've got several planets under your control, then focus on more frigate types and perhaps getting a second capitalship.

I usually have my colony cap go one direction taking asteroids/moons/volcanics/ices, and my frigates with a colony frigate in another, so I have to expansion forces. Kill the siege frigates around a planet first, then colonize it immediately to save time. If there are still a lot of militia in the gravity well, especially flak frigates, try building a turret first, then move your capitalship to the next planet while the militia are still alive. The turret will take out anything but LRMs on its own, and those can be handled with a few corvettes once the flak are gone. Once all militia are gone, you can scuttle the turret for resources.

For large Terran/Desert turrets, your cap might need some frigate support, but if you can kill the siege frigates you can safely colonize the planet, get the population upgrades can clear the rest out later if need be.

So wait, hang on. I'm supposed to colonize- and then leave the enemy defenders there, to somehow pick them off later? O.o I've -watched- the AI (Via probes, yay probes!) And they don't do that- they somehow dispatch those defenders like they're not there!

Also, ye gods. Is it just me or is the utterly pitiful income rate from Sins even more pitiful in Rebellion, even on 'fastest economy?' I mean, there's something -wrong- when I'm staring at the financial screen to see if I can scrape up a single Cobalt!

I was just giving some tips that the "pro" players of Sins do. The AI is certainly not the model of efficient play. But if you're not comfortable with using those tactics yet, by all means ignore them.

I'm guessing your problem is you are not building enough ships early on. 100 fleet supply of ships should easily take out the militia of all but the most heavily fortified terran and desert worlds. If you're only building your capitalship and 4 light frigates or something, yeah that's why it seems hard.

I usually started at 1 Akkan and 12 Cobalts. I assume that's too low, then. At least it explains why I was getting whupped.

12 cobalts should be plenty for early expansion, at least for the first 5-10 planets, depending on map size.  That plus even the not-so-deadly Akkan can take out any militia force, with VERY few exceptions, usually with about a 5 Cobalt loss on Desert or Terran if the ships there were heavy on Kodiaks and LRMs.  But with a Cap + 12 Cobalts, that's 110 Fleet Supply, not including your scouts.  You are scouting, right?  If not, there's your problem.  You need to be able to see where the colonizeable worlds are.

I HAVE, however, noticed that the AI seems to be a lot better at expansion than they used to be.  I'm wondering if the AI is scripted to research the first Fleet upgrade right out the gate, because I usually see 3-4 Colony Frigates at random intervals when my scouts find my local enemies.  (I play Aerolian Sector usually, so by local, I mean my starting star).  It may just be that they're expanding faster because they're putting absolutely everything into their early fleet.  Cobalts/Corvettes/Colony Frigates/and their free cap.  I KNOW the AI splits its ships up, making multiple fleets.  This was absolutely irritating me in a game I was playing yesterday.  Not only was I getting behind in credits too far from building my fleet too big too fast, but the Pirates were actually large enough that they were an actual nuisance, and since I was broke, I couldn't pay them off to go after someone else.  All the while the Ai would send 2 siege frigs, a Heavy Cruiser, and either a carrier or a couple light frigates to a random planet I hadn't fortified yet and commence to force me to split off part of my fleet.

Wow...sorry, got a little off-topic there...anyway.

Later, I realized all my credits were disappearing because I forgot to research the planet upgrades after re-colonizing after the pirate raids, so that spiralled down quickly, but still.  The fact that the AI is by default better at multi-tasking means they probably just built multiple fleets and scattered.

-Twi /)

Like what was said. you need to colonize quickly. For TEC i build a Kol, and a colony frig, then use rest of fleet supply on colbalts. Other factions you can use equivalents with same results. I hit the closest worlds first. wipe out the defenders then send in the colony frig. Once i got at least 3 worlds capped (including upgrading infrastructure, and building extractors) i should have enough economy to start expanding fleet supply, building labs, and start researching upgrades.You "should" have at least 3 worlds capped, upgraded, and have some basic defenses up by the time of the first pirate raid.

The biggest mistake new players make is once they colonize worlds they ignore the infrastructure upgrades, and forget to build metal, and crystal extractors. If you do this you cripple your economy.

Try to build trade ports asap. Not only will they boost your income, but if a heavy pirate raid hits that world, Pirates will focus on killing the trade ships. Ignoring your fleets, and defenses. Basically trade ships draw fire. Allowing you to defeat big raids with a small fleet.

Once you get economy going build at least 3 turrets and hangar defenses. Hangar defense is better than turrets, but keep some turrets to defend the hangar defense structures. Once you get a starbase up you can use best judgement on what defenses to put up. AI bee line suicides to starbases.

Well, to be fair, MS's advice was fine if you are playing vs. AI with pirates on, although I agree on the KoL part and too much static D even for vs. AI.

  It was actually a pretty good starting strategy, just not the one most commonly used.  And as for the kol, I'd rank it 3rd most useful as a first Capitol ship.  It's by far the hardest to kill, and if planted in the middle of a militia fleet, can wipe them out no problem with the first few cobalts you can build as support.  The only downside to this strategy is that it ultimately slows down colonizeation unless you build multiple colony frigates, due to their slow AM regeneration.  Personally, for a Starting capitol, I rank them in the order of Akkan, Sova, Kol, Corsev, Marza, Dunov.  (Haven't used a lot of Corsevs, so they could potentially switch places with the Kol.)

