Hi, i'm pretty new at Sins, i bought it when Sword of the stars 2 turned into a debacle, and like it alot more then i thought i would. I convinced one of my friends to play, and, now he beats me every game, with a swarm of TEC LRM's, usually in the first 15 mins. I play advent, generally, but at this point id play waterheaded pony babies if it meant i had a chance in hell of beating him.
Like Goa said, flak are your best bet; they cost the same (research-wise) as the LRM, in terms of both number of labs required and in terms of flat research cost.
If you try going for flak, and lose, it's because you're not getting enough flak in time. Try building a military faster. (remember: don't research ANYTHING you don't absolutely have to, and make sure you develop planets out of the red as soon as you colonize).
Fighters work, so i build a carrier, but he just sends one in as well, and my fighters end up drawn agasint his cap ship every time they kill an LRM.
Fighters only work in the very early-game before your enemy has flak. After that, the enemy is likely to have at least a few flak ships, which counter fighters HARD, making fighters virtually useless in most situations. Carriers are often not a very useful ship to rely on except in the later parts of the game (with bombers).
Something else you may find surprising: If you're playing a really small map (where homeworlds are 3 or 4 or less phase jumps away from each other), you may find that building a lot of Seekers to counter LRM is viable. Cost-wise, if you build Seekers to counter LRM, Seekers will come out with a slight advantage. This is because scouts (of which the Seeker is one) do a good amount of damage against the "Light" armor of LRM frigates - and Seekers have a TON of durability for their cost.
If your enemy starts to adapt to your pure Seeker spam: use Seekers and Disciples (Seekers counter long range frigates, Disciples counter everything else in the beginning of the game - except for capital ships and starbases). This is known as "Tier 0 spam" which is Advent's greatest strength in the very early-game, and is used very often by pros.
This strategy is most effective with Advent, and although the other factions are capable of using it too, the other factions are usually more able to rush to decent military units.
Also, as Mecha-Lenin said, after the beginning of the game it's a good idea to switch to using Illuminators in general, because they're extremely effective at fleet-to-fleet combat. They're bad at focus-firing but do a whole lot of damage overall.
Please advise a newb, im getting really frustrated and hes one of my best friends so i cant just scream at him, lol. We genreally play small 1v1 maps, all settings to fast, pirates on.
Pirates on? That'll throw the game... ugh.
If you want you can post a replay of a game you play and we can review it.
