I have come to an idea to make this guide, after I have stumbled on a thread in discussion section, by Immortalits. It showed to me, that there are still new people comming to sins, and that they could make a use of a more deep guide, explaining their "most beloved race". Unless I am too lazy, I will continue with guides for Vasari and Advents. I will also try to prevent crossings, with already existing guides, aka Grimms guide or Goafans (which are really great guides, even if a bit outdated.) Especially for brand new players without any idea of the game, the Goafan's guide will be most useful, as my guide will not explain "how to build a ship", but rather how to use it, to become a good player.

P.s. Accepting any peace of advice, or missing information, or propositions, etc.

P.p.s. Check out my youtube videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS9uvcxDL3ZoJGrDkY3bdfg
and the "Ultimate Balance Mod"
https://discord.gg/8Xa39mb

It all starts with a terran planet, 2 frigate factories, 1 capital ship factory, 3 mines and 2 scouts.
Getting 2 additional scouts and setting them to auto scout is a must have, as knowing the map layout, you will know in which direction you have to move to colonize, and in which direction you should fortify.

Now it is about getting your first capital ship. While most of the frigates/cruisers will have to be researched, you can get any kind of capital ship directly.



You have 6 to choose. And for reasons of good ads, most new players go with a kol battle ship. But do not let the capitalistic propaganda, with all those shiny trailers, sway you into such a mistake. Kol battleship is the only capital ship from TEC arsenal, which is completely useless, unless you have mastered every possible aspect of the game. As it's abilities are inferior, and it's raw firepower is insignificant. A Dunov capital ship, being a support one, delivers more impact, than a Kol battleship.

The second most logical pick, is the colonizer capital ship - the Akkan battlecruiser. And this is the right one to go. It is strong, tough, has simple abilities to understand and requires very few micromanagement. The only weakness - little firepower. It desperately needs some cover, be it cobalts, corvettes, or even scouts.

Judging by my experience with new players, from here on, they do not know which capital ship to get, so they just double down on Kols or akkans. And that is somewhat right, as other 4 capital ships require a deeper understanding of the game. There will be a section below, describing every single one in depth. But for now only capital ship worth of mentioning is the Marza.

Marza is the siege cap (capital ship) for TEC. It allows for fast pushes into enemy territory, it's raw fire power allows it to destroy starbases 1v1, and it's lvl 6 ability is the ultimate counter to any spam, but the fighters/bombers. You may go with it, if you are up to an aggressive game play, but I would not recommend doing so, until you have mastered akkan.

There are 7 frigates to choose from.

Arcova Scout Frigate, is your scout unit - as the name tells. Using it for fights is not advisable, even if you happen to have no resources for real war ships. The only fighting they can take, is against other scouts, or much smaller asteroid militia forces. (look into grimms guide, how to colonize planets with a colonizer frigate and 5 scouts). Only thing worth noting, is that they have additional damage against siege frigates, so if you are up for rapid expansion, with planetary turrets, scouts are more cost efficient than cobalts.
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Cobalt Light Frigate. As the wiki says, it is the work horse for the TEC fleet. Well, it is a lie. In current patch (1.94) corvettes are the real work horses of any fleet. In a "fair fight", cobalts win against corvettes. However war is not fair. Due to cobalts having only frontal weapon, slow turn rate, and small range, it is very easy to micro a corvette fleet to be behind cobalts, and therefore ignoring any of their firepower. And even if not, corvettes can always ignore a fight they cannot win, cobalts not so much.
Furthermore, cobalts have a stupid habit, of overflying their targets. Aka if they chase an enemy capital ship, they will accelerate to a speed, where they overfly the said capital ship, than try to turn, try to turn again, as the capital ship flies by them at full speed, accelarate again, and do it so long, that you miss 70% of your fire power. The drunken proletariat commanding cobalts, can be taken under command of a local not so drunk commissar, who will obey to your orders, but you will have to make a ton of unnecessary clicks, wasting your time, yet killing that nasty capital ship.
The only thing cobalts are good at on their own, is shooting at static targets. So you can use them against ai, but against humans, who will deliberately order their ships to fly in circles to troll you, it will be painful.
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Javelis LRM Frigate, is a beauty. It's long range, allows to make a few shots, even before enemy gets into firing range, and it's dps, along with the damage multipliers, make them melt your enemy. You have spotted an enemy Progenitor class capital ship, which wrecked havoc on your cobalt fleet? Well, it sounds like the right time, to deliver a few hundred missiles, relieving their souls, and sending them to their gods. Javelis, or shortly Javs, will make advent caps disappear in seconds. And with Akkan capital ship ability, they can even outrange enemy starbases, killing a fully upgraded ones, without taking a single casualty!
The only weakness of Javelis is their low hp. AOE abilities will wreck them. And corvettes, who can shorten the distance much faster than any other ship, will also melt through their thin armour. A few flak could be helpful to protect them against corvettes. But legends say, that a pro Javelins along with akkan battle cruiser can even win against corvettes.
Maybe you are the one, to revive this legend?
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Krosov siege frigate. It's very costly, and has no use against ships. I mean, even scouts counter them, nuff said! The only thing they are good at, is the only thing, no other cruiser or frigate can do. Bomb planets!
But due to their high cost, and vulnerability, use them only if you are sure, enemy has no ships around.
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Garda Flak Frigate, is disliked and ignored by 95% of competitive mp players. They require a lot of micro, and their usefulness is very limited. In fact, flak kills only corvettes and bombers. Not even fighters! Well Gardas do kill fighters, but they rebuild faster, than you kill them, so you cannot rely on them for that job. And since no one builds bombers, the only job Gardas get used to, is to kill corvettes. Which sounds as inferior, yet happy to "Garda Production Ltd.", even after recent corvette nerf, they are still used in 70% of fleets, so it is not all that stupid, to get those.
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Protov colony frigate, has no military use. It's only usage is to colonize planets AND to colonize "Neutrals". Neutrals are the lonely mining facilities, in uncolonizeable systems. It is very important to get those, as they have yields of 133% allegiancy, while even the closest asteroid to you, will be colonized at 90%. So if you are deciding between an asteroid with 3 mines or a neutral system with 3 mines, go for the neutral first. It will give you more resources, while saving you resources, needed for 1 social upgrade at the roid, and 250 credits per mine. In this example you save an equivalent of 1650 credits, while getting more income. Those resources could have been used for extra 3-4 cobalts.
The only other ship Protov can fight, is a scout. While lacking firepower, it has decent hp, so it wins 1v1 fight with a vasari scout, who tries to get your neutral, just do not forget to enable auto attack, as it is disabled from the start!
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And finally, the - Shriken/Stilat Corvet. The most hated and beloved unit of the game. People get hundreds of them, some people build every single game, only them, for hundreds of games. They were nerfed a bit in recent patch, yet they are still very very powerful, and versatile, making them the choice number 1 in most fleets. Just be sure that you are building only them, if you decide to get those, as there is a kind of snow ball effect with corvettes. While you can mix other ships, corvettes excel when you have only them (your capital ship aside).
Corvettes are fast, cheap & deadly. But most importantly, they have passive abilities. And it is worth saying, that TEC loyalists have the most powerful corvettes in the game, due to their ability, rivaled only by TEC rebel corvettes.
And even more importantly, they are invulnerable to most of the abilities, especially the titan abilities, making them more tough even than heavy cruisers, in certain situations

Shriken Corvet, is the TEC loyalist variant of corvette. It's ability is to half enemy ship's speed, acceleration and turn rate. And you remember sins ships dislike to rotate? Well imagine that turtle speed being halved. Due to such effect, any capital ship in range of your akkan bolt and shriken corvettes, will never make out of the gravity well. And if you get enough of them, lets say 100, even titans.

Stilat Corvet is the TEC rebel counterpart. Their ability has no such strategic use, as the TL do, and is rather straight forward. They increase received damage by 25%, which is combined with other TR bonuses, is a nice addition. Overall, your corvettes will do more damage than TL ones. However, since in sins, it are the capital ships who decide the battles, TR corvettes are not so good at killing those.

There are 7 cruisers to choose from, however not all of them are useful. But first a general overview of them.

Percheron Light carrier - the Petyr Baylish of the SOASE. Why? This cruiser is the biggest liar of the game. Just look at it's tool tip, and it will tell you "strong vs none". While in truth Percheron is the ultimate cruiser for late game and strong vs EVERYTHING. It has no own weapons, but it can use it's antimatter pool to launch 2 squads of fighters/bombers. In general, getting bombers is useless, unless you play vs ai. While bombers have higher damage, they are so fragile, and cost so much am (antimatter), that your carrier will not be able to sustain the loses, which will render your firepower down to 0. But the fighters spam, is the ultimate weapon in SOASE. There are very few AOE abilities capable of even touching the fighters, so they are like corvettes, but even better. Why better? Because if you lose corvettes, you have to rebuild them, if you lose fighters, you just wait a bit, until they are replenished.
And if your enemy tries to go for your carriers with his AOE abilities, you just spread them thinly out, and he will have to kill 1 carrier at a time, wasting lots of time, chasing, turning, accelerating, decelerating, while your fighters melt him.
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Hoshiko Robotic Cruisers - those are neat in theory, not so much in practice. Their own damage output is inferior, their damaging ability drains too much am (antimatter). Their primary roll is to repair your ships at a rate of 20 hp/sec. Sounds cool, especially considering it can stack with a repair bay, giving you 60 hp/sec. However due to their cost, and low fire capabilites, you cannot mass them to repair your entire fleet. And micro managing them to repair capital ships/titans only, is time consuming.
Such an effort may be worth it, if you are trying to save a high value capital ship, but the impact is not all that big, and the resources, both ingame, and your own input is relatively high.
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Cielo Command Cruiser - A cruiser quite useless if left for itself, but useful if microed. I would suggest to completly ignore it, for the time being, until you get used to capital ships microing, than you could try to play around with Cielo.
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Kodiak Heavy Cruiser - A heavy variant of cobalt. Can take more damage, and has higher dps. But it is tech lvl 5, while titans are tech tier 4. And most of titans are hard counters to heavy cruisers (HC). So unless you get 100 of kodiaks, enemy titan's abilities will kill them first... all at once. There are possibilities to use the kodiaks, but generally, a carrier is more reliable than a kodiak, as there are certain abilities, capable of wiping your entire kodiak fleet in a second, while carriers can always stay at a safe distance.
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Raloz Heavy constructor - has no weapons, is very expensive, and it's hp is not all that good. But it can construct giant starbases, capable of single handed destroying entire fleets. More on them below.
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Orgrov Torpedo Cruiser - in theory, the ultimate weapon to counter enemy star bases or local defences. However they are so vulnerable to direct attacks, especially by corvettes, that they are not worth it. A carrier fleet would destroy the same starbase from a safe distance slower, however without casualties. Consider Orgrov as a last resort, when nothing else is working.
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Neruda Envoy Cruiser - an unarmed diplomatic vessel. By itself, it has no impact on the battlefield. However it allows you to increase relationships with others, forge alliances, and most importantly, sign pacts, and pacts are something often ignored even by skilled players, yet for me, this makes them noobs, as pacts are easy to access, and very powerful upgrades. More on them below.

Trade ports: Provide you with credit income. Repay their costs in ca. 15 minutes. The income per trade port increases with a longer trade route, so sometimes it is better not to build trade at a planet, in order to get a longer trade route. Trade ports on the same planet do stack. It generates trade ships, which if destroyed, reduce your income for 25 seconds.

Compared to other races, a basic trade port has same yields. However Advent have 0 upgrades for their trade ports, while vasari have them, yet much later into the game, giving you a considerable advantage.

Broadcast center: This is your culture building. Use it to increase your income (10% near capital, up to 33% at distant colonies), or to deny your enemy possibility to colonize planets near you. If your culture is strong enough, you may even overthrow enemy government, making pushing into enemy territory easier. Or you could use it, to increase your antimatter regeneration, by up to 1.5 am/sec.

There are upgrades to reduce enemy build speed on planets under your culture, however the effect is rather low, so researching it is a luxury.

Orbital Refinery: This building is often ignored even by skilled players. Another big mistake, especially for TEC who suffer in resource deficit. The main reason for it being so easily ignored by players, is that it is hard to use. With trade ports you simply spam them in a line, while "orbital refinery" requires a bit of calculation process, to find the best spot.

