Hoshikos are MUCH cheaper than overseers, and on a per-cost basis one of the best damage sinks in the game. You can spam these guys with virtual impunity, there's nothing that can effectively counter them. Their secondary ability is absolutely wicked, greatly diminishing the damage of your frigates if you can't disable the hoshikos. A great unit overall, far better than the Overseer IMO.
I've seen a lot of people analyze that TEC is second best the whole way through, and Advent's advantage begins earlier on if played right. Other people seem to think as you say, that Vasari have the early game, TEC mid, and Advent late. While the Vasari are pretty blatantly skewed towards the early game, I tend to think that TEC and Advent have different strengths and weaknesses at mid and late game, and which one is stronger will depend on the styles and skill levels of the playe
If Advent are down to their homeworld and have a massive fleet defending it, TEC can just build a few superweapons and nuke it out from under you.
Against the AI you can easily get a full fleet of level 6+ caps, so it's not all bad. Anyways, early game I'd say Vasari come out kings, late game Advent come out kings. TEC is the game's real economic faction, usually beating down an enemy through attrician and perseverence (and lots of Hoshikos) rather than a quick and decisive attack.
You have to save the maps into the correct folder. For me (and the vast majority of Vista users) it's C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Galaxy Aside from that, ensure you've patched to the most recent version of the game. You'll need to use Impulse to do that.
TEC has the better economy, for sure, but Advent has the better fleet. It's highly presumptuous to say that either faction is better. Economy means jack shit if the enemy fleet is just steamrolling your's time and time again while money just stockpiles because you can't use it all, and a strong fleet means jack shit if you don't have the cash to keep it at full fighting strength.
Vasari is definitely the strongest early game faction. However, those strengths taper off and their only redeeming factors late game are their civilian phase techs and those wonderful phase missiles that penetrate shields. Not enough if Advent or TEC get the upper hand. Personally, I'd say that Advent have the edge over TEC late-game, but it's less pronounced than Vasari's early game advantage.
I'd agree that Emergency Facilities is crap. However, part of the problem is that siege frigates aren't a real threat, so there's no point in investing in this planet upgrade. The first level is acceptable, doubling the hit points of a planet albiet at a stteep cost, but after that it's just obsenely expensive. Definitely needs a buff along with siege frigates, either to give more health or to be less costly.
You can't do the Skirantra cluster trick against Dunovs, [i]because they'll magnitize the Skirantra[/i]. Like most anti-strike craft abilities, the only real counter to magnetize is to keep your strike craft spread out so any one casting won't slaughter your entire strike craft force. Keep in mind that magnetize also damages the unit the strike craft crash into, not just the strike craft. It's not as effective as flak burst at purely killing strike craft, but it actually tur
I think you mean sleepless nights. Sins is a great game that can whittle the hours away shockingly fast. For people who like this sort of game, Sins really comes across as a masterpiece.
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[quote]Sorry guys, I really have no experience with the Halcyon as I mainly play TEC and sometimes Vasari, but I was genera;;y commenting on their pitiful strike craft capacity and direct dmg potential. I understand you guys are agreeing with me on that point? All Carrier Caps should start with more Strike Wings! and max out at 9/10. For my part I know the SOVA is a peice of [censored] ![/quote] The one 'itch' I have with giving carrier caps extra strike craft
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The AI doesn't counter capital ships very well, plus you get lots of experience because the AI gets units killed carelessly, so you typically have much higher levels in singleplayer than multiplayer. That said, the Halcyon is perfectly respectable in multiplayer. The weakness of capital ships really comes out more in MP than SP, where players will use well prepared comboes to finish them off quickly, and it's harder to get your own caps up to higher levels. They're not bad, it's j
The AI will disable the Marza if it has a cap ship with the appropriate ability and the anti-matter. Often times (more than half the time, in fact) it doesn't have such a cap ship in its fleet, or it's run out of anti-matter or I can just disable that cap and then barrage away. The AI is purely reactive, and not proactive, so it's really easy to set it up for a full Marza barrage. I can't speak for players, and I know quite a few are careless or ignorant, a player will learn
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You know, I can understand people finding the Sova sub-par, and I can see not finding repair cloud worthwhile. However, calling the Halcyon worthless is another matter entirely. First and foremost, it's your only anti-strike craft cap as the Advent. Given how powerful strike craft are in the current version of the game, this automatically makes it a must-have in the mid-late game. Beyond that, energy amplification aura is a big boon to any army.
Depends on the map size. If it's a bigger map where rushes are impractical, then do it right away, since the investment will pay off before your enemy can actually strike you. Small maps, definitely delay because your fleet won't be large enough if they hard rush.
Keep in mind uncolonizable planets don't have loyalty, and therefore always function at 100%.
1) no 2) if you've disabled auto-cast for its other abilities, a Marza should continue to fire for its full duration. However, there are abilities that can disrupt missile barrage, and a good opponent (usually not an AI...) will make sure to do that promptly. 3) turning on auto-cast depends on the ability. In a huge battle, motherships can just spam shield regeneration or malice anywhere at any time and get away with it, so they're great choices. However, it
A wormhole isn't assured to be a two-way link. If a wormhole's target is not another wormhole, then you cannot return to your origin from the destination. While this a fairly rare layout on most maps, you should pay attention to it because using such a wormhole can be a serious risk.
I didn't say not to capture asteroids. Their metal extractors may not be as useful as the ones in neutral territory (like asteroid fields), but they're still important assets and well worth the cost to acquire. As well, you can build structures in these systems once you own them, including trade ports, repair bays, and research labs. The problem is that a lot of players ignore asteroid fields outright. What I'm saying is to give them a fair priority, but not reverse th
Pirates that run away as soon as bounty is depleted could be a problem, simply because in a scenario that is not 1v1, bounty usually [i]does[/i] deplete before the pirates even reach their intended target. Other changes would be required in conjunction to make that work. However, the piracy system needs an overhaul anyways.
I totally agree with you. I'd like to see pirates issuing multiple waves at once against different people, and not just suicide waves, but actively attacking and retreating against different targets. Having different settings for pirate activity (heavy, light, normal, off) is something that would be nice, as well.
I recommend going for refining magnate concurrently with this one, and then relying on selling resources on the black market for income. Play a map with lots of uncolonizable planets (asteroid fields, gas giants, etc) because they produce the most crystal and metal incomes.
While a little flak support can be helpful, you're usually better off building more carrier cruisers and building fighters than investing in flak. Also: 40 cobalts!? are you nuts? You're going to get slaughtered by LRF's. I build a couple cobalts as necessary at the start of the game for colonization purposes, and then otherwise I don't touch them unless I see someone skipping directly to carriers. They're decent mid-game support with saboutage reactor, b
Orbital Refineries are a bad deal in most cases. Trade ports are a far better use of your time and efforts. In most cases, it's better to build a trade port to earn extra credits and then spend the excess on the black market. It's only late game when you have lots of extractor upgrades that refineries become useful, and even then I almost always place them on planets that would break my trade chain. One thing you have to remember to do is upgrade your planet populati
Click on the planet. In the command card there's a list of menus (including the logistics building menu). On the upper-left hand corner of the command card there's a wireframe planet icon. Click on that and you'll have access to the planet upgrade menu. One of these upgrades increases your logistics capacity.