The changes I'd like to see to the Ankylon are the following:

Disruption Matrix:  Change the Vorastra's level 5 ability 'The Maw' to a channel so disruption matrix can actually interript it

[comments:  this would give the TEC loyals their much needed countermeasure to The Maw.  Despite this being a change to the Vorastra there would be no collateral damage, as the Ankylon has the only interrupt which can affect titans]

Furious Defense(rework):  Change to a passive.  While the Ankylon has at least 95% of it's hull points it regenerates 1.5/3/4.5/6 antimatter per second.  Whenever it's hull drops below 95%, this antimatter regen bonus stops and is replaced with +20/25/30/35 hull regen/s in a nonfriendly gravity well or +30/40/50/60 hull regen/sec in a friendly gravity well.

[comments:  this would solve one major problem with the Ankylon: it's vulnerability to beign antimatter drained and ignored.  with 4-6 AM/sec ther only way to realistically keep the ankylon out of antimatter would be to actually focus it and force it to convert it's antimatter regen into hull regen.  Moreover, despite it's weak weapon systems and lack of a passive that actually turns the tide of battle, this ability would more or less ensure that the ankylon maintains a presence in even long battles by continuing to support it's fleet without fear of AM-exhaustion.

The weapons boosts are removed, but honestly I think the passive natures of the change & antimatter regen more then make up for it.  If it weren't enough, some ability cooldown % could always be added to the >95% hull portion along with the antimatter regen.]

Group Area Shield:  Additionally affected allies regenerate 10 shield/sec. 

[comments:  this would allow TEC fleets of frigates to actually survive multiple titan AoEs.  At present their frigates can survive the first AoE because they have shield & hull points vailable.  But the first AoE knocks out shields.  Any hull damage is easily restored by hoshikos in the 30 or so seconds before the next blast, but the TEC have no quick way of restoring shields.  As a result for the second AOE frigates have only their hulls, and even with group area shield most frigates don't have enough hull points to survive a titan AoE with all their shield points depleted.

10 shield/sec would be plenty to recover most of their frigate's shields between titan AoEs, allowing their frigates to actually confront each titan AoE with something close to the full measure of their survivability- at least until neemy weapons fire comes into play.]

Inspire and Impair:  Additionally affects enemy strikecraft.

[comments:  Affecting both types of strikecraft may be too strong, but this change would mean that I&I would at least be guaranteed to affect the portion of enemy frigates which the TEC loyals have no control over: the enemy.  If they choose to mass carriers themselves they choose to give up the friendly portion of this ability, but this remove's the ability for the opponent to negate the effectiveness of this skill by building what is likely already the best late game fleet.

Moreover, this means that as a titan level 6 ability, I&I would actually have  alate game use- as it would affect all late game enemy frigates.

Lastly it gives the TEC loyals another tool for dealing with bombers, the bane of any defensive fortification based strategy.  The TEC in general ahve always been wanting for such a tool(Advent have TK push & shields on tactical structures, Vasari have Jam weapons & phasic traps)]

A pretty hefty set of changes I know, but I think that's the sort of thing that will be necessary for the Ankylon to actually be competitive in the propensity of a support-titan.

That's the thing. It is hard to determine what really works in Sins against the AI, especially compstomps. The AI does not properly micromanage its ships, does not focus fire (well), or builds proper counters. You can get away with almost any strategy or build order if you're competent enough. Against human players who know the game, lots of things that work against the AI just do not work in practice, so only the truly best strategies are viable.

Clearly you know this, its just some of us want to make this clear that a lot of the strategies single players advertise as "Good" only works in single player. 

No.

1. Investing too much in static defenses will get you killed in MP. You must only starbase the most vital worlds. And there are very few cases where you can both afford two starbases and that adding that additional starbases is necessary for defense.

2. In multiplayer you'll just encourage your enemy to build ridiculous numbers of bombers or to bypass your starbases if you build two. Or worse, they'll just realize you aren't a threat and go around you and kill of the rest of your teammates, until you're forced to quit because it's 5v1 (FYI knowing when to quit is important in MP, everyone will hate you if you make them fight to the last planet).

If all that we're saying sounds weird and mysterious to you, I encourage you to try it, though it might not be fun at first. I was basically a single player only player for several years with Sins, though I followed the balance discussions on the forums so I had a good idea of what the multiplayer metagame was. And I always believed those guys over my own observations because I knew I was just playing for fun. Still, seeing just how quickly some of the pros can steamroll you can be eye opening, and teaches you just how many "bad" habits you develop in single player that you do for fun but do not really help you win.

This line is going get you some "advice" about MP and what you "must" do to be competitive.  To put those inevitable responses in perspective, however, consider the following:

01.  The specific form of MP to which they refer is a sub-genre of the game, and a pretty small one at that.  Well under 1% of the people who have actually bought one of the Sins games actually choose to play in this environment.  However, it tends to dominate the perspectives and comments on this forum.

02.  The reason that this type of MP game is so different is that they set the initial conditions to force fast play in a confined and constrained environment.  They will claim that  this does not change the "balance" of the game (although if you read Incomitatus' detailed comment above about the TEC short, medium and long games it is not hard to see that this is actually not correct as it changes the length of the games and thus the value of different factional technologies being deployed at different times), but it certainly changes the style of play that will be successful. Some, but not all, of what they say can be extrapolated to guide play against an AI opponent.