Refinery can boost income of mining facilities. Each mining facility can operate with 3 refineries. Refinery send their working ships to adjusted systems as well, so in general, you will have 3 refineries, per 4 planets at the most. You may spread them as you like, as neither social, nor industrial upgrades affect the yields of it. However keep an eye, that you do not cross them once you reach a limit of 3, as this will be wasted resources.

It is worth noting, that refineries boost income of "neutrals" even more than from your own planets.
The exact calculations are very long, and would not fit even into such long guide like this, but a rule of thumb is, once your refinery can reach 10+ mines, it is better to build it, than a trade port, even if you have industrial specialization.

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Gauss Defense Platform: Sins wiki says it's use is limited. A huge mistake. Ofcourse it cannot fly, but it's raw power is overwhelming for it's cost. This turret costs about as a cobalt, but can take 2 kodiaks down by it's own! An impressive performance, which can be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ directly at the game start.

The only mistake one could make with Gauss canon, is to spread them on larger planets. While this makes some logic, in order to prevent enemy "bypassing" it, in practice, this renders your defences obsolete, as your enemy will face 1 turret at a time with his entire fleet.

So your best choice is to put them as tight together as possible. On asteroids put them as tight to the asteroid as possible as well, as here it is much easier to prevent bombing ships to go around.

Gauss canon should be built if you are defending yourself. Even if combat already has begun, cancel all constructeres and get the gauss cannon! Or better 5! (As most planets can house a max of 5 without upgrades.

Than bring your fleet to gauss, to receive their support, and watch enemy fleet disappear. Also should enemy capital ship bypass your defences to bomb the planet, you can always construct 1-2 new turrets in range of the capital ship, in order to kill. This way you will pretty much make his capital ship either retreat or die. (Note that you should not build the turret directly at the capital ship, as this way, your constructor ship will die to side weapons of the cap. Build the turret at the edge of it's range, and it will be perfectly enough)

While Gauss cannon is strong, researching upgrades for it, is not all that good, as the upgrades do not scale well with the needs for defenses, rendering gauss cannon obsolete later into the game.

Hangar Defences: This one desperately needs the upgrade from tier 2. As by itself, 2 squads are much inferior to the gauss cannon, and costing 4 tactical slots (or 4 gauss cannons) it is not even near in dps. However with the upgrade it gets the firepower of more than 3 Gardas, which will be very effective against enemy corvettes and strike craft. Place it close to your turrets, or star base.



Repair Platform: Is useful at tier 1, but excels with tier 2 upgrade, making it the most powerful repair bay out of all, repairing 40hp/sec. Yet lacks antimatter, so at best use it manually.

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Phase Jump Inhibitor: Increases the time a ship needs to jump by 7x, and since ships jumping are mostly incapable of shooting back, this is a big opportunity. In general you need 1 PJI on asteroids and 2 on larger planets. Also be aware of very long construction time.

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Shield generator: Protects your planet from bombardment, but you really should get a starbase with auxillary government instead. However if you get those, keep in mind that basic shield holds 30% of the damage, upgrade 1 makes it 50%, and upgrade 2 makes it 80%.

Proximity Minefield: 700 AOE damage, is nice. However Mines are very costly, and easily countered. So you could try to "trow cash at a problem" if you have an overflow, with mines, but it has low effect on balance. Also your enemy may sacifice 1 ship at a time, to trigger mines, if he is too lazy to get scouts. To stop him from doing so, disable auto attack on mines.

THIS HAS BEEN ADDED ON 31.10.2019 (or 10.31.2019 for americans)

As I was not really pleased with the initial technology section, here is the updated version. I will keep the initial one below though.
The difference between sections is that, initially I described technologies on an ingame tier base, which gives a better understanding to new players in general, but does not give insights, of what technology is better to rush, and what technology is better to postpone. You will require basic knowledge of the tech tree, as I used the "slang" names and not the ingame names for technolgies. Should it be too hard to understand - there is always the usual tech tree section to begin with.

So welcome to the updated version of the guide, where I will give more insights on technologies. The number at the beggining indicates "points", of how good the technology is. Keep in mind that some specific situations may dictate otherwise, but this rating will apply for 90-99% of the cases. Also note that while some technologies are grouped with the same score, the order I mention them, still means, that the one mentioned first, will be better in most cases.

100/100

Terran planet population I, Metal Extraction I - both this technologies pay off after 7 minutes. To compare, trade ports pay off only after 14 minutes. And trade ports are considered pretty much op in terms of efficiency.

95/100

Metal extraction II; Crystal Extraction I - same as previous section, but now it will take you 10-12 minutes to repay, depending on your expansion.

92/100

Interstellar Networks, Pervasive Economy - both of this technologies provide serious boost, but require bigger investments than many other things. Also it may be counterintuitive, but investing into 1 culture building early on, is way better, than getting trade ports, as long as you can get the required logistic slots.

90/100

Trade ports, Volcanic/Arctic colonization - Trade ports pay off in 14 minutes, and volcanics/arctic planets provide decent income. Obviously get the latter one only if you have planets of that type around, but keep in mind, that a trade port gives you 2 creds/sec, while a volcanic/arctic will give 3.5 creds/sec, just with the base 70 population, if near your capital.

85/100

Terran Population II, Crystal Extraction II - Those technologies will pay off in 15-16 minutes, which is already slower than with the trade port.
Sensor drones - utility technology, to keep active vision on your enemies, but there are other ways to do so, so it's not mandatory.


80/100
Metal extraction III; Crystal extraction III, Modular architecture - Hummer (player name) would strongly disagree on placing "Modular architecture" this low. But if we'd do the math, all technologies above will be more profitable, if you place less than 1 mining facility every 50 seconds, which is extremely fast even with expanding in 3 sides. The technology pays off, only when you get to build the cheaper factories.
As for metal/crystal extraction - even with decent amount of planets, you will still be above the **golden** 14 minutes of the trade ports.


75/100
Oceanic/Greenhouse/Ferrous Colonization - you do not want to rush the colonization of those planets, but once you reached the technologies from the list above, the investment will no longer be too big, while also providing good yields.
Basic Psidar; Culture upgrade I - support technologies, important for basic battle capabilities
Pillaged War Chest (TR ONLY) - The tolltip may be missleading. But this technology gives you 1 credit for every planetary hp you bomb. For example, by killing an enemy homeworld, you will additionally get 5600 credits.


70/100

Market discount; Extra logistic slots - utility upgrades, where it is hard to say, how long will it take for them to pay off, but if you have technologies from the list above, it is time to grab those for sure.
Counter Deployement (TL only) - if enemy is at your gates, the extra ship build speed, along with no time for reinforcements to arrive (While your enemy's ships will have to travel), will make a huge difference at the battlefield. The repayment of this technology is basicly just a few minutes, but it is this low, as it is still a niche technology.
Peace with pirates (TR ONLY) - if you play with pirates active, this will save you a lot of resources early on. However this will also lock you away from farming experience on pirates with a titan.
Refineries - if you are getting market discount, than you are low on resources. Refineries excel when you are short on resources.

65/100

Labor negotiations (diplomacy tree), Industrial Juggernaut, Quick Jump Calculation - Faster ship construction, and faster jumping will make you win equal fights, as your reinforcements will always be there sooner. Also note that faster jumping will excell, should you be jumping out of a gravity well with a jump inhibitor

60/100

Culture II; Insurgency, Basic Crew Training, Enhanced Psidar - mostly luxury upgrades, which still make your gameplay easier.

55/100

Trade cargo holds I & II - it is not as much of a worthy upgrade, unless you are into late game, but it is a requirement for the "pervasive economy" technology.

50/100

Here go pacts, envoy buffs, TL's extra 10% xp ( as it works only in owned gravity wells), other technologies may also be mentioned here, depending on the situation, but it is no longer worthy to structure them with points.

5/100

Expedited Permits, Rapid development, Catastrophe Recovery - are the absolute low priority technologies. They do provide the buffs mentioned in the tooltip, but those buffs are so insignificant, that even with infinite money, you probably should ignore those technologies.

As a continuation of further technology reevaluation. This time for military tree.

Note that I will not include starbases, or any of the alligned technologies to this list, as starbases are heavy out of balance for TEC. Which is enough of evaluation in itself.

Also note that ships will not be included here, as they are explained in the frigates/cruisers section.

100/100

HP I - best tier 1 upgrade for any race for ships.
Repair platform - while to AM heavy without upgrades, still a big advantage over other races

98/100
Armour I, HP II - armour upgrade is weaker than the hp upgrade, but it's cheaper than the tier 2 upgrade, which makes them kinda equal.

97/100

Better repair platform - gives you the best heal out of all races
Hangar with the flak upgrade (defensive tree) - it's extremely effective, but hangars are pretty costly.

96/100

Savage Thrills 35% damage (TR ONLY) - While better than the militia, this technology is in the civili tree, which locks you out of the military tree for some time.
Militia 30% damage (TL ONLY) - Great thing to rush, but keep in mind that it works only in friendly gravity wells.

95/100
Armour II, Ankylon Prototype II (TL ONLY) - Both are worthy addition to toughness of your ships

90/100
Militia 4 armour (TL ONLY); Armour III - as armour stacks diminishingly, it is not as good, as it may have been, but still strong
Timed explosives - allows your scouts to snipe enemy super weapons

89/100
Novalith cannons (TL ONLY) - TL only, cause tl get them cheaper and earlier. This way they can rush 2 of those, and snipe enemy homeworlds very early on

85/100
Ankylon Prototype I; Shields I; Turn rate for capital ships - While shield upgrades give you a flat 5% boost, as most of other hp upgrades do, if you check unit stats, you will find out that TEC have 2:1 ratio of hull:shields. So every 1% in shields is only half as effective as hull upgrades.

80/100
HPIII, Shields II, Armour IV, AM I & II - final upgrades to make your ships as tough as possible, but with much less scaling compared to previous levels.

75/100
Gauss turret upgrades - get all of them at this point. Give the priority to Messon Bolt cannon and range though. Also works for TR titan dps.

70/100
Phase Jump Inhibitor - with ai, it allows you to wipe out retreating fleets, while with humans, it is more of a "scare of" thing.
Planetary Shields - useless against usual bombardment but provide excellent shielding against novalith cannons. With upgrades reduces a novalith shell damage from 3500 to 700.
Cluster warheads (Javelis ability) - works as 12-18% dps boost, which is stronger than any other single weapon upgrade

65/100
Demolition bots; Intercept; Designate Target - Based on ships you build, get the abilities. Those are very good ones.

60/100
Weapon dps techs - there is no priority here, as it completly depends on the fleet layout you are using. But generally autocannons are the priority, as it gives you access to better fighters, and better heavy cruisers, while also providing a boost to your flak, should you be outswarmed.

50/100
Every other tech, not listed below.

5/100
Sabotage Reactor (Cobalt ability); Heavy Fallout (Krosov ability) - First ability is simply broken, and do not work as intended. While the heavy fallout is simply too weak, and has near zero impact.

Research prioritization, is what makes a big difference in people play style. Such a diversity comes mostly because people can see what "top tier players" build, but cannot see what they research. You are free to develop your own style, and live by it. I will simply point out the most obvious, and hidden techs you should go for.

First of all it is important to decide what do you go first. Military labs or civilian labs? 90% of players in multiplayer go military labs, as 1) those grant you corvettes and 2) economy wins in a long run, but if you kill your enemy before the long run, you win the game. Me, being a hipster, go for civilian labs in most cases. But it is punishing experience, so better do not repeat it at home!

Let's say you go the easier way, and pick the military lab. Your first point of research should be invested into corvettes than. Once they are researched, begin the production, fill in all of the free fleet capacity, research first fleet capacity tech for extra 100 slots, and fleet until you fill them. Only after you have ca. 50-60 corvettes, it is worth looking at other techs in the list.

Once you fulfilled this requirement, instead of continuing to fleet, it is worth making your fleet stronger. The upgrades by themselves will be cost worth, than a few extra corvettes, but it will also save you the higher fleet upkeep, caused by the second fleet capacity research. And keep in mind, that even if your entire fleet is destroyed, you will continue to pay a set fee in %, so a big fleet, is not always a reliable strategy.

