If you put them all in the same fleet, they will end up in the same place. You need to make two fleets if you want them to stay at seperate planets.

The leader is your sub-selected entity (simliar to warcraft 3). Use tab and shift-tab to change the subselected entity to a leader of your choice.

Yeah, I seem to have a handle on fleets a little more now, and I can eventually see them replacing ctrl group altogether for most purposes in Sins. But the way they pin up at the top of the Empire Tree still makes me think they are ctrl group at times (which don't seem to be displayed anywhere), and really makes wish there was a way to bind some keys to select fleet 1, fleet 2, etc. I am still hitting "1" constantly because it seems like it should grab the fleet off the top of the tree.

That's a design decision You'll find that it's quite advantageous to group ships within fleets by control groups (group 1 for cobalts, group 2 for LRMs, group 3 bombers, etc). That way you have a finer control of your fleet

That said, there's nothing stopping you from creating a control group with the whole fleet. The only thing is ships that automatically join the fleet won't automatically join the control group.

I should also add that fleets are much more intelligent than pure control groups. There's some nifty fleet AI that doesn't come into play if you just dump your selection in a control group.

Hmm, maybe I will just stick all my Cap ships in a control group since their numbers don't change so much. Then anytime I move them the everchanging fleet will follow, provided one of the caps is the fleet leader right?

Seems an awkward workaround though, would still prefer to be able to bind keys for selecting first fleet, second fleet, third fleet, etc.

Not saying this is a bad idea, it's actually pretty nifty Shouldn't be hard to implement, either. In the meantime, it doesn't take much longer to click the fleet icon on the empire tree (or zoomed in to where you can see the icon) to select the whole fleet without a hotkey.

Hi there. I'm also almost brandnew to this game. Only found out about it a month ago.

Been playing RTS for quite a few years, some with more succes than others, also played GCII quite a lot (heck I even played Masters of orion 2 back when it was released), so I've got quite a few years on my back.

Here's how my first actual game went down and my impressions for it:
So far the impressions are generally good. Like Tekkor I started out with a 1vs1 in a random map on easy after completing the tutorials, and I decided to play as TEC with opponent on random race. Fate would have it that my oppnent was made TEC as well...All the game mechanics worked basically like a watered down version of GalCivII, which of course is very neccessary since it's all now realtime, + the element of RTS gaming.

Luckily I didn't get caught in too many pitholes. Realised pretty soon that crystals was my main bottleneck for my economy, money worked out pretty well with upgrading the planets to stop them from being a liability, and generally keeping my military to a minimum. Made a few tradeposts, a few research facilities of one and the other kind, and generally kept my empire working.
One thing that annoyed me immensely was the pirates. Not really the bidding war, I was always floating some +10000 credits, but when I decided to end the pirate menace by going to their system I was quite shocked.

I hade missed out a bit on the intelligence reports my scouts had left behind, so when my carrier class capital ship and some 10 frigates of mine jumped in, they found some +50 pirate frigates +17 defense cannons!
After exhanging a bit of fire with the pirates I had to beat a hastily retreat with litle losses. After that I generally left the pirates alone. I expanded my forces quite a bit and started taking over some more planets and whack my opponents settlements off the map, since I though he had started becoming a tad too agressive in his colony expansions. Ressources was always plentiful, never used the black market even once. Made sure to research refining methods and make a few refineries to keep the crystals flowing. Metal almost took care of itself.

After at while I had assembled an okay big fleet. My main capital ship had reached level 6, and I had built another capital ship, that first one on the list which is made for close combat, forgot it's name, which was slowly approaching level 4. Putting the hammer down on the computer wasn't very hard. My two capital ships, with plenty of bomber support, 3 siege frigates and some 15 of those autocannons cruisers made for a plenty good force. I went directly to my opponents capital planet and whiped out everything in the sector. It was annoying though that the computer almost build up the systems behind me with the same speed that I teared them down. He was even still bidding some +3000 each round of pirates to get me down. I let him win one of the bit wars and soon a pirate fleet came and leveled one of my colonies with a force of some 40+ frigates.
I pretty much ignored that. It's not fun loosing a colony of course, but my main fleet was in the other end of the solar system, and I wanted to see the extend of what the pirates would do against me. For some reason, they really hated the trading station and the freighters. After it had been brought down, they went after the two research facilities I had there. Eventually they just got tired and slowly left the system.

After I had crippled my oppenent to the point where all he had was the occasional capital ship showing up here and there, just to get blown apart in 20 seconds, I decided that the pirate menace would have to stop. All my ships was pretty much fully upgraded at that point. Full shields, full armour, guns running hot all the time and two capital ships with so much veterancy that it could make the Galactica envious.
I knew it wouldn't be anywhere near easy to take on the pirates. I hade my scout crafts doing occational runs through their system and planting probes there, and when I added up their number of crafts I realized that they had over 230 crafts in just their sector!!

I made a fleet number 2, with two capital ships as frontrunners and 20 autocannon cruisers to support them. All in all my force numbered some +50 crafts. I jumped at the pirates at the same time from two sides aaaaaaaaaannnndd.....I was totally obliberated. My fully upgraded, multivetted fleets of state of the art crafts was nothing against the sheer numbers of the pirates. At that point I just saved the game and quite, having gone on for some 3½ hours with that one game.

Gonna finish it later, but I think from now on I'm gonna leave the pirates alone. Somehow I think they are unbeatable. At least it will cost me horrendous ammounts of crafts to take them down, and meanwhile my opponent is just building himself up in peace. Pretty annoying to be the strongest power in the solar system and I can't even take down a pocket of bandits....

