A couple questions

If you want to play it in online multiplayer, then yes, vanilla Sins is pretty dead and you will need to get Entrenchment.  The game definitely needs more players online.  Sadly, most of the people who bought the game only play single player against the silly AI without realizing that they're missing out on the real game.

However, there is still lots of online multiplayer activity if you know where and when to look.  As I said, first you need Entrenchment.  Your best time for finding people and games is between 3 pm and Midnight U.S. Eastern Standard Time (aka, European and North American prime time).

Recently I have seen as many as 130 people online (which is enough for 13 5v5 games).  Now remember, all of those people won't be in the Lobby since that number also includes people who are currently playing the game.  Also, if you see a listing of games available in the Join Games window but don't see them listed, they're probably for whichever version of Sins you are not on (for Entrenchment in your case).  The online multiplayer game is great fun once you become a competitive player.  During prime time you'll find man 4v4 and 5v5 matches where captains pick the other 6 or 8 players for their team, often resulting in balanced teams and good games.  Just remember that because you are brand new to the game, you are going to get thumped online at the beginning.  Just be patient, enjoy the process of improving your game and becoming a better player while you're being beaten, watch good players in replays of the games you've played, read the Strategy forum, and eventually you too can become a good player.

Sadly, Ironclad Online doesn't receive as much attention as it needs and the Lobby channel--the default channel that you should be taken to when you join, has broken again and has not yet been fixed.  The programmers are primarily concerned with the single player aspects of the game and with producing the expansions since it doesn't make economic sense to spend 1/3 of the development and maintenance costs for a feature that, very sadly, less than 1% of all purchasers (say, 600,000+ of them) will ever use.

And, lest I forget, Welcome to the Sins Online Multiplayer community.

1) Get Entrenchment

2) Play ICO with us. As stated above, new players tend to get beaten badly by the better players. I destroyed someone who told me they were a tactical genius and was good at RTS games (they had played heaps of Starcraft). But he deserved it shooting of his mouth The players who take their licks, ask questions and are respectful will quickly get better as the "pros" will give them tips etc... Once you get to know people and they learn of your (hopefully) growing skill, you will be able to join games without people booting you from the start screen (the better players want challenging games)

3) FFA games will always get things like you describe happening - it is the nature of those games. That is why I tend to play team games with locked teams.

4) PUG games (as described above with captains picking their teams) are a good way of balancing teams...

5) Some people online are dicks. Accept it. It is the Internet. But most of the serious players are not immature kids, they are adults (some of which are immature anyway, but hey). Remember this is the internet. Don't let a few bad apples put you off - MP is sooooo much better, faster and more entertaining then SP.

To summarise - get Entrenchment and play online. Expect to lose while you improve, but as long as you aren't a dick, you will be accepted online once people get to know you.

The stats are pretty meaningless in this game since they can be manipulated pretty easily.  These guys teamed up simply for the joy of winning an unfair fight.  BTW, this is why most of the veteran players never play FFA maps -- they almost never end up fair fights.  The last 4 player FFA I played, all 3 other players tried to kill me.

Most of the online players have moved to Entrenchment at this point.  If you like online play, get it and start looking for locked teams games in prime time.  Like everything online, some games will be disappointing, but others will be a lot of fun.

Good luck!

Thanks everyone. I'll get Entrenchment tonight and play SP a bit more to get an idea about the new stuff.

No problem about some sound beatings for a while. Hell, I EXPECT to get owned pretty badly for a while. Last game I played online extensively is Battlefield 2, and the first couple weeks was pretty rough there.

A bit disappointed about the numbers. 130 people online are, well, pathetic. I mean, Sins really strikes me as a multiplayer game. No campaign, dumb AI (not dumb by itself - compared to other games it's VERY good, but still). Killing mass light frigates may be fun for a while, but gets old pretty quickly.

An online Sins game takes longer than most other online strategy games, on average -- about 1-2 hours vs 30-45 minutes.  Entrenchment only made it worse by giving additional defensive options to draw out games.  I think as a whole, Sins was a bit off target for the casual gamer to want to play it online.  Games like Starcraft and Warcraft 3 tend to get you into the action very quickly while you do a bit more planning in Sins.  Still, Sins is a pretty phenomenal game, and if you have the time and interest, competing in the multiplayer community will sharpen up your gameplay quite a bit.

Cykur, I agree with what you say, but still, for a game that must have sold over 600,000 copies by now, wouldn't you expect that half-of-one-percent of those people (3000 people) would still want to play it in online multiplayer (that's being very conservative)?  Surely many of those 600,000 people have hours of free time to devote to gaming.