So what first weapons, or hp? And if hp, hull or armour? I say hp is a better pick, since all ships have hull, armour and shields. But not all of the ships fire lasers. So hp it is. But armour or hull? In general it can be said, that 1 armour point provides ca. 5% hp. The very first armour points on a ship provide slightly more than 5%, and the higher you go, the less protection it provides, on a per point base.
However even if the first upgrades are applied to ships with still low armour values (0-2), the first hp upgrade provides us with 6% hull and 3% regen, against 0.8 armour (4% hp). And the second upgrade is 13% hp and 5% regen, against 1.5 armour (7.5% hp). Even if we round those numbers up, for ships with low armour values, we will be far away from the hull tech.

Therefore the only situation where armour research is better than hp, is when you begin researching while in active combat. This is because, ships have to regenerate the extra hull points, they get by the tech, and while in combat, the regeneration is drastically reduced. So your upgrade will apply only for newly build ships, while the 60 corvettes you are currently fighting with, will stay at the same performance niveau, they were without tech. But the armour upgrade applies instantly, giving your corvettes extra hp.

There are a few further techs valuable in certain situations. Such as a repair bay. TEC have the strongest repair bay from all races (if you upgrade them with tier 2 technology). Utilize it, while fighting in your gravity wells, and render enemy firepower to 0. But watch out for am supplies, those are depleted fast!

Another useful tech are hangars. While not so powerful at lvl 1, with tech tier 2 they get to shred enemy corvettes and fighters. 1 hangar bay will be more than enough to stop 40 corvettes from roaming your unprotected buildings.

And a final useful upgrade, hidden from simple eyes, is at the titan prototype tech I. For TL you get extra 5% shields, and for TR you get 5% fire rate. In TL case I recommend getting it even after you get armour, as TEC rely more on hull, than shields. As for TR, 5% fire rate applies for flak only, so it's worthy upgrade, only if you have ships with flak weaponary.

TIER 2

Tier 2 provides you with further ship types and their efficiency upgrades. But as I mentioned before, you either spam corvettes only, or you do not spam them at all. So if you were planning on getting those shiny javelis, just rush 2 labs, and research them, do not try to mix those ships. The anarchists commanding the corvettes, do not like being in the same fleet, with the egalitarians of the javelis fleet.

So unless you wanted some specific ship, I recommend you not to waste resources on researching them "just in case", and go for hull upgrades. At tier 2 there are no armour or shields upgrades, so there is no dilemma of what to pick first. Just keep in mind, that Titan prototype technology provides additional boosts once again. This time it is 5% hp for TL, which is weaker than simple hull upgrade, due to extra regen in it, and it only applies to starbases, so watch out, if you really need it. And TR get a boost to population killed. But it is more of an rp thing, rather than of any meaning to the game.

In case you have found out your favourite ship, you are going to use through out the game, be it cobalts, javelins or corvettes, you may now decide to enhance the performance of lasers/flak/rockets. However I would not recommend doing so yet, as it is still just the beginning of the game.

You should better upgrade your repair bay, with 2 points, as it gets from 20 hp/sec up to 40 hp/sec.

Or you could get those nasty flak guns on your hangars, if you are playing defensively.

I would not recommend researching mine fields, as those are highly expensive, and easily countered by cheap scouts.

TIER 3

You finally get to upgrade your shields, but since TEC rely on hull in a nearly 2:1 ratio rather than shields, read the 5% extra shields, as 2.5% total hp. In such situation, extra armour points seem to be more effective. And if you are afraid, that your 57% shield mitigation will drop once shields are down, it is simply not true, as shield mitigation remains active, even if shiedls are down to 0.

And once again the hidden upgrade in the titan tree, 5% fire rate for TL.

Tier 3 provides you with hoshikos, which may boost your op repair. However why get repair, if you can get carriers, which will not get damaged anyway? And by this I mean, if you reached this technology level, you should consider getting out your first carriers.

Or you could go for massed starbases with trade, and turtle in your territory, while building space communism.

The "Highly conductive rails" tech, providing your gauss cannons with extra 12% range, is useful only to troll. You have built a canon on an asteroid, but enemy capital ship flew around, to be just out of range of your canon? Get 12% extra, and hope for him not noticing it, while his capital ship melts under the superior shells made of stalinium.

TIER 4

You can finally maximize your hull upgrade, which is all worth it.
Going for antimatter may be worth it, but TEC have a much more powerful am regen in their civilian tree, with which, you will have no need in this upgrade. So get it, only if going civilian is not viable.

At tier 4 defensive tree has much more to offer. Finally TEC get their own jump inhibitor, to trap enemy fleets, or most importantly, scare them off, to even jump into a system, as there will be no retreat option.
Or get the auxillary government on your starbase, to ensure your enemy cannot bypass your starbase all that easily.

Well, and ofcourse you could finish your titan research. This time it does not provide any bonuses, but allows you to finish it.

TIER 5

Once again armour upgrade over shield upgrade. Or you could prefer the maneuverability upgrade, to make your capital ships and titans more versatile to hostile environment.

You also could get a planetary shield to protect your highly populated worlds from novas, but I consider it a waste, as your population will die over time anyway, and as TEC you really should rely on income from trade ports and not from population. The proletariat down there cannot give you the same taxes, as the free merchants flying in space.

At tier 5 you could also go for the ultimate doomsday weapon - the safety override protocol, also known as the red button. At lvl 2, on your starbase, it will vaporize even the heavy cruisers, and maybe slightly damaged capital ships.

Or specifically for TL, there is one of the most cheating technologies. the "militia". There are 4 points to be researched, at the end of which ALL your ships and starbases will get 30% extra damage, and 4 armour in friendly gravity wells. It is expensive, but could, and sometimes should be rushed from the begining. This is the only way TL can fight advent, and their early game devastating abilities.

TIER 6

Nothing big for TR, but the flak damage increase by extra 10%. Not much, but most useful with fighters, and other extra damage stacking TR get. TL however have one of their most powerful technologies here, after militia.

First of all, the cheap novalith cannons. Not only the cost reduction is substential, but also the -3 slot usage is a game changer, since most of the planets can house 35 slots, while a usual novalith canon uses 18. But reduced down to 15, you can get 2 novaliths on a single planet, with a few slots left for a hangar or repair bay.

And furthermore TL get a technology to boost their starbases. At the very same tier, there is a generic upgrade to starbases, but it is weaker, while costing the same. So make sure you get the right one first!

TIER 7

Nothing special here. For TL, lower the cost of starbases, to make them easier to spam, or maximaze the armour upgrade.

TIER 8

TL have only 1 technology at this tier, allowing them to build 2 starbases at a single gravity well. Usefull, but it comes so late, that people get tired of playing a game at this stage of the game, so it's actual usage in multiplayer is limited.

TR however get their novalith canons here, in case they have made the entire missile upgrade tree. Once again costly, but could be considered, if you are locked out of conventional warfare.

TIER 1
If you are playing with the latest dlc, introducing the minor factions, TEC have the superiority of having their envoy at tier 1. So you could lock all the minors for yourself, forcing others to fight them over, instead of fighting you. It is an investment worth it, as you get a cut of trade, tax and even access to the labs from minors.

But should you be playing a usual mp game, where most of the dlcs are disabled, the diplomacy tree can be mostly ignored at any tier, unless you go for pacts.

TL have the advantage of early capital ship "battlefield promotions". The extra 10% are not crucial, but helpful.

As for general economy upgrades, there is a choice between boosted metal production, and extra population on terran planets. One could think, that getting extra metal is more useful than extra population, as the percentage of boost is ca. the same. However in truth, you'd need about 4-5 planets to outmatch the extra income from your homeworld. It appears that the proletariat working at mines, is not as productive, as your homeworld iphone bearers.

So feel free to get the extra population before the extra metal yields. Just watch out, that if you stack too many population bonuses, it will be not effective, as population needs to grow, while the mining boosts are applied instantly.

Sensor drones are very helpful to know where your enemy is, but wasting 2 points into it, is worth 3 cobalts, which could be out there, fighting your empire. 1 point however is not that costly, and may provide intel worth the expanses.

TIER 2

Once again, population should be favoured over mining tech, however the difference is no longer as big as before, so the impact of "wrong research order" is insignificant.

However it would be a mistake to get trade ports, before researching the mining upgrades, for one simple reason. By the time you get to tier 2, you will have 4-6 planets, with a decent resource income. But researching trade will give you nothing. Instead you will have to wait, to accumulate the resources to build the trade ports, which will pay off only in 15-18 mins.

TIER 3

Here you may get your culture, which will boost your tax and mining income by ca. 10% empire wide. While it sounds cool, 2-3 trade ports will give you the same income. So there is no reason to rush culture over trade ports, unless you want to passivly boost your allies culture, in situations they cannot do it themselves, or you are unable to create a trade route, due to map layout.

TL have "Counter deployment" which is all worth it, if you are overwhelemed by your enemy, have a lot of resources but not enough ships. However, such situation is rare, most often you will find yourself without resources, so wasting extra cash on build speed, you will not be able to utilize is meh.

TIER 4

In my opinion TEC have the most powerful culture upgrade - the am regeneration. Go for it, once you have 4 civilian labs. And have your carriers up and running. With the extra am regen, you could possibly even go for bombers!

Favored Client Discount, is another valuable tech, as TEC get quickly into an overflow of credits, and underflow of resources. a 15% discount is essential once you see, you are buying resources from market, instead of selling them.

And now my most beloved tech of this tier. Not for it's powers, but for it's uniqueness. No one bothers to research the refineries, as it is difficult to calculate their effectivness for a human being, since the income is displayed not in credits, but in resources. Yet once you are buying metal/crystal, the value of resources doubles, and therefore any income of yourself, is twice as worth it, which perfectly makes up for the higher cost of such a refinery.

If you plan to become better than 95% of sins competetive players, learn to use the refineries. They are pretty simple, yet "scary", in terms of the unknown. The calculations are pretty long, but can be found in this thread: https://sp.zhabite.com/app/204880/discussions/0/1742229167173775078/

TIER 5
No hidden gems here

TIER 6

Direclty a few gems to compensate for tier 5.

First of all, the amazing "Development Mandate", giving you extra 4 logistic slots at ALL planets, allowing you to build a trade port even on dead asteroids, finilizing your trade route, broken up due to map generation. Or simply giving an extra slot on a developed vulcano, with 89% extra trade income, so that 1 extra slot, ends up being 1.89 extra slots. The possibilites of this tech are vast, and no other race have anything alike.

Secondly, the "basic crew training". While it may be too late into the game, should you feel need to get a new capital ship, having it at lvl 4, is better than at lvl 3!

Further am regen from culture.

TIER 7

Industrial Juggernaut may be useful, once you reach an income of 300+ credits. But this will happen much later, than you reach tier 7, so do not rush tihs technology, and better get a few additional trade ports.

TIER 8

Insurgency was a neat tech, which made raiding parties appear at any planets, forcing them to spend cash on local defences. However this tech is very old, and if played with the dlc, providing ramping militia, this tech will look inferior.

Pervaisive Economy, is the ultimate TEC weapon. It makes you receive a cut of cash, whenever someone builds anything or buys at the black market. A 20% cut in a 10 player game, makes it up to 1.8x income of a regular player. This technology is extremly useful, and provides you with money, even if you are locked down to a single planet, by your enemies.

Ofcourse if you are playing 1v1, you will get only 20%, and not 180%, but even than, it's free cash!

I have deliberatly ignored their special technology in usual tech overview, as TR get some really sick tech for their offensive in a civilian tree!


TIER 3

"Pillaged war chest", allows you to steal credits while bombing your enemy. The tooltip is not clear enough about what the 1 credit relates to. Is it 1 credit/second? No. It is 1 credit per planet health. So if you bomb an enemy homeworld with 5600 hp down to 0, you will get 5600 free credits! Not a game breaker, but very very neat extra income.

TIER 4

Now this is a game changer. "Savage Thrill" increases your fire rate and damage by 15% (or 30% dps). Remember the militia from TL? Well they did get their 30% while in own gravity wells. TR however get those while in enemy planets (once the planet receives damage, you get this boost. You do not need to bomb the planet all the time). And to win the game with military force, you need to push into enemy territory! So get da big guns out!

"Truce amongst rogues" was once a powerful economy technology, allowing for rapid colonization, as any neutral ships would become your allies. So you could freely colonize all the planets. But than it was nerfed, and this technology makes peace only with pirates. A valuable technology for new players, who do not know how to deal with pirates, but a useless, if not damaging technology for skilled players.