03.  Playing against the AI, either alone or with friends, is fun, as the vast majority of Sins players can readily attest.  If you enjoy this type of game, there is no need to subject yourself to the abusive "cage match" environment that I mentioned in 02. above.  Some of the players are not very nice, and if you don't do things exactly their way they can be fairly crabby about it.  It is worth noting at this point that, with friends, you are already playing a form of MP for which your tactics and suggestions are not at all inappropriate.)  Depending on initial random conditions, the games will be very different each time out of the box.  If you and your friend/friends then continue the game after the AI players are eliminated, you can experience the challenge of facing a human opponent.  In this type of environment, how you manage your respective AI opponents will definitely affect play in the endgame (so feel free to take tips on the short game from the self-proclaimed "experts", but with a grain of salt).  In a large universe, however, the game will definitely then last long enough that you will need to re-evaluate a lot of what they say about what to do and what not to do, because their games simply never last long enough for them understand how to prepare for that environment very well.

OK.  Enough about MP.  Having said that, you made three good observations:

a.  If you can get the enemy to focus on your Ankylon, it can indeed take a lot of punishment while you work on taking out his caps and/or support ships. You need to make sure it doesn't run out of antimatter, however, or you lose a lot of its fleet support value and just end up with a flying brick.  This is easier to do against the AI than it is against a human player, of course.

b.  Twin fortresses, supporting each other with docking booms, fighters and some bombers, can be an effective defensive bastion.  They will not last forever if left unsupported, so you should plan to reinforce/screen them with expendable support ships while waiting for your fleet to arrive. When the cavalry arrives, they will then provide invaluable fleet support by supplying your Ankylon and Kols with antimatter (an area in which both are somewhat weak).  In the endgame the TEC loyalist should definitely have two at each of his worlds, for this benefit as well as for the extra income that the trade facilities will provide.  In a Twin Fortress setup, one auxiliary government, one remote construction, four docking booms, four hangar bays, two trade facilities, four weapons upgrades and six defensive upgrades leaves you...ah...six over the limit, so you obviously have to do some prioritization.

c.  The TEC Loyalist economy is indeed the dominant feature of that faction.  Not especially well-suited to "cage match" play, but in the long game it really comes into its own.  It is what allows them to treat everything in their fleet except the capital ships as expendable.  So know when to retreat those caps. Even moderate capital ship losses are acceptable, however, because you can level your new ones up fairly quickly in the next large couple of battles as long as you manage them properly.  Because it comes back with all experience levels intact, the Titan is also somewhat expendable, but it can be a lonely 5 1/2 minutes while it's rebuilding.

Above all, despite what some others seem to think, it's just a game and the whole point is to have fun, and there are a lot of ways to do that.  Comments from the "pros" notwithstanding.  For example, if you choose to play against the AI with friends, you can set up situations where you trade factions and play again under similar conditions, just to compare and contrast things like how long it takes for a game to finish, or for one player to reach a certain number of planets, player stats at hourly intervals, etc. etc.

Hello Incomitatus, I've been enthralled by your essay, I loved reading it and a lot of what you say resonated a chord with me, I liked Kols in trinity and thought they weren't bad at all, until the internet convinced me otherwise, you have just reversed that conviction, your defensive starbase-spammy playstyle is one I love, and you stated a huge number of really good points that I haven't the time to cover. I know this thread is 2 years old and I do hope that you notice this reply, because I really want to know how you train your caps up to lvl 4..? I cant find it anywhere.

Can you explain how GRG isnt a good ability? Nano Dissasembler might be amazing and all, but Gauss Rail Gun combines 2 of the Jarrasuls abilities! Gravity Warhead and Nano Dissasembler can have both of their jobs done better with Gauss Rail Gun, provided you have the antimatter to sustain it's use. It wont do as much damage as the nano disassembler because it doesn't have armour shred, but the damage is instant, as opposed to a DoT, which is superior. and you cant claim the shield mitigation argument because shield mitigation affects both abilities.
As for the Adaptive force-feild argument.... my only reaction was to facepalm. Passive? You want an already near-indestructible ship to have a permanent 15-35% damage reduc with a permanent 65% middle-finger to vasari? That would make the Kol outright broken. It would be literally invincible, if Ironclad instated that change, i would make as many kols as i could at all stages of the game except the very opening, do my damndest to lvl them up as fast as i could and when i had 3-4 of them at a high enough rank to have Adaptive Forcefeild maxed out (which i could do thanks to ceasefire) i would sling them in with an Ankylon (could be just a lvl 4 ankylon, enough for even a rank 1 group sheild) and laugh at all pathetic attemps to even deal them any damage at all. It would be perhaps the most painful change to the Kol that i could think of for Vasari opponents, it would make them beat thier heads against brick walls in frustration. 
Apologies for brining up the debate 2 years later. 

Hey Hesketh,

This thread is pretty far out of date now.

If you're looking for guides, a great one was developed by GoaFan, who still posts on this board on a semi-regular basis. His is a good all-round guide, and covers important game mechanics and tactics.

If you're past the core elements of the game, a great advanced guide for those looking to play against other humans is Grimm's guide. This one is geared toward 5 on 5, which is the typical online pvp game type, but it introduces some pro level tactics that you need to know if you want to go hard against skilled humans.

I believe both of these guides can be found on this forum, but I may be mistaken. If you can't find them here, a google search for "GoaFan Guide Soase" or "Grimm's Guide Soase" should turn them up.

Good luck!