What I would expect has nothing to do with the current Sins online population.

Where are the people?  I think we lost a chunk of them with ICO being flaky, the game engine crashes aka "minidumps" that took most of last year to get fixed, and the general length it takes to play a game of Sins. 

Most regular people can not afford to spend more than 2 hours playing a single game, yet we both know that a 4v4 or 5v5 occasionally goes epic.  I once had a 5 hour Entrenchment game and I have had several in the 3+ hour range.  While many games are around 1 hour in length, as soon as someone experiences a couple of these ultra long games, they may come to the conclusion that Sins multiplayer is not for them.

There are also some griefers, and while this is not unique to any game, it doesn't help with such a small community.  Sins is a wonderful game to grief in because rather than griefing people to get wins or backstab your allies, you are actually griefing to make the game take longer and make your opponent quit in exasperation.  Veteran players just suck it up and take the extra 30-60 minutes to kill someone who has dug in and is making an asshat of themselves.  Because of the length of a Sins game, you might only get in one game that night, so it sucks if someone spoils it for you.

It doesn't help that the online gameplay curve is absolutely brutal to a casual gamer.  While Sins is easy to play, there are many levels of refinement and subtle understanding of counters that a skilled player brings to the table.  When someone plays Warcraft III, for example, they get much quicker feedback when they make mistakes and a better understanding of how they are dying.  In Sins you play along happily for 30 minutes, at which point some death fleet shows up and inexorably crushes you.  Because of the small community, newcomers have to take a lot of lumps since it can be hard to find other new players to learn with.

I'm not trying to be negative, I am just like you wondering where the people are for a game that sold so many units.  The answer is they are playing with their starbases and minefields against the computer.

You tell me why you think there are so few people in the online community? 

(PS.  No one reading this get scared!  Sins Multiplayer is awesome!  Come play!)

I don't disagree with you about all of that, Cykur.  I think you've more or less identified the primary reasons for the low player counts.

It should also be noted that the Vanilla Sins-Entrenchment divide hasn't helped matters much, either.  New players come online and wonder where all of the games are since they don't have Entrenchment.  The problems with the Lobby channel haven't helped matters.

Another issue is the lack of auto-download for custom maps which makes it practically impossible for there to be games where no one gets a bad starting position, where the map isn't unfair in some way to one of the teams, or to have maps where people start near their allies.

Entrenchment actually brought people back to the game as far as I could tell.  Online populations went up, so I think this kind of panned out.

Yes, auto map distribution is a nice feature.  I don't think it was a major one to hurt online populations, but I know it means a lot more to some people than it does to myself since I prefer random maps.   Who knows.

My 2 eurocents after the first MP experience with Entrenchment.

A bit better than vanilla, as there actually are a few games in prime time. But it's all 4v4, 5v5, huge maps. This is one of the main problems, I think. First, big battles are totally un-microable for me. I know my PC is quite old, but a rts should NOT be more intensive than a 64 players map of battlefield 2 with medium to high graphic settings. Don't know about the average playerbase, but I don't think everyone has an uber-pc to fully enjoy the big battles.

Second, big games take a lot of time. I don't have problems with 3-4 hours games, but I'm sure a lot of people do.

Couple the 2 things and it's easy to see how the average player can be discouraged very quickly.

But then I can't imagine many good players playing 1v1 or 2v2. 1v1 vs a noob (like me) probably isn't going to be a lot of fun. And in 2v2 a single bad player is actually half of your team. So, once again, not appealing for the experienced player.

So, as I see it, the whole thing is probably going to stagnate. And it's a shame, this game has some amazing MP potential.

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Large/Huge single star games (4v4 or 5v5) often take LESS time then the 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3 games as once one person dies, a domino effect can occur

Al_Shizuka, after you become more experienced with the game, you might prefer 4v4's and 5v5's assuming that your computer can handle them.  The real problem as far as CPU power is concerned is in multistars or late game in an unusually large game when you end up with 2000 fleet supply's worth of ships fighting in a single gravity well with lots of strikecraft.  That having been said, I don't think you'll have too much difficulty finding 2v2's an 1v1's.  After all, those are the easiest games to fill.

I agree with Hack that the 4v4's and 5v5's don't necessarily take that long.  Those games are often if not normally resolved in under 2 hours unless they're multistar or unlocked teams.

If you're concerned about having to play with skilled, experienced players, start up 1v1 and 2v2 games titled "New players please" or some such.  I think most experienced players (who were new themselves once) would respect that.  Also, your best bet for finding newer players is with regular Sins and not Entrenchment.