TIER 6

Is another star in TR arsenal.


You are tired of buying resources from the black market with credits? Why not buy mercenaries directly from the black market?
"Pirate mercenaries" can be purchased from any culture hub. Which allows you to fleet at a rapid rate, and most importantly, get ships and newly conquered worlds directly, once you build your culture hubs. So you get a pirate fleet, and a culture pressure on enemy.

This is more of a "troll strategy", however it is pretty fun, until enemy gets some titans with heavy AOE.

TIER 8

Liberated resistance is useful against ai, but not as much vs human players. Because with tier 8 it is late game. You want a fleet of specific composition to counter your enemy. And than all of a sudden, your fleet capacity is stolen by 5 free cobalts and 2 Cielo.

So not really helpful, unless you are up for some role play.

Diplomacy is often ignored in multiplayer. No one feels like wasting fleet capacity for 5 cobalts, in order to get a few envoys. While this may be true in early game, where every ship counts, such logic becomes laughable when you have 100 cobalts.

There is not much secret to diplomacy. You build envoys, get the extra 4 technologies to boost them, and send 1 per planet. It is important, as 2 envoys on the same planet do not stack. But 2 envoys at 2 planets stack their impact.
Researching technologies for envoys is worth it, as it will help your ally with little boosts, but also save the fleet capacity, everyone is so concerned about.

All of this "enormous effort" is for the pacts. Not much secret to those as well. However keep in mind, that you can sign your pacts, only with 1 ally. And if you sign your pacts with other TEC player, only 1 of you needs to research them. However if you find a non-TEC player, you could benefit from TEC pacts, and Advent/Vasari pacts as well. So you better fight over your xenophoby, and make some diplomacy with the xeno scum aliens.

Anyone can read the pacts by himself, as tooltips are helpful, yet let me summarize it a bit.

1) Trade pact, is researchable at tier 4, and boosts your trade and refinery income by 15%, and also boosts the hp of your trade ships. It has the same impact, as 3 techs from the civilian tree, but at a lower cost. Though instead of getting one, get both!

2) Efficiency pact comes also at tier 4 but is not really important, unless we are talking about titan race. Yet in case you want to pump out a titan first, why would you go civilian in the first place?

3) Armor pact at tier 5, is stronger than any armour upgrade from the military tree, but the militia. And since militia is op, this one is near to op as well. the extra 200 hp are not a big deal though.

4) Siege pact comes at tier 6, the same tier, novalith come around. However the 10% damage reduction, is not enough to survive 2 novas aimed at your unprepared hw. This pact is rather a little, nearly unnoticeable boost, rather than a serious addition to your fleet.

5) The thruster pact comes at tier 7, and is also a little bonus, for your capital ship survivability. But maybe you can pull of some sick maneuvers, or even make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs?

6) The supply pact comes at tier 8, and is the final pact, you can sign. And oh boy is it strong. The extra fleet capacity is neat, but the -15% to fleet upkeep, is such a big difference! In Lategame, where you pay 3/4 of your income to fat bureaucrats, getting this number down to 3/5 is amazing.
And if you somehow managed not to fleet at all, your bureaucrats will even start to pay you! What an amazing world we live in!

Argonev starbase, is the toughest starbase out of all. It also has the deadliest ability, the red button, capable of wiping entire fleets in matter of seconds, at a cost, of it's own life. Yet it cannot move, placing is critical for such starbase. The most general advice here, would be to simply place it central in the gravity well, so that any structures, no matter civilian or defensive, can be easily placed around.


First rule of any starbase, is not to waste resources. Do not upgrade them if they are not under attack, or enemy is not gathering fleet to push it. Do not build it, unless you have a specific mission for it, and so on. (Also do not get strike craft on sb, as it is pathetic usage of resources)

Placing your starbase at the edge of the gravity well in a hope that enemy will jump into it, and it will get a few shots at them, is not a reliable tactic. Even with fully upgraded weapons, ALL of the ships will manage to bypass the starbase. So your main goal is to protect the planet, and not to catch the fleet, especially considering a human would simply jump at other edge of the system, completly ignoring your starbase.

I would not recommend building those in early game, as they are costly, yet easy to bypass. And without auxillary government, one could simply bomb the planet, and move on.

In midgame there are some opportunities for Argonev starbase. From locking down on chocke points, to simply connecting your trade route.

Getting supply upgrade is something for the rich kids. Normal repair bays are cheaper and faster, and antimatter regen from culture is more cost efficient. So I would not get it at all, unless some very specific situations.

Frigate construction bay - this one may be useful in some niche situations, where the map generation prevents you from establishing a frontier production base (for example, there are 3-4 uncolonizeable systems in a row). In such unlikely, yet possible scenario, a frontal shipyard is a musthave.

But no matter what you invest into, keep in mind, that upgrading a starbase, which will never get into an active combat, is wasting resources, you could have used even for more income, or simply for an early offensive. So try not to overinvest into starbases, and keep in mind you can upgrade them while in combat. For that to be succesful, enough of hitpoint are necessary, so getting an hp upgrade is okayish, even if the attack is not guaranteed.

Lategame is just as midgame, but with the risk of facing hundreds of bombers/fighters. So get a few hangars around the starbase to shred the xeno invaders!
And should you be playing for TL and be able to get 2 starbases in a system, please do not spread them. The closer they are the better, as even TL starbases with all the extra hp upgrades, are still melting under lategame fleets.

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Just as a side note, never get fighters upgrade on a starbase. It is wasted point (you have only 8), and resources. It provides you with 4 squads, at a cost of 2 carriers. So why not build 2 carriers, with 4 squads, but be able to send them to other systems? Or if you have no fleet capacity, get even cheaper hangars, which have deadly flak guns.

Ankylon Titan is TEC loyalist titan. It is the toughest of all titans, with defensive abilities, yet lacking offenisve guns and abilities. All in all, it is a big supporting vessel. Does not sound very inspiring, but it actually is.

Titans are focused by any sentient being, due to them never losing their attained experience, and therefore even if killed, coming back only stronger. So having a low impact yet unkilleable monster, is often more important than having a big railgun, which melts under medium fire.

Being much tougher, means you can accumulate experience much safer, and therefore lvl up your powerful abilities faster.

Ankylon titan has 4 active abilities and 3 passive upgrades, as any other titan.

Furious defence, is my most beloved ability on the titan, so I always prioritize it. With 15 hp/sec repaired and it's tough armour, it may clean easily a pirate base, while most of other titans struggle to do so. And the best part of it, the bonus is doubled, while in friendly wells!
The damage boost is neat, but considering low dps of the titan, not really impactfull. A much more impactfull action would be to drive your titan into enemy lines, as it has it's weapons on both sides of this hull, but tends to turn only one of it, to the enemy. So driving into the enemy, will double your damage!

Disruption matrix is a very situational ability and can be ignored in most cases. It's dps is meh, while the disabling abilities is not that crucial, as this mission may be performed by akkan or dunov capital ships. Only real difference it makes, is if you made a corvette/kodiak fleet, and face enemy "guardians" with repulsion ability. The disruption matrix outranges the repulsion, and therefore may allow your close range units to break into advent front lines.

Group Shield is the ability number 2 I pick, as it boosts even further the titan surviveability, and allows even for lategame corvette fleets.

Inspire and Impair is an ability to increase your ships fire rate, while decreasing those of enemies. Once again a supporting ability, relying on two fleets clashing, so make sure you have a fleet to clash with your enemy.

Passive abilities:


Hull upgrade is a logical extension of the titan's surviveability, so grab it whenever you can, along with the furious defence!

Weapons upgrade should be ignored even more than disruption matrix, as your titan is not your dps deliverer.

AM regen upgrade should be priotirized at the same niveau as the group shield, as it allows you to actually use all your abilities, and use them more often.

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Strategies:

Your titan cannot fight on his own, so you need a fleet. A best pick would be 100+ corvettes, as TL corvettes are the strongest anyway, so boosting them with group shield will make them valuable even late in the game. However corvettes lack firepower against starbases, and are vulnerable to red button. So disruption matrix will be required, if you expect lots of starbases.

Anyway if you expect lots of starbases, a better pick would be kodiaks. They also benefit from group shield, have the dps to melt starbases, however are more vulnerable to AOE abilities, so keep an eye on those!

Ragnarov titan is the total opposite of the TEC loyalist coutnerpart. It lacks in hp, but makes it up with massive dps, and powerful offensive abilities.

If not for corvettes and carriers, it could single handle any fleet, no matter how big. In general you want to throw all your resources to protect your titan, while it annihilates anyone in it's way.

Let's directly jump into it's abilties. Keep in mind, that all those abilities can be fired at anything but corvettes. Even if corvettes are close to your main target, they will remain untouched by it.

Scattershot has moderate damage, depending on the level, about half of the damage delivered by the explosive shot. However scattershot reduces enemy armour. At lvl 4, by 8 units, which translates to 40% less hp for your enemies. So if you have a big fleet, a scattershot is more valuable than explosive shot. If it is the opposite, than explosive shot should be prioritized.

Explosive shot has a powerful AOE damage and thats it. It just annihilates big groups of ships at once. That simple it is.

Snipe is a single target massive damage with very low cooldown. It can destroy even high lvl capital ships in 30 seconds. Just make sure you fire snipe before actual battle starts. As shield mitigation may get up to 80+% on advent caps, you want to kill them while they are still at 15%.
Snipe has a very long range. So if you and your enemy have some kind of fortified position and do not want to engage, you can sit at yours, and send hellfire on him from a great distance.

Overcharge is titans ultimate. It is accessible with lvl 6 and makes all your abilities hit harder. Especially increasing the snipe capabilities.

Passive abilities

While with Anyklon it is pretty easy to set priorities, Ragnarov wants all of them. All of the active abilities, and all of the passive upgrades. You want more hp, to make your titan more suriveable, but you want extra damage even more, to enhance the strongest side of your titan. And you also want the AM regen, in order to allow you to use that snipe over and over again.

As of this, it is hard to give an advice what to pick first. But since scattershot and explosive shot do the same, I would recommend deciding your self for one of the abilities, ignoring the other, in order to get extra hp/dps/am regen.

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Strategies

Your titan is highly vulnerable to massed corvettes. So consider getting gardas in order to shave them off. Or a starbase would also work. But starbase cannot move, so you will be locked down, while TR are all about pushing forward. Your own corvette fleet could work, but corvettes get useless as the time passes. So gardas are the most versatile approach.

Combined with akkan, and it's lvl 6 ability, to enforce cease fire, you may guarantee a safe escape for your titan.

Fleetwise, a carrier spam is the most logical decision, as your fighters will be superior to TL counterpart, and maybe even superior to any other race.

Kol battleship: useless peace of metal, as mentioned above. May be a bit useful to fire at massed strikecraft, but it's damage is so low, that you will need several Kols, and all of enemy fighters focused in a little area. So better spend resources somewhere else.

(If you consider yourself a skilled player, check out Kol in advanced, and expert section)




Sova Carrier: a niche capitalship, especially useful for TR. It's main usefulness comes in the early game, when 90% of economy comes from home world. The embargo ability allows you to steal [40%/60%/80%/100%] of income, respective to the lvl of ability. So rushing to enemy homeworld, ignoring any other planets, with embargo and pillaged war chest, will make you get tripple the cash of your direct opponent.
The only problem, the later you go into the game, the lesser impact any taken planet has, even the hw. So Sova is valuable only in early game.
It's ultimate is nice, if you want to get fast fleet, but it is another niche situation. Usually oyu do not care for build speed but resources.


Akkan battlecruiser: the colonizer capital ship. It has a very neat colonizing bonus, for extra mining income and free extractor. It's ion bolt is a powerful ability interruption, and allows to prevent enemy capital ships from running. However I prefer to invest into "targetting uplink". It is a supporting ability, which increases range of all ships and structures in a moderate range. It is so powerful, that it can make your javelis fire at a range, where enemy starbase will not be able to fire back. Or your cobalts get a bit more smarter, while chasing fast corvettes. Uses for it, are unlimited. So get it! The ultimate "armistice" forces peace in a medium area around capital ship. Which is valuable if you want to save a titan, or you want to get your starbase built (just make sure construction starts before you enable the ability, as abilities get disabled, construction not). Or maybe there is some channeling ability devastating your fleet, your akkan cannot get in time to fire it's ion bolt? Armistice will save the day!