  As for getting trade ports as early as possible, I'm not really sure.  It is a good boost to economy, especially if your starting location isn't very good, but can potentially cripple you if you're on too small of a map.  Didn't know that about pirates prioritizing them though, so maybe it's a better idea than I give it credit for.

  And finally, I absolutely disagree with redruby's idea that static defenses are useless.  Every planet should have at least 1 Hangar Defense with Fighters, to repel the tiny siege frigate groups the AI likes to drop in your grav wells when nobody is home.  As well as the fact that the Flak Turrets upgrade can help defend your structures from enemy bombers if you buld them in a close enough group.  Maybe in online play this is a bad idea due to abilitys like the Marza's Missile Barrage, but the AI doesn't take advantage of this on a regular basis.  And the TEC Gauss Turret is a serious threat once you get the Burst Rockets and Meson Bolt added to it.

One thing about the defenses though is that the AI rarely passes through a grav well you own, so you really only need to heavily fortify a couple of choke points around an area of the map that you decide you can't lose.  (At least 8 planets is preferable.)

-Twi /)

Sovas and Marzas can kill the militia pretty quickly but you're better going for the Sova and Akkan combo is you want to kill militias and expand really fast.

Corsev is no good for early game expansion in eco slots since you have to sacrafice frigates in order to get the most use out of it. It's main purpose as a starting cap is to get you great AOE damage on the front line slots in MP quickly.

Dunov never good as a starting cap, I agree there. Most likely a 2nd or 3rd cap depending if you actually wanted to invest in 1 but they work best in pairs.

Kol is only good for a desert or terrain with heavy militias if you actually started that close to one. Even then I wouldn't go for it since by the time you got a astroid and moon you can fund 10-20 Corvettes with your Akkan to expand even better. I would repute against the tankiness factor since no one ever focus fires on it but then again it is AI.

In online game the marza outclass the corsev and the sova imo.

The amount of bombing time u save with planet raze is huge and if ur fighting over a roid or moon denying the enemy the opportunity to build repairbays/facs is great.


I also think playing vs Ai is stupid and mindless. Any retard can beat the Ai coz it's just so dumb and consistent.

Any strategy u implent vs a Human can be implented vs an Ai with alot more effect because it doesn't know the best way to counter.

So anything I say will hold true in both offline and online play.

The starting strategy i posted is pretty generic, and it works well for me vs vicious aggressive AI's. You can put any cap ship where the Kol is, and it will still work. I just happened to chose the kol. You can chose an Akkan if you want to, and you can skip the colony frig. Ninja cap worlds while you are attacking them (just make sure you take out any siege frigs first). There really is no one "right" strategy to start a game, because any combo could work. Especially vs the AI. As long as you capture worlds quickly. Just don't forget to upgrade the infrastructure, and build extractors! Experiment, and see which strategy works for you.

YES the Pirates DO prioritize trade ships. Trade ports have saved my ass on several occasions during a huge ass pirate raids.

Building static defenses is a must if you don't want an AI fleet knocking on your door. If an AI scout sees a world with no defenses at all the AI fleet wont be far behind. Building a few hangar defense, and a turrets usually makes the AI pull "The Brave Sir Robin" Maneuver.

As I normally play with AI on Free for all mode they take time and attack each other. I know my expansion method leans to the more n00bish style, but against AI it works. first go for colonisesr cap, make sure resourse asteroides are being built on/have mines on them, 3 or 4 scouts and max the rest of fleet cap on basic ships. go for asteroids first and do the pop research (or whatever its called) for em and build lab. take other and upgrade other locals that dont need research, do research and take over an upgrade those. I normally have about 5 or 6 planets before the first pirate raid and a fair income.

5 planets is normally enough income to justify increasing fleet supply.

research, scouting, building up, scouting and taking planets oh and did i mention scouting?

they tend to help.

the AI pulls "The Brave Sir Robin" maneuver, as MS, puts it way too often. out number them say 2-1 or more and they bravely run away.

AI chickening out of fights it could win has been a problem since original sins. There was a time when ONLY the pirates put up a decent fight.

I have seen both extremes with the AI. In the early days of the betas the AI would send endless trickles of suicide fleets. Then came "The brave sir robin" AI where lvl 6 cap ships would run away from just a few frigates, or a massive frigate fleet would run away from a single cap ship.

All things considered the AI is much better since original sins, but it still needs some work. On occasion the AI still runs away from fleets it can easily defeat. On the other hand the AI suicide itself on starbases. Dunno why we cant seem to find a decent middle ground when it comes to the AI.

Its rare for me to run away from a fight, unless i know im not going to win. the surrender button dose not exsist either. its total victory or total annilation. that being said, is there a reason the AI seems to surrender at the drop of a hat?