Great game though, I'm sure it's gonna get even better once I get past the "Learning the ropes" part and start going online to see how I fare against human opponents. Somehow, I can imagine that my problems with the pirates will be nothing compared to what I will face online...

You can use the ctl+# to make control groups, which are different than fleets and won't show up in the empire tree, yet. (There's a large group of us that won't take no for an answer from the devs about incliding the ctl+# groups in the empire tree like B3(?) had). But the ctl+# groups are good for one key choosing, and you can include the group to jump together.

Other than that, SINS is easy to learn, hard to master, since there are many different ways to build, gather resources, colonize, fight, etc. Playing with yourself is a non-embarrassing way (except for Eeets, anything he does is embarrassing) to learn what is best for your style of play. Hint, build the first cap ship on the left when you are just learning, they are the most balanced in abilities. You have to build a cap ship factory as one of the first structures you build, then build resources excavators to get crystal and metal. You need a scout to see what's what (first frigate on the left) and a colony ship (botom row, left most) to colonize planets after youclear out the local militias with your cap ship. Don't forget that you need to build up planets or you lose credits. Once you figure out what kind of game play style you favor, you need to play a LOT to see what works for you. THere's a lot to juggle, best way is to play, play, play.

There are some strategy threads, and zoomba should migrate some of our threads over to the main boards, we had a lot of discussions about what ship does what to who and for how many cookies.

pek

Don't think we'll be seeing control groups up on the tree at this point It's easy enough to get used to it, though. Can select a whole fleet with a click on the icon, which usually isn't any more effort than pressing a key.

Pirates are icky in large numbers, but beatable! You're playing as the TEC, which have some interesting toys to play with. As you're rebuilding your fleet, take a look at the Marza and Dunov capital ships! The Marza (when leveled up)can do some AoE damage, and the Dunov is a very good complement to the Kol

And don't mistreat your Hoshiko cruisers, they save lives

Sunesen...

Yeah my second game went pretty similar to yours. I learned alot on it and it lasted about 4 hours. I posted about it on another thread here somewhere. Basically I just kept my bid higher then the other guy...I upgraded all planets to get out of the red and then popped trade ports down everywhere.

I basically had 2 fleets. My first fleet had the first TEC capital ship to the far left...then the repair one. Plus about 20 various frigates and I had 2 of those cruisers in each group...the ones that help leadership or whatever.

The second fleet was about the same with 2 different Capital ships. My highest Capital ship got to level 6 I think at games end. One of them was the one that specialized in fighters had like 4 or 5 squads.

The other opponent wasnt too bad....the pirates had a bout a million ships so I just outbid and avoided them. I had like 80,000 in cash in surplus at games end and a ton of metal as well.

My game tonight Im going to try a bit smaller system...like a 9 planet or so system rather then the 14 one....perhaps trim a bit of time off the game.

This is comming from someone who hasn't actually played yet but from what I've gathered in the forums the big pirates isn't all that unrealistic. Think of it this way... your playing a single system power slowly expanding... from what I gather from the storyline is the Pirates are actually multisystem organized crime syndicates... Mafia if you will. They just have more resources at thier disposale than you will until you are also a multisystem powerhouse. then they likely arn't much of a challenge.

I'm going to try and read up more on this tonight, but what exactly are you doing on the black market if you don't mind me asking?!? I opened the BM and Pirate screen and didn't have a clue what it all meant. I even tried bribing the pirates, but up a good amount of credits and they still came after me!

Thanks,
~JO

my impresions as newb to this game....good lord i love it
nw only to tweak it a bit after last reaserch max numver of ships to be endless(or nukber of owned star systems x10(caps)) make cariers able to caryy a few more fighters(especialy capital cariers) make galaxy consisting of 300 starsystems 10 or more actual players systms having 2 suns and more.... now if i wouldn't have to go anywahere tomorow i'd eb done by morning..... but i do have one question though

is there a way to mod pirate attack timer? i'd love it to be set on few hours for such a map
...would also just love to remove attack missions
and making ceasefire before i can set up trade alliance(see no point if my and his ships end up dead right after entering system)

The black market lets you buy/sell crystal and metal. If you need more of something to get an upgrade NOW, you can buy what you need, at a cost. Use the black market in the begining because you will normally have more credits than resources, and research costs resources.

The pirate screen is just that. A BIG gotcha is that you have to constantly monitor the pirates if you get into a bidding war. It's a lot like e-bay, you can get outbid at the last second before they launch, which is a random time. So you have to keep close watch, you can't just bribe them once and forget about them, whoever you bid against WILL raise the bribe. That said, a pirate raid can be devastating in the early game. Or a good way to make opponents stay close to home.

pek

I'm gonna have to look into those cap ships in case that i (most likely) run into that situation again

Just finished up. Had my fleets hunt down the remnants of my opponent. Biggest pain was catching those stray colony ships before they could set up shop again behind my lines. Laste exactly 4 hours and 4 minutes.

Upon examining the score board (statistic heaven) I noticed that my primary income did indeed come form my planets trading posts. My opponents main income came from planets, but he did manage to hunker down on some nice planets in his corner of the map. My side was mostly asteroids and vulcan planets. But lotsa things was learned

Next time I'm probably gonna see what it's like with multiple opponents, and keeping the pirates away to make sure they don't disrupt the balance. I wanna see what the computer actually has to offer. Gonna try a new race as well. Could get very interesting