Dunov Battlecruiser: Most usefull for it's emp charge, as it drains shields at a high rate of enemy ships. Especially useful when you have 2 corvette fleets fighting, so that you have the opportunity of having shields while your enemy does not. Furthermore it can be used to drain am, and prevent abilities from being casted (aka red button). Other abilities are not really worth mentioning, as their impact is pretty low.


Marza Dreadnought: A siege capital ship, with the biggest single target dps out of all caps. Radiation bomb may be used for fleet to fleet combat advantage, however I would not recommend wasting your points on it, as this ability is relativly weak, and will often be outmatched by other capital ship's abilities. Raze planet is on other hand a very handy ability, outperforming any other race at pushing planets. And this is the real problem for akkan, as fleet battles will often push 2-3 planets further than you are bombing the planet. You will never have such a problem with a Marza. Incendiary shells is a handy ability to counter vasari and their early game starbase rush. While marza already have an outstanding frontal damage, this ability boosts it even further.

Missile barage - the ultimate of Marza, is the ultimate weapon. It is capable of killing anything, but heavy cruisers, in a big radius. Making it close to the red button damage, however with the Marza remaining alive. Yet you have to keep an eye on enemy capital ships, as your enemy will often try to disable your marza. as this ability is channeling, meaning it needs time to deliver the full damage.


Corsev Battlecruiser: A Marza in a smaller scale, and with harder micro. You need to board a ship, than run with it into enemies, than explode it, and than hope for 25 frigates to die. If you manage it, you are golden. If you fail any of the steps, well it was wasted am and time. Also keep in mind you cannot board the corvettes, but you can explode them.
The "salvage operations" is a passive ability to keep your capital ship alive. It heals the cap ship with 10% -> 15%-> 20% -> 25% of killed friendly frigates nearby. However since you need points invested into 2 other abilties, you will have the lower levels of it. And getting 60 hp every time a cobalt dies, is not a reliable source of repair, once your capital ship gets focused.

• Use "focus fire" only against tough targets. The game engine will avoid any overkills by it's own, as long, as you do not tell your ships to "focus fire".
  
  
• If you are crazy enough to use cobalts. and you are chasing enemy capital ship, make sure you micro your cobalts. It is not hard. Just tell them to fly in the same direction, and than tell them to attack the ship once again, in a short sequence. This way their speed will be reset, and they will not overfly their target, for next 10 seconds. Repeat it, once you see, they are about to overfly the cap once againt.
  
  
• If you have a cobalt fleet against a corvette fleet, and your enemy is flying in circles around you, instead of leaving your cobalts on autofire, tell them simply to fly in the direction, corvettes will be soon. Ships do not need direct orders to attack, to shoot their weapons. They need simply to face with their guns a target, and so, by simply turning your cobalts in the right direction, you will be efficiently shooting at enemy. While by telling to shoot at corvettes unfortunate enough to be infront of your cobalts, they will begin to freak out, as corvettes are fast, and change their position.
  
  
• If you face a corvette fleet with a javelis fleet, do the same thing from point 3. But here it is even more important, as cobalts will lose their fire power any way. But javelis, with their long range will always find a target. However if you tell them to fire at a specific corvette, they will hold their weapons, until they can do so, reducing their dps, and therefore making you loose hard.
  
  
• If you have a big Gardas fleet, but your enemy no longer has corvettes, but instead lf (light frigate) or lrf (long range frigate), use the same trick, people use with corvettes. Garda is one of the few vessels, which has firebanks on 4 sides, so putting them behind enemy ships, will avoid counterfire, while you will still be able to shoot, and maybe even make all 4 firebanks to fire, instead of regular 1-2.
  
  
• While spamming corvettes, keep your fleet monogamic. And while fighting, try to focus fire, low life targets. If you cannot do a full depth micro, due to too many clicks needed, just make your corvettes flying in infinite circles around enemy fleet, and it will do the job. And keep in mind that you are faster. If you do not like this fight, disengage. Especially if enemy brings massed flak. Try to split his forces into flak and non flak. It will be easy against medium skilled players, as they will not be able to keep their fleet grouped, since all ships have different speeds. So you could pull his cobalts out of the flak fleet, shoot down a few, while flak follows, disengage, repeat.
  
  
• 95% of late game fleets are pure carrier spam. But it is not only about punping more carriers, it is also about not letting enemy titan one shot those. So upon jumping to a battle field, make sure you spread your carriers at big distances. At best in smaller groups of 3-5. If that is too hard for you press "I" on your keyboard. This will group your units in the empire tree into bunches of 10. Now you can tell your carriedirection, you will be efficiently shooting at enemy. While by telling to shoot at corvettes unfortunate enough to be infront of your cobalts, they will begin to freak out, as corvettes are fast, and change their position.
  
  
• Also the trick above can be used in midgame with javelis. Should you be caught offguard with a javelis fleet, facing let's say Ragnarov titan, which can kill grouped javelis in 1-2 explosive shots, your best option would be to make little groups of 10 javelis, spread them in a line. When Ragnarov jumps in, they will form half a circle around him. Due to Ragnarov's low hp, you will melt him pretty fast, and while on paper Ragnarov is a hard counter to javelis, you will make him pay the iron price.
  
  
• Now if you came here with your learning, it is time to reveal the strength of the Cielo Cruiser. His hp and dps are very low, while cost is high. So do not try to use it as your main ship, or damage dealer. It is a support cruiser, and is worth getting only when you have a fleet, it could support.
  Also if you go for Cielo, you need the tier 6 tech upgrade to it, as it makes Cielo 5x more useful.
  
  Cielo's first ability gives you a little shield regeneration, which cannot be considered as a reliable heal, but rather unnoticeable bonus. However it provides you with 10% extra dps, which is extremly useful on a Ragnarov titan, but could also be used on a Marza. Ofcourse any ship gets a benefit from 10% dps boost, but you will not have the antimatter, or the amount of Cielos to boost every single ship, so disabling the autocast is advisable.
  
  But the tier 6 ability is the real deal. It reduces your targets protection by 40%, making it very handy against titans, capital ships or starbases. However it also requires manual usage, which is why I would not recommend going for Cielos, until you have mastered your capital ships, as they have even larger impact.

Playing as TEC you MUST go only for 1, max 2 capital ships. This is because TEC capital ships have 0 synergy, compared to alien counterparts, however they get individually much better with lvl up. And since all experience is equally shared through out the gravity well, 1 capital ship will level twice as fast as 2, and tripple as fast as 3. And so on. So choose your capital ship wisely.

Akkan Battlecruiser, is believed to be the weakest colonizer capital ship. It lacks firepower on it's own. So even if you use the smarter tactics from Grimm's guide, and get turrets every time you kill the siege frigates, on bigger planets. Leaving your capital ship to simply auto attack local militia during the colonization phase is a major mistake.

I have seen even skilled players doing this mistake, so no worries, if you cannot take the micro straight away. But knowing the trick, is first step of becoming better. Basically akkan is so weak when left alone, that even at full hp, you will fail to clear the medium defended planets with 2+ kodiaks. Even if you get the turrets once, you kill the siege caps... mostly because you will not even kill those, before you are killed.

So what is the trick? It is to know your capital ship. All TEC capital ships, but Marza, have decent firepower from several sides, but turn in a matter, that only 1 of the sides is actually firing. The same applies for akkan. It will always turn with it's left side to the enemy, as it has the "highest dps" of 21. However the total ship dps is 50. So you are missing nearly 50% of your dps. To be more specific, you have 18 dps to your right, and 11 dps at your front. So place your ship, so that it can fire at targets to the left, front and right. This way you will kill twice as fast your enemies, and compensate for the very low dps.


To compare cobalts have a dps of 10, so without this trick, your akkan fires as 2 cobalts, while it could fire as 4.

Marza Dreadnaught: If you go for Marza as your first capital ship, be aware, that everyone will try to kill it before it reaches lvl 6. Mostly people let it fly around to get lvl 4, but than they unleash all their firepower on it, in attempt to kill it, as lvl 6 marza, is a portable red button.

So how to prevent this? As I said, usually until marza gets to lvl 4, fleets are not big enough to kill caps fast enough, which may make you overconfident, only to see your marza melt under 60 corvettes. As a rule of thumb, you may fly it rather reckless until lvl 4, but by the time it gets to lvl 4 you should rapidly research repair bays, with 2 upgrades, and build at least one repair bay, at your front line planet. And should you push, always build new repair bays at captured planets.

Usually 40 hp/sec will be more than enough. Just make sure you do not run out of antimatter. The easiest way would be just to build more repair bays. And disable the auto repair, as you need every single am for your marza, and not disposable corvettes.

A further trick for surviveability, works if you have a corvette fleet against enemy corvette fleet. As corvette captains are not as drunken as cobalt ones, they are still on something, I swear!
Anyway this forces people to micro their corvettes, and tell them where to fly. And as mentioned in tricks with frigates, if you do not give a specific target, ships will fire automatically. And if you have your own fleet of corvettes, directly near your marza at this point, they will take a fair load of damage, instead of your marza.

But should you fear, that all of this will not be enough, rushing hoshikos for additional 20 hp/sec could be viable.

And obviously your ship's position is crucial for any retreat. Sometimes you want to leave your ship at the edge of gravity well on your side, even if the fighting happens on the other side. The few corvettes your marza would have shot, are not worth, the risk of loosing a soon to be red button.
In any case do not begin to retreat when you hp are at 50%. The moment your shields begin to depleat, means your enemy is focusing your marza, so run, run at all cost.



Kol
On request of Trolik I am adding Kol to the advanced capital ships. His advice is to spam Kol battleships once you enter late game and max the fleet out. Instead of spamming carriers or Kodiaks who will most likely be hard countered, the Kol battleship spam may be proven useful, especially against Advent enemies.
Keep in mind that pure dps of Kol is inferior to Marza. However the Gaus Rail Gun ability, which ignores shield and shield mitigation will be very handy against advent Titans and capital ships with 70-80% shield mitigation. With this in mind, your 550 damage per shot, will be equal to 2750 conventional damage output. Quite nice, yet costly in antimatter. So make sure you are fighting in your culture with am regeneration upgrades.
But even than, it is not enough. so get better 10 Kols, and lvl them to lvl 4 with purchase ability. It will be very costly, but the only way to make your fleet capable of fighting.


NEW:
With some calculations done, based on cost, fleet supply usage, etc:
5 Kodiaks cost about as much as 1 Kol, both in resources, and fleet supply.
5 Kodiaks will have better dps than Kol lvl 4, even with it's Gaus Rail Gun Ability. But at lvl 5, Kol will have slightly more dps than 5 Kodiaks if an infinite AM pool is asumed.
But Kol lvl 4 will be slightly tougher, and Kol lvl 5, will be significantly tougher than 5 Kodiaks.

By looking at this, it is wasy to say, that should you be interested in a Blitzkrieg, while your enemy does not field a lot of firepower, Kodiaks will be a better choice. But if you are planning on attacking an equally strong opponent, you should go for 10+ Kols.
NEW:

You could also combine this ability with Cielo Cruisers abilitiy from tier 6, for better yields.

I have talked about economy partially in the technology part. But a quick recap is always helpful.

• Going for economy in an aggressive spot, is very hard to pull of. So better postpone it until later. Simple colonization will be expensive by itself, while also giving good yields by its own.
  
  
• When you finally get to upgrade your economy, the extra population tech is more useful than extra metal, unless you have 5 planets+.
  
  
• Trade ports should not be rushed, before mining technologies or extra population, due to their high cost. However once you have those tech, go for trade and not culture, as trade beats culture, as long as you can get a trade line of 4+ lanes.
  

Now to the new stuff.

1) Modular architecture is a technology from tier 1 of the civilian tree. Basicly it costs ca. 1200 credits, but reduces the costs of mining facilities down to 150, from 250. And getting 10 mines, is like colonizing 4-5 worlds. It is not a must have, but is a nice addition to your savings, especially the reduction to all ship factories, will be helpful, once you need a frontal shipyards.

However I would not urge you to research it, as instead of this technology, you could for example get a colonizer capital ship + 2 colonizer frigates, and colonize more planets at once. And since early game resources are spare, spending 1200 credits, which will repay only in 20 mins into the game, may be not the most wise thing to do.