I think its just a numbers game based on a numbers game in ships, statcounttype, damage taken, and DPS. If a single AI cap ship sees x number of a certain roletype it automatically runs away. I am not exactly sure how the AI determines if it can win, or lose a fight, but its supposed to simulate a fight or flight response. Least that's how i see it. The Dev's can provide a better explanation.

It does work most of the time. Fleets engage in battle, and if a fleet takes too much damage, and loses too many ships it retreats like it should. Problem is it doesnt work well vs Starbases. The AI will b-line suicide run starbases most of the time. Dev's said they will work on that. TBH i would rather see more of a no retreat/no surrender AI. Than a "Brave Sir Robin" AI.

Thats not exactly what I meant, though its nice to know. There's been a couple of times on Rebellion when an AI will just surrender (quit the game) even when not in any serious trouble. I played a 4 way last time and took a couple of an AI's planets and it just surrendered, did not even attack their homeworld.

Could be tha game knowing something we don't.  Me and Oddski Boddski did a comp stop a couple days ago and the vas AI we were fighting surrendered while still maintaining half it's fleet(I assume at 3rd fleet upgrade) and around 6 planets.  Maybe it just understood that we currently had more ships at the time, and with its ally dead, it was doomed to fail?  No way to know witthout detailed knowledge of the AI's script.  I personally don't like that they surrender at all.  I like to wipe em out.

-Twi /)

I agree about no surrender, but too many people whined about having to totally annihilate a faction, and how long it took. I dont mind AI surrender if the AI didnt surrender when it still had a fighting chance, or worse. Surrender while it has a superior force.

The AI will never be as good as a human opponent. I dont know what to say other than the AI needs more work.

Only way I could see making it even is to give it auto/permanent-planet vision once it has had a ship in a grav-well.  So it can build a fleet to counter yours.  But that would probably take a lot more work than I think it would.....

-Twi /)

Thats what different victory conditions are for, don't want to have to completely kill an AI faction then put Cap ship victory or  homeworld victory on. besides if your playing against more than one AI you normally have to kill off their remnants to get more planets anyway. A lot of RTS games I've played require total or near total annihilation of the enemy, and some have different victory conditions. In  Starcraft you merely have to blow up all their buildings, so why not have an AI surrender after it loses all its planets. besides differing victory conditions are what make games more interesting....then again the current ones were only added in rebellion.

 Lol i like how you insult the OP and praise your godliness all in the same breath.

What a douch

I think if you are losing to the easy ai, you lake the mental facilities to ever be good at this game.  Use common sense, build multiple colonizers to start the game (2-3).  Use corvettes to kill siege, lrm, cap the planet, build turrets to kill the rest while you are working on the next planets.

Also don't waste money early on building cobalts for expansion purposes.  This is wrong.  Since you really only need to kill siege and lrm before capping planets, corvettes are much more efficient on a cost basis.

Also since some idiot said that the Kol was the "3rd most useful starting cap" I wanted to make sure I gave you the real list before you let crappy players pollute your newb brain.  The Kol is tied for the least useful capital ship starting as TEC, and one of the worst in the game as well.  It might be decent if you have a little bit of skill and experience, but never as a starting capital ship and never for newbs.  I have to stress this over and over again with baddies, just because it says 'battleship", it is not the best capital ship for killing enemies.  That would be the marza.

1. Akkan - colonize, ion bolt is great for FFing caps, TU good for outranging immobile starbases with ogrovs.  Armistice nice and makes your capital ship invulnerable if you are not retarded.

2. Marza - rad bomb good for targeting low health sbs, raze planet useful for adding siege power, IS ok but not my favorite, and MB is fantastic.

3. Corsev - disclaimer: need to be pretty skilled to use effectively, but can counter corvette spam (if i remember correctly, i never build these)

4. Sova - embargo is great against braindead players and all levels of AI, missile platforms provide free dps, and rapid manufacturing is awesome for pumping out a just-in-time fleet.

T5. Kol - only good for late game counter to mass strikecraft.  need more than one kol to enhance the flak burst ability.  by itself early game, you are doing it wrong.

T5. Dunov - i mean.... can be useful, but mostly for supporting other capital ships so it really isn't a good starter choice

Dunov is definitely the worst, but the Kol and Marza are at least on equal ground, at 3rd, not 2nd.  Marza is only a good stsrt on a small map if you plan to rush.  Other than that, Missile Barrage is its only redeeming feature.  Corsev and Sova both have the fleet support capability to take up the 2nd tier on their own as well.  Sova can drop turrets, and Corsev steals ships.  Both add to your current firepower.  (Corsev could be concidered slightly more effective, since the stolen ships are permanent, but overall, the Sova provides a less specialized role.)  And placing Kol in 3rd has nothing to do with its name.  It has the highest survivability, excellent abilities for wiping out enemy fleets, and is particularly effective against Phase Missiles with its adaptive forcefields ability(Which should be nerfed slightly, but made passive.)  The only legitimate complaint about the kol is its tendency to run out of antimatter more quickly than the other caps.  This is because its abilities are all geared towards frontline combat!  A ship with one or two good combat abilities and one or two support/utility abilities won't be using Antimatter at the same rate, imagine that...

I can agree that more than one is necessary for flak burst, but that's true of most capitol ships late game.

-Twi /)