1. Depends who you ask. People who love roleplaying, watching fleet battles and slowly amassing a huge empire will like single player more. A large variety of mods also increase the appeal of single player (though you can use multiplayer with mods, these are almost always arranged games). Multiplayer appeals more to the RTS focused people, as the AI in Sins can't really challenge you enough to make full use of the strategic depth of the game.

2. This forum community is very good in terms of getting players through the learning curve, advice to improve their skills, and general discussion. Some in the multiplayer community are said to be sort of hostile to newbies, in part because the veterans have years of experience with this game already and due to relatively few new players recently, some view it has a hard to get into club. Many multiplayer veterans are trying to change this though, and with the steam version now released there is likely to be a lot more new players like yourself, so this is an ideal time to try multiplayer, after you get the hang of the game against the AI a bit of course.

3. Not really, the TEC is probably the most popular faction online now, due to their powerful rush game they have at the moment. They are also the least complicated faction so its a good choice for newbies. However the only way the TEC can compete late game is with sheer economy and numbers, as the powerful advanced research and abilities of the other two factions will beat a TEC fleet of equal numbers every time. Thus the TEC focuses one either defeating the Advent/Vasari players early before they can get those abilities online, or getting a large economic lead that they will easily win a war of attrition even if they lose more ships every battle.

4. I'll just say yes, even though I'm not sure what you are asking is worth it.

At least from when I've been on ICO, I'd say that Vasari's the most common faction... especially among the skilled players.

Yeah, I wanted to say that too but a lot of the multiplayer chat has been about the lvl 3 Sova rush lately, so it made it sound like TEC and Vasari are about evenly picked. Of course I'm a mere modder so anything I say about multiplayer is just an echo of what I hear on these forums.

The Vasari are probably the games most unique race, but they can sort of be thought as a merge of the Protoss and the GLA from Command and Conquer. Their units are a bit more expensive but rather than make up for it with superior stats, the Vasari get access to some unusual and powerful special abilities and research that more than makes up for their slightly lower stats late game. For example they get phase missiles which can bipass shields (and are easily the best weapons in the game), they are the only faction with a Starbase that can move, their support cruisers can disable groups of frigates at once, and they are the most mobile faction, able to jump between non adjacent worlds with their phase gate technology and can even bypass enemy frontline worlds with a sneak attack from their super weapon/cannon, the Kostura. Together these give the Vasari the best late game, though before they can research all of this stuff their relatively vulnerable.

ok so 2 questions then

if the varsei starbases are movable then, how moveable? like to a differnt planey or a system or just around that graveity well

also do people play with diplomacy on, like accepting peace and such?

All competitive MP games are on locked teams. Some of the diplomacy features between allies like making pacts and sending envoy ships to each other are still used, but you won't have to worry about making alliances or getting betrayed/ganged up on in MP.

Well I was thinking in an unlocked teams game without any starting alliances people may just all ally with everyone but one person just to defeat them. So you don't have to worry about uneven teams unless of course one of your team mates is eliminated.

i want to teach him 2 but what do i know about writing a whole book about the do's and donts of playing sins games. You best first learn how to find your recorded replays of the game, then upload them on the internet so we/i can download them. From there we (i definately will) find 15 mins of my most valuable time and x6 speed to watch you play and tell you where you went wrong. Cos im such a nice guy  

P.S: Make sure your game is updated to version 1.34. Cheers

Diplomacy is fun with pacts etc.. its for amusement. Don't use during online games vs other people. Its a waste of resources.

Totally in agreement; Diplomacy works very well for FFA, but that's not really practical for most multiplayer games simply due to game-duration.

hackers?  this game has tons of problems in the online community, but i've never known of a "hacker"

Those are called mods.

I've played multiplayer for a while now and have never seen anyone seeming to hack, or even heard of anyone accusing anyone of hacking.

Nope.