2) Somewhere between researching mining upgrades, and trade ports, it is the right time to make a few social upgrades, on your homeworld, or nearby ice/oceanic. Just keep in mind, that population needs to grow. So do not upgrade all the levels of it. 3 is the perfect number as it tripples the population growth.

2.1) Also keep in mind, that taxes from people are affected by allegiancy. So getting even 1000 population at a distant planet, which has max 35% allegiancy, is not all that good of an investment. However trade does not suffer from distances. It can be safely said, that planets with less than 50% allegiancy, should be industrialized, instead of socialized, even if we are talking about oceanics or ice.

3) Once you get to trade ports, build 1 at a planet first, instead of filling all the slots, in order to create the longest trade route. As the longer it is, the greater the income.

4) After you have finished your trade route, instead of filling the logistical slots with further trade ports, get culture. It is important for income, and for preventing enemy from taking your planets, should you get into a sudden attack.

5) After culture, you should think of worlds, you could place your refineries. Depending on if you are already buying or selling resources at the black market, you should consider getting your refineries. Just keep in mind, that you can get only up to 3 refineries, and they go to connected worlds in 1 phase jump. So pick worlds with most connections for it.

6) Know the planet types. Volcanoes, Ferrous excel with industrial upgrades, while Ice and oceanic planets excel at social upgrades. And by excel, I mean the amount of upgrades you can make. Aka you can make 5 industrial upgrades on a volcano, boosting it's trade income by 89%, while you can get only 2 industrial upgrades on an ice, yet 4 social.

In other words, get social upgrades on your ice or oceanic, and trade on your volcanoes and ferrous. All other worlds are somewhat balanced in the amount of upgrades, so you can specialize them in a manner you prefer, however trade is a more reliable source of income, as population may be killed by novaliths, or the taxes could be reduced by enemy culture.

6.1) You should always fill all the logistic slots (and upgrade those), before getting the industrial specialization.

7) If you are playing with 4+ players, get the tier 8 technology "pervasive economy". If you are playing with less, you can get it, but be cautious, not to over expand on it.


8) Get your starbase with 2 trade upgrades on your industrial planets. On fastest game speed, this will give you 8-10 credits per sec, repaying you all the heavy investment in ca 10 mins. ( a trade port pays itself in 16 mins)

8.1) With TL, do not be afriad of getting 2 starbases at your industrial planets. This will give you crazy income, and will also protect your trade from any sudden attack.

8.2) Getting starbases with trade on non industrial planets is viable, but will take already ca 20 mins to repay. And on social planets it will take even longer. So unless you are not planning on dragging the game out, you should not be getting trade there.

9) Now economy is not only about having a big income, but also denying your enemy the income. Novalith cannons reduce trade by 100% and population max by 40%. And if there was no shield at the planet, you will also kill the entire population, even if the planet is protected by auxilary government. If you can get those, get as many as you can. Just do not forget, that their autofire is disabled, so you should fire them yourself, or simply enable the autofire, once they are built.

As we come to our "expert" section, it is not so much of "god skill level", but more of minecraft starcraft cps play style. If you are a perfectionists, or simply an asian, and you want everything be executed, without a nanosecond delay, those advises may be helpful for you.

• "Use the damn hotkeys, Chekov!"
  Most important of those are "I" to group your ships into stacks of 10, in the empire tree; "tab" to quickly zoom in and out; "ctrl+num", to create a fleet group, you want to specifically command; "q/w/e/r" for capital ship abilites (or literally anything, which has a menu with stuff, aka planets)
  
  
• Use z-axis controlls. Why? Just cause no one has an idea of how to use it properly, and even if you don't, just make your enemy freak out, as his ships will freak even more out.
  
  
• Make sure you place capital ships with side weapons deeper into the enemy lines, as this will often double their dps.
  
  
• Once your capital ship is focused, do not sit as a duck at the same place! While there is not really such a thing in sins like "miss due to fast speed of the target", there is such a thing like "we cannot fly this ship properly, to keep us in range when we need to fire." So no matter if you are already at a repair bay, or simply gathering the experience, make them waste some gasoline! It can be safely said, that a moving target receives up to 50% less damage, than a static one.
  
  
• Having an akkan to disable enemy channeling ability in a gravity well, is not enough. You need to position it in the right range. If you want to to use ion bolt on your enemy, giving a simple attack order, will not be enough to stay in range. As his cap will try to move out of the range of your akkan, to use that missile barage, your akkan will take it's time to turn around, and follow the marza, giving it 10-15 seconds to obliterate your fleet. So always control the position of your akkan, and be ready to use the ion bolt with hotkeys, every second matters! As even if you interrupt the missile barrage, all of your ships in range will suffer some amount of damage. The higher the initial damage, the less hp, they have to fight conventionally.
  
  
• The same thing applies for marza, for opposite reasons. You want your Marza to stay out of range of enemy capital ship. You have Shriken corvettes? Slow enemy capital ship, and than move your marza slightly out of range of his disruption ability and than fire it. You do not need to run far away, as your enemy will spot your maneuvers, and either retreat his fleet, or take manual control of his capital ship. But since his capital ship will need to turn around, in order to accelerate, you will be able to damage his fleet really heavily.
  
  
• Even if you ignore the radiation bomb, and use am only for "raze planet" on marza, you will be lacking in am, for your ultimate. So you need either some buffs, like those from culture, or just do not use "raze planet" on auto-cast, once you reach 150 am threshhold.
  
  
• Corsev Battlecruiser deserves to be in expert section, as his abilities are not 1 click-op-meta-annihilation. You actually have to time everything. The most difficult part about Corsev is to board ships. In general you do not want to waste points into boarding levels, as it does not make it any better, but easier to time. So you will be stuck with 1 point in it, up to lvl 10 Corsev, with 10 seconds to board a ship.
  
  What you need to do, to successfully board a ship, is to damage it so much, that it has less than 100-300 hp, than send the boarding party, and only than tell your fleet to focus that frigate. If successful, you will get 1 extra ship, but what is more important, your second ability "demolition team" deals double damage with boarded ships.
  
  The problem with it, is that hp status is not updated every second, but rather every 3 seconds (or even less, as time passes). So finding the right timing may be difficult. But that what makes Corsev end up in the expert tree.
  
  
  Than you need to find an enemy fleet, fly with the frigate and Corsev into enemy lines, explode the ship, and watch 25 ships explode. If they do not explode due to their higher hp, you will have to hunt them down, before they auto repair.
  
  NEW
  Your passive third skill should be attained at lvl 4 Corsev, and be of second priority, after "demolition crews". It repairs Corsev, each time your ship dies nearby. As it is bugged, the % healed is not based on the frigate's hp, but Corsev's hp. So every time everything from scout to heavy cruiser (but not corvette) dies nearby, you will be healed for at least 300 hp. This still leaves your ship vulnerable to a massive alpha strike, but since you can scuttle your ships for heal, it is very hard to lose Corsev in early-mid game.
  NEW
  
  Elite crews should be postponed if you have no other capital ship/titan in any time soon, as you cannot apply it to yourself, and frigates are not worthy.
  However the ultimate is very much worth it, especially for TR, as they lack toughness, so the only way to save a ship, is often a faster speed.
  
  [You can also capture pirate ships]
  [Note the drop in hp]
  
  Basically i do 50% of hp damage to 25 pirate ships in a single go. It does not matter if I explode a cobalt, or pirated version of Kodiak, the damage is equal to the ability of my capital ship. The only limiting power here is the antimatter, as it regenerates very slowly, and since you lose 100 per jump, it may take some time until you can use it.
  
  This way, I managed to clean the pirate base on min 15, with a capital ship lvl 3 and 20 cobalts. A nice way to deny any titan experience, should you be afraid of such outcome.
  
  Btw, the animation of ship explosion takes time, like 5 seconds. However damage is applied instantly, on using the ability.
  
  
• 
  NEW
  Kol Battleship is considered a really weak capital ship. Well it is not weak, but extremely hard to utilize, even harder than Corsev. In the early game Kol will drastically lose to Marza in terms of dps, even with infinite AM for it's gaus rail gun. Only at lvl 5, you would get slightly better dps, if infinite am is asumed. But practically, it is not until lvl 7, when one could say, that Kol becomes a better dps dealer.
  
  You are also missing on various support abilities, such as of akkan. And you do not have the quick planetary bombardment as with Marza. You also lack means to kill corvette swarms early on as Corsev. So what is the strength of Kol?
  
  Well, you will be behind any other capital ship in terms of capabilities until lvl 6. But with lvl 6, all the fun begins. Your ultimate will give you decent amount of aoe, which allows to kill ALL advent corvettes (without upgrades) in a single ultimate duration.
  Some may say "But does not Marza do the same, just faster?" - Yes, it does. However Marza's ability is channeling, and therefore it can be interrupted. Also Marza is not as tough as Kol, so you may lose it. And Marza lacks lategame dps to kill starbases, as Marza's passive ability does not stack.
  So Kol is a much more reliable and versatile game tool, especially when you are fighting 300+ corvettes. And also one of the major reasons, why you no longer see 300 corvettes in late game in mp. But it's still the most reliable dps dealer in TEC arsenal. Just do not get flak burst, on more than 20% of your kols.
  NEW

Same as with capital ships, this is for people who do not want to waste a nanosecond.

• Control your construction frigates. Those tiny bots, which do all the hard labour. Send them to the place, you are planing to build your building, in order to save the time, for that constructor flying there. This is most relevant when you are making rapid research of the repair bay, as your capital ship is under fire, and while nanoseconds do not matter, 10-20 seconds may matter.
  
  
• If playing in a 5v5 game (or any other kind of 10 player game), pervasive economy is op. However it relies on other people having income, which often will not be the case until later into the game, so rushing it minute 1 is not really optimal.
  
  However it can be safely said, that you should totally go for it, once you have about 10-15 trade ports (at best in a line). The researches on the way to pervasive will boost your trade port output, ca at the same cost efficiency, as if you built further trade ports, and once you get the pervasive, you will be getting a 20% cut out of nowhere.
  
  Btw, if my memory does not betray me, pervasive income is not taxed, so it is a reliable source of income, even if you have a big fleet.
  
  
• If your enemy builds starbases, do not try to break through the lines, unless you heavily outperform him. If it is a stalemate, better invest those resource into income, wait a bit, and overhelm your enemy.
  
  
• Sign pacts! Those will boost your income heavily.
  
  
• If you are locked down to few planets and cannot waste resources on trade ports, or simply do not have the capacities for it, let others gain money for you. Once again, get pervasive, and prosper, while other work!

In the following I will make a table of "how long an investment requires to pay off". This is a very important table, as in sins you have this deathball balance, where having even 10% more ships (with rest being equal), will result in you completely snowballing your enemy. So when you are close to your enemy, it will be always smarter to stop investing into economy, once the timings until the next battle are shorter, than the pay off timings.

A basic idea, which often slips away even from skilled players. This is also the reason why there are often situations where a player who does not colonize at all, but focuses on fleet rush, wins against enemy who colonizes 2-3 asteroids (which actually have really short pay off timings).

This table makes most sense for early and midgame. As with lategame different variables join. But obviously if you play on some weird maps, some of the info may not be applicable, as it is designed to describe the most generic maps, and therefore be useful in 90% of situations.

The timings are for fastest game settings. Which is 70% faster than the slowest one. You will have to do your own recalculation for exact timings, but the basic idea is that the priorities will remain, no matter the settings.

Note that numbers considering tax and extraction are for 100% allegiancy. Should you be colonizing planets with 50% allegiancy, you will have to double the timings, and when colonizing with 25%, multiply by 4.

Also note, that all timings proposed are assuming you are playing in a generic manner, with 2 colonizations at a time, civ lab first, planetary upgrades only after previous has been finished (as opposed to queueing all at a time), technology as early as possible, etc.

Final note: Calculations has been made with the resources being at 2.5x. While at this level of gaming, you are most likely having resources at 5x value, however as the game balance has been designed around the idea, that 1 unit of resources is 2.5 credit units, I have used this for timings as well.

Disclaimer: Timings for social specialization look decent. However keep in mind that it is for 100% allegiancy. Should you colonize a world, just 4 jumps away from your capital, the timings will already double, due to 55% allegiancy

TEC loyalist are seeking to close their borders, build a wall, and make xenos pay for it. And if xenos ignore this wish, a few radioactive bombs can always solve problems!

TL concentrate on defensive technologies and better income than their counter part TR. They have the best corvettes in the game, as their ability slows down ships, and considering this malus comes from the fastest ships in the game, the strategic capacities are incredible. Yet as if this was not enough, Shriken corvettes are "creating" an exploit with their ability. As no matter whom they are fighting, they slow down ships. While ships are left to auto fire, there is nothing to fear...


However when someone tries to micro his ships, fighting shrikens, he will face a massive problem. In sins, fleets try to stay in a formation. Even if you did not create an actual "fleet", but just selected a group of ships, and told them to move, they will do so, at the speed of the slowest ship. And since it is easy to keep at least one of the ships at 100% slow, the entire fleet will be slowed down.

But not just slowed down, this renders the firepower of ships down, as they have limited fire arks. And retreating becomes devastating, as your corvettes will be strafing slowed down ships, which have no weapon banks at their back. Therefore, if you manage to make your enemy retreat, make him suffer!


At tier 5 there is the militia technology, considered op. It gives you 30% dps in your territory and 4 armour (or 20% extra hull). And 30% is a lot. It is enough to make a hard counter, an equal opponent, aka cobalt vs javelis, or corvette vs garda.


If you know, you are about to be pushed, rush this technology. It will win you games. And quite often, playing vs advent, whose fleet is more cost efficient, militia is the only option to fight them back. However getting it against inferior enemies is wasting of resources, as it is costly, yet works only in friendly territory. So if you get it, make your enemies come for you, lose their fleet, and only than launch a counter offensive!


This one is a bit outdated, as since latest patch, corvettes were nerfed, and now are useless against starbases. However if you know that your enemy does not have any, or very few, this fleet is very deadly.


This one works, however you are vulnerable to many AOE attacks, and even group shield is often not enough. So use it at your own risk.


This is the most common build. As it utilizes the all round carriers. However there are no unique upgrades for TL fighters, so you will be at a disadvantage to any other race. Your only option in this build is to have such an incredible income, that you will not care for higher losses.

However my experience shows, that you cannot always throw money at a problem. Sometimes even with 10x the enemy income, you will fail to stop their advance, unless you spam double starbases, and even than your fleet will be inferior.


This can be performed both from an eco spot (no enemies directly next to you). Or agro spot (1 ally to your side, and 1 enemy to other side).
Rushing novalith is often more important than getting pervasive, or 1000 creds/sec. As you need only 2 to kill a non upgraded home world. It is most useful, helping your other allies, who happen to be in the agro spot. As your ally "agro" if fighting enemy "agro". And in agro home world resembles 70-80% of the income. And they have no reserves to get a new home world, or protection.

Rushing it from eco spot, should be done once you have 1 trade port on each planet for the longest chain. Just stop spending on anything but for novalith. That's how simple it is.

Rushing it from agro spot is a bit more complicated. On the one hand you have the advantage over eco spot, that you were getting military labs anyway. However military labs are just a tiny cost, in the entirety of 2 novalith.

So it comes to a question - how to get an equivalent of 20k credits with income of 40 creds per sec, while also being at constant risk of being attacked. You cannot simply not build ships for 20k, while your enemy does.

The trick is, to spend all of your resources on your fleet while in active fight, but reserve, while you are not. As TL, it is not your job to kill the enemy anyway, your specializations are defensive. So get the territory you need, and sit quietly. Get a few hangars at the front planet if enemy spams corvettes, or some turrets if anything else. If you are facing an aggressive opponent you will have to get Militia before the Nova, gladly you will make use of the military labs anyway.

Investing into starbases is too costly, and should be avoided unless really necessary.

Once your position is solid, begin saving up the resources. In case of need you will be able to fleet, so do not immediatly spend them on labs or research. Wait until you have accumulated more.

As you get closer to the needed amount of cash for novaliths, you may begin to research the tech, research the tactical slots, and moving your constructor bees into position to build novalith (here every second matters, as your enemy may counter 2 novas with a simple hp upgrade on his hw).

A new built Novalith will have 150 am, while it needs 200. If you leave it as is, even the slowest player will get 7000+ hp, rendering 2 Novas useless (btw each Nova deals 3500 damage)
There are 2 ways to get nova to needed amount of am. Either do the research of extra am in military tree (you will need all 4 upgrades, which is pretty costly). Or get 4 civilian labs, with a culture hub, along with the tier 4 upgrade for am regen.
Depending on your situation, both options may be prioritized. The culture has the bonus of boosting your economy by ca 10% and creating pressure on your enemy, so that he has to get a culture of his own. Btw. if you decide to go the culture way, getting it directly would nearly pay it off, by the time you can build novas, so do it.

Once construction begins, I advise to set Novas to "ctrl+2" (or any other number), so that you can easily check when they can fire.


The name says it. If you cannot beat your enemy, just eco. Your eco will outperform theirs, and you will be able to throw money at problems. However this should be the last resort, as mentioned before, throwing money at problems often does not help.

TEC rebel want to purify this galaxy from the xeno scum. So their specialization is all about offense, while lacking defensive ones. As TR you really need to be pushing, even if it means high casualties. If you will be defending, without any special bonuses, the casualties will be even bigger.


This one is a very vulnerable strategy, relying on quickly killing your enemy hw, while getting extra 5600 credits from it. I would not advice using it, unless your skill is much higher, than that of your opponent. Though I wanted to mention it, as the idea of it is pretty cool.


Well those corvettes amplify the damage by 25%, which along with other bonuses is neat. However by far not enough to make Stilat op. TR build corvettes not so much because of their strength, but because it is pretty much the only effective counter to enemy corvettes, be it shriken or other races.


Here you may question - but are not gardas hard counters against corvettes? Well, in theory, yes. However in action it is so easy to outmaneveur flak. And even if there is a need to dive, like to kill a capital ship or a titan, your flak will not die to corvettes, but they are also not the main target - yet their own dps is so low, that they will take significant time to shoot down the corvettes.


TR is probably the only race, where going civilian labs is more valuable for warfare, than going military labs. Savage Thrill - tech tier 4, increases your dps by 30% - the same amount militia does for TL. However you can get this bonus in enemy systems while pushing. To activate this bonus you need to bomb the planet at least for few seconds, and than the bonus will hold for long time, so you can use your capital ship for other matters.

The extra 30% dps will allow you to fight advent progenitor at somewhat fair rate, however still remain cautious, as advent have a more cost efficient fleet in general.

Against vasari, the extra 30% dps, used against their starbases is a game changer, as with killing a starbase it really matters how high the dps of a ship is, in order to prevent a starbase from getting hull upgrades.


Korsev capital ship is amazing early game. It allows you to kill up to 25 frigates in a single go, which puts you really at equal if not upper hand in any combat with advent. Also due to Korsev not being such an "ultimate enemy" as Marza is, this capital ship is often not focused, while you annihilate enemy fleet.

However Korsev is a much harder capital ship to control in itself, so you will need to divert more attention to it. And timing is also very important.

Why cobalts? Because as TR you need the savage trill, so you cannot spare 1 mil lab and corv research. Also Korsev ability does explode corvettes of your enemies, but does not allow you to explode your own corvettes. And should you be short on boarded ships, using your own is the go.
Also cobalts have a higher dps in general, so they will have easier times protecting vulnerable targets, such as Korsev, if used properly.

In general, cobalts are stronger than corvettes, however due to lack of speed and mobility, they are often countered by corvettes. With Korsev, you do not care for a few cobalts killed while enemy corvettes are baiting, since every second they do not fight you, you regenerate antimatter, for that swift 25 kill strike. And if he does fight you, even on auto controll, cobalts will come slightly on top of the corvettes.

Though beware, the more corvettes there are the more dangerous they become. The effectiveness of corvettes does not scale linear with fleet sizes, but rather booms, as their numbers grow.


Now since TR have extra bonuses both to fighters and Kodiaks, your fighters will be superior. However there are times where carrier fleets are hardcore countered, while Kodiaks are not. And since their Kodiaks have higher dps than those of TL, you could use them to melt enemies. Just make sure you are picking the right fleet composition, as Kodiaks are very vulnerable to AOE attacks, and repulsion by advent Guardians.

So far I was talking about TEC in general. However you fight your enemies not theoretically but practically, so it is worth knowing about basic match ups.
This section will tell you about simple hand to hand combat of different ship types of different races. Mostly comparing the cost efficiency of those. However keep in mind, that I do not include capital ship abilities into this, and abilities do play a major role in sins. From lvl 1 Progenitor, to lvl 10 Ragnarov, impacts of those ships may be more important than armadas.


The following data was gathered from battle testing of different sizes. As mentioned no capital ships, or any kind of AOE abilities. Fleet efficiency is compared based on cost-efficiency. Aka 18 TEC corvettes vs 19 Advent corvettes. Therefore, slight fleet supply usages are present, however they were always under 8%, and therefore, ignorable, since sins, is always about resources used right.

Early game

Here all ships have either no upgrades or tier 1 upgrades.


While I said that TL corvettes are op, cause of their ability, their strength comes from tactics. If there is no valuable target, and you just throw your TEC (no big matter if TR or TL) corvettes on enemy corvettes, their value drop drastically.

And in simple dps fight, your corvettes will always lose to Advent corvettes, with advent remaining ca. 20% of their forces.
If put against vasari corvettes, yours will come on top, with your 20% remaining in tact.

If you do tier 1 upgrades on ships (as those are most common, due to their cheapness), advent-TEC battle will be lost with same outcome. However TEC-vasari battle will be won with ca 30-40% of your forces left. This happens due to vasari not having many upgrades in tier 1, and not many in tier 2 as well, should they go for them.


Once again, excluding any abiltiies, Advent will come on top with their disciples, against cobalts, with ca. 20% of fleet survivng on their side.

Vasari's lf is really bad, no one builds them, but should they do so, your cobalts will win with 30% of fleet remaining.


This is the only TEC ship which actually wins hand to hand combat against the Advent counter part. With Destra crusader costing more, you can field more Kodiaks and with about same hp and dps, Kodiaks come on top with ca 20% of forces left.

Surprisingly, the Skarovas Enforcer is the only cost-efficient Vasari ship. While loosing any other fight, Vasari HC, actually wins with 25% against Kodiaks.


Advent carriers cost 1.5 more than TEC, and field 3 squads instead of 2. In early game, when TEC do not have their extra armor, it's only hp upgrades which matter, and TEC and advent get those equally.
Yet Advent carriers proved to be much superior to TEC counterparts, though, I'd asume with midgame am regen in culture, TEC would give a fair fight to Advents. [But this is a speculation!]

Vasari carriers - [missing info, due to my laziness.]


Not compareable, as those are the only ship types, spread across the mil tree, with Vasari getting them at tier 1, TEC at tier 2, and Advent at tier 3. This factor, makes any kind of testing pathetic, as getting to tier 3 is very hard in a real game, and even tier 2 may be closed for first 30-40 mins in some situations.




I was too lazy to do some midgame tests, especially considering it is hard to tell which techs are aquired in midgame, as everyone rushes it in different times. So I went straight for endgame tech.


TEC corvettes flip the balance into their favour, due to main Advent corvette dps (50%) being non upgradeable, flipping the Advent superiority of 20%, into 20-30% in TEC favor. However by this point corvettes become mostly obsolete due to starbases, and very powerful AOE, so not really much to be happy about.

Vasari testing - On supply base, Vasari corvettes get annihilated. On cost efficiency base, Vasari corvettes actually win, as long as TEC corvettes do not have extra techs like militia or savage thrills(further mentioned as "extra dps"). Otherwise they are also shreded by your corvettes


- If it is VL vs TEC without extra dps, than VL will win with 25% superiority. If you do have the extra dps, you will win such a battle with 50% superiority

- If it is AL vs TEC with extra dps, than AL will win with 50% superiority. AR will win only with 20% superiority


- If it is VL vs TEC without extra dps, than VL will win with 40% superiority. If you do have the extra dps, you will win such a battle with 25% superiority

- If it is AL vs TEC with extra dps, than AL will win with 25% superiority. AR will lose with your 20% superiority


Even TR fail to overcome the massive boosts of advent, in their culture (even if both sides get only 50% of their bonuses). The first few waves of figthing will be successful for TR, due to very high dps, however the longer the battle lasts, the less am your carriers will have. And this even did not include any Advent carrier cap ship capable of dealing massive damages to strike craft (not like KOL).

If you somehow manage to push Advent culture away (lol?!) you will come on top a bit. However in general at this point of the game, you really need to have a higher income than Advent, as you really lack cost-efficiency.

Vasari carriers - Just with any other ship, if you do have extra dps, you will win against Vasari. If you do not have it, you will lose the fight.

The build order list will go through currently used builds, beginning with the most easy ones to replicate, and finishing with the most difficult ones. However do note, that there is a direct correlation between difficult=stronger, so if you can perform a build order lower on the list, go for it, as it will be simply stronger. There are some exceptions to this rule, so I will also give a rating to build orders in terms of their strength, like (3/10).

• X-wing/Krusher style (aka Marza+Corvette spam): (3/10)
  1) Build military lab
  1.1) Research corvettes
  2) Build Marza
  3) Build extra scouts if you want to, but not mandatory
  4) Build 2 colony frigates, for expansion to your 2 first roids
  5) Build corvettes with all resources you have, non-stop.
  5.1) Spend resources to upgrade your 2 asteroids
  5.2) Should the map be too big, spend extra cash on third asteroid
  6) Do not colonize anyfurther, or make any other spendings. Just get more corvettes
  7) After first encounter, you should be able to win it, with all this spam, and bomb enemy planet with Marza, to reduce enemy income
  8) Colonize the bombed out asteroid, and get 2-3 factories there, for faster reinforcements.
  9) Continue spamming, without spending a penny on anything else, until you kill your enemy.
  
  Strong sides: You will win any fight, if your enemy did not scout you, and did not get a major fleet of his own, and your Marza will bomb planets fast enough, to not allow your enemy to gather his forces. Marza has the strongest aoe damage in game at lvl 6.
  Weak sides: You are extremely vulnerable to Corsev in early and midgame. You are even more vulnerable in late game to a Kol. You are semi-weak against starbases. You are semi-weak against turret defences. You are doomed if your enemy scouts you, and manages to outspam you. You are semi-weak against advents with their cost efficiency, and malice.
  
  
  
• Akkan colonization rush (12 corvettes BO/Auqia preference): (5/10)
  1) Build military lab
  1.1) Research corvettes
  2) Build Akkan
  2.1) Build 2 scouts, to know of your enemy's plans
  3) Build 1 colony frigate
  4) Send your colonizing ships to different locations, preferably akkan to a non agro position, so that it can safely colonize, while colonizer frigate may be sacrificed.
  4.1) Get 3-5 turrets at the asteroid close to your enemy.
  5) Build 12 corvettes (exactly amount you can build without getting extra logistic slots)
  5.1) Send corvettes to help Akkan.
  6) Try skipping uncolonizeable planets, unless there are no other worlds, in 2 jumps.
  6.1) If there are no such worlds in 2 jumps, it is worth getting civ labs for colonization
  7) Let your enemy fight your turrets. Even if there is Marza which kills planets fast, it will not be able to dive under this heavy fire for a while. So you are winning time.
  7.1) Even once your defences are broken, continue colonizing. Your task is to colonize faster, than you lose planets. Against Marza it is nearly impossible, but against anything else, you should be able to colonize 4-5 planets, per a planet lost.
  7.2) If there is a Marza+corvettes build, you should get hangars with flak, on your next planet in line of defence. Hangars will anihilate enemy corvettes, while turrets will shred enemy Marza.
  8) Since your enemy gets only 1 planet at a time with his cap, and you get 4-5 planets, you will have massive economy advantage. Utilize it to outspam any fleet he got.
  9) Your best choice would go for Javelis frigates, as they synergize with Akkan. But if your enemy has big corvette swarms, try better going for cobalts or flak.
  10) Kill your enemy with much stronger economy.
  
  Strong sides: Much better economy, your enemy cannot evaluate your potential, and probably will stop fleeting, allowing you to house a bigger fleet much faster; Big map control, so that enemy players cannot colonize easily; good synergy with high dps javelis frigates, and strong anti-starbase capabilities
  
  Weak sides: Marza will probably be a very painful opponent even if you do everything perfectly. Also you leave your homeworld vulnerable. While you should be able to push enemy back, by the time he gets there, if your 1v1, suddenly becomes a 2v1, you will lose your homeworld, and with it, all the achieved economy superiority.
  
  
• Sova rush (2/10): (Harder to perfom, but weaker than others)
  1) Build military lab
  1.1) Research corvettes
  2) Build Sova carrier
  3) Build extra scouts if you want to, but not mandatory
  4) Build 2 colony frigates, for expansion to your 2 first roids
  5) Build corvettes with all resources you have, non-stop.
  5.1) Spend resources to upgrade your 2 asteroids
  6) Upgrade Sova to lvl 3
  7) Run with your Sova directly for enemy HW, no matter if there are colonizeable planets on your way.
  8) Do not colonize any further, and use all the money on corvettes.
  9) Once Sova is at enemy HW, use the embargo lvl 2 ability, to steal his income and slow his production.
  9.1) Due to slower production, you will be at the upper hand, even with slower reinforcements, however Sova carrier is extremly fragile, so do not try to fight with it. Kite all the time, flying in circles, avoiding damage.
  10) Embargo will give you a 10 creds/sec advantage over your enemy. And once you achieve the said fleet superiority, go for further colonization & bombing of enemy planets.
  
  Strong sides: If map allows for a rush, you will make the starting economies shift from 30 creds/sec (crystal&metal converted), to 40 creds/sec (you) to 20 creds/sec (enemy). With it, you should be able to outswarm your enemy.
  
  Weak sides: Even with the economy advantage, you will need first 150 seconds simply to pay back your Sova lvl 3 upgrades. And only than you will be benefiting with this BO. However the chances are your Sova will be already heavily damaged by that time, with outnumbering forces, and you will have to retreat. Also even if you catch an enemy unprepared, he may get "feed" from allies, and all your strategy will be ruined, and you will probably die

• Akkan colonization rush (Civ lab BO): (6/10)
  1) Build civilian lab
  1.1) Research terran population - metal income - metal income - terran population - cheap factories
  2) Build Akkan
  2.1) Build 2 scouts, to know of your enemy's plans
  3) Build 1 colony frigate
  4) Send your colonizing ships to different locations, preferably akkan to a non agro position, so that it can safely colonize, while colonizer frigate may be sacrificed.
  4.1) Get 5 turrets at the asteroid close to your enemy.
  5) Get a second civ lab, if you face too many uncolonizeable planets
  6) Try skipping uncolonizeable planets, unless there are no other worlds, in 1 jump.
  7) Let your enemy fight your turrets. Even if there is Marza which kills planets fast, it will not be able to dive under this heavy fire for a while. So you are winning time.
  7.1) Even once your defences are broken, continue colonizing. Your task is to colonize faster, than you lose planets. Against Marza it is nearly impossible, but against anything else, you should be able to colonize 3-4 planets, per a planet lost.
  7.2) If there is a Marza+corvettes build, you should get hangars with flak, on your next planet in line of defence. Hangars will anihilate enemy corvettes, while turrets will shred enemy Marza.
  8) Since your enemy gets only 1 planet at a time with his cap, and you get 3-4 planets, you will have massive economy advantage. Utilize it to outspam any fleet he got.
  9) Your best choice would go for Javelis frigates, as they synergize with Akkan. But if your enemy has big corvette swarms, try better going for cobalts or flak.
  10) Kill your enemy with much stronger economy.
  
  Strong sides: Much better economy. Significantly better economy than in 12 corvettes BO; your enemy cannot evaluate your potential, and probably will stop fleeting, allowing you to house a bigger fleet much faster; Big map control, so that enemy players cannot colonize easily; good synergy with high dps javelis frigates, and strong anti-starbase capabilities
  
  Weak sides: Slower colonization than in 12 corvettes BO, less map control, more vulnerability for HW rush; Marza will probably be a very painful opponent even if you do everything perfectly. While you should be able to push enemy back, by the time he gets there, if your 1v1, suddenly becomes a 2v1, you will lose your homeworld, and with it, all the achieved economy superiority.
  
  
  
  
• Corsev opening, best for TR: (10/10)
  1) Build civilian lab
  1.1) Research terran population - metal income - metal income - terran population - cheap factories
  2) Build Corsev
  2.1) Build 2 scouts, to know of your enemy's plans
  3) Build 2 colony frigate
  4) Send your colonizing ships to different locations, one with Corsev, another without any assistance.
  4.1) Use turret to help the colonizer without escort
  4.2) Get 5-6 cobalts to help out Corsev as his starting dps is too low, to overcome militia
  5) Board cobalt from the militia
  6) Continue boarding new units
  7) Assign hotkeys like 1 for factory planet; 2 for Corsev; 3 for all boarded ships
  8) Continue colonizing
  8.1) If need be, get vulcanic/arctic colonization
  9) Build cobalts only, do not get any military labs
  10) If you encounter your enemy, begin fighting, spam cobalts, use demolition crews on boarded ships, to annihilate enemy fleets.
  10.1) You can kill 25 advent corvettes with 1 boarded ship at Corsev lvl 2
  10.2) If enemy has AM burning ships, just fly around with your Corsev, while it regenerates AM
  11) Get 4 civilian labs, and research "savage thrills" for 35% dps boost.
  12) Now you can get military labs, to boost your ships and finish your enemy
  
  Strong sides: There is no counter to this meta up until late game. The only reason why it is not spammed every day, is that it is hard to micro. Just keep the fight going on, as much as you can, force enemy to attack you, because you bomb his planets, and you will win any 1v1, or even 1v2.
  
  Weak sides: Corsev has low AM regeneration, so you may find yourself unable to use the op abilities. However you can always retreat to regen AM, or even get culture upgrades to do so faster.
  
  
• Kol masochist BO, best for TR: (8/10)
  1) Build civilian lab
  1.1) Research terran population - metal income - metal income - terran population - cheap factories
  2) Build KOL Battleship
  2.1) Build 2 scouts, to know of your enemy's plans
  3) Build 2 colony frigate
  4) Send your colonizing ships to different locations, one with Kol, another without any assistance.
  4.1) Use turret to help the colonizer without escort
  4.2) Get 5-6 cobalts to help out Kol as his starting dps is too low, to overcome militia
  5) Avoid as much combat with your enemy as you can, until Kol is lvl 4 at the least
  5.1) You may want to even get turrets at planets close to your enemy
  6) Invest skill points into first and third ability. Even if there is strikecraft/corvette spam, do not skill second ability
  8) Continue colonizing
  8.1) If need be, get vulcanic/arctic colonization
  9) Build cobalts only, do not get any military labs
  10) If you encounter your enemy, begin fighting, spam cobalts, keep Kol alive with third ability
  11) Get 4 civilian labs, and research "savage thrills" for 35% dps boost.
  12) Now you can get military labs, to get better ships and begin actual fighting with your enemy
  13) After you have killed your direct opponent and have Kol lvl 6, you are ready to annihilate any corvette spammer at the map, even if he has 500 corvettes.
  
  Strong sides: Best BO to counter late game corvettes; strong against starbase spam, once you can field multiple Kols; decent in fights with frigates and cruisers; Kol excells at surviveability, making it much safer to dive in, with him.
  
  Weak sides: Weakest starting capital ship, leaving you vulnerable in early phases of the game; Requires much more micro than the Corsev BO, as you cannot force combat on enemy as easily; Requires a lot of research investments, before you can enter battles with your opponent

25.06: Changed description for Cielo Cruiser to represent their true strength. Originally presented it as a useless cruiser, for reasons of high micro insensitivity. However since this guide is meant to give insights to different strategies, even if not feasible due to apm requirements, it was wrong of me, not to include it.
Thanks to Impisi, Trolik and Matheus for changing my mind.

25.06: Added Kol to advanced capital ships, for late game purposes.
Thanks to Trolik for his insights.

31.10.19: Added 2 new technology sections with priority evaluation
Added Kol to the expert capital ships section, and added some info in advanced section.
Changed info on Corsev in expert section, as the information was not up to date.
Added Build orders
Finilized the Frigates expert section

08.11.19: Added "Economy (Are you even human?)" section