I send it to unknown worlds and then colonize.  I seem to be having trouble with managing resources and what to build when.  Would anyone be interested in playing a game with me and helping me out?

That's why. You want to scout out the planets before colonizing. Also, having some scouts and LFs will make colonizing far faster, especially since scouts counter siege and LRFs.

I might be able to play a game with you, if you'd like. Just name a time, and I'll see if I can.

The replays might be of a previous patch version. Try downloading replays for Entrenchment 1.041.

I can play maybe sometime later tonight.  I'm on EST, but it's also finals week almost.  I will definitely be able to play more when winter break comes, but I can try and find time this week or this weekend to play with you .  Hopefully you'll still want to!

4:30-6:30 PST = 7:30-9:30 EST, right?  Lol.

Haha thanks.  Would you be interested in helping me out online Darvin?

That's fine man.  I just meant in general if you would ever want to.  I'm almost at finals week, so I'm at crunch time for studying and work.  I may be able to later this week or this coming weekend.  Definitely Friday though.

I'm pretty sure I have the most updated one.  I bought it through Impulse, so it should have updated it.  RagingAmish's replays work, though for some reason I can't see some planets.  No matter how much I zoom in, I just cant see anything then it causes a MiniDump.  I'm learning quite quickly on my own.  You'll see when we play.

Having played with you, I'd say your speed issue is entirely related to pacing and multitasking.  You've gotta keep your units moving.  Needless to say if a unit is sitting around idle it's not going to achieve very much, so keep it engaged.

Secondly, multitasking will help you greatly.  There's no rule that says you can only fight in one gravity well at a time.  One of the best ways to get moving quickly in the early game is to split into several groups (each just big enough to handle its assigned task) and to take multiple planets simultaneously. 

Finally, you need a plan.  You need to have an idea of which planets you want to capture in which order, and you need to consider what units you will need to send to do this, and when you can afford to send them.  Your plan should also consider when and how you're going to attack.  One of the problems you had was that the moment you ran out of easy planets to expand, you really didn't have anywhere to go so you sat around for a long time.

Totally agree man.  Thanks for all the help.  I'm going to play a lot of single player games and get used to expanding early and getting used to the races.  We can play again when my connection is better

To a certain extent, you need to remember where your important assets are.  Beyond that, you can always use the empire tree (on the left-hand side of the screen) to browse your assets in each gravity well, or you can just zoom out and highlight the different planets to see what's there.

As far as military groups go, I just use control groups.  I will select my primary task force and click control-1; now every time I click the "1" key, these units will be selected (double-clicking "1" will immediately center my screen on them).  Using a different number (0-9 all work) for different groups, I can then cycle between each of my military task forces with great speed.  This is pretty much the only hotkey you need in Sins, you can get away without using any of the others.  I personally don't use fleets, I just use these hotkeys and manage each of my forces manually to maximize performance.

Once your comfortable with multitasking and managing your units, you should try turning off autocast.  You can get much better performance by manually controlling your abilities, and not only that but then you can start budgeting antimatter on your capital ships, which makes sure you have enough for when it counts.

It's not just the free extractor, it's free extracTION; and you're getting 33% colonize bonus from the Akkan.  That partially offsets the tax you pay.  It's a colony rush.  Instead of kill off siege, build turrets, and leave, it's:  just colonize right away, build a turret, and stick around just long enough that you think the turret will be ok.  The turret will kill off everything, including the siege.   I've done some experiments--you have to do a little micro to make sure the siege doesn't kill off your planet before the turret finishes; but, you can time it just right so it dies right after.  You pay like nothing in tax.  The siege is distracted bombarding the planet.  You pay tax while the colony is alive, but not when it's dead; and you still have the extractor.   No money to get the first civ upgrade?  No problem.  Take a raincheck.

There's a sizeable delay between when you colonize and when you colonize again.  As a result, I don't colonize until I've destroyed the siege frigates.  Once you've killed the siege frigates, the militia can no longer bombard the planet and you're free to colonize it and start building things like turrets in the gravity well.

Remember that scouts deal x2 damage to siege frigates, and are very cheap, so you can build like 10 or so scouts, send them in to destroy the siege frigates in the gravity well (while your capital ship distracts the other units) then colonize the planet and kill the remaining militia with turrets and stuff.  If your capital ship took some damage, you can even build a repair bay and make your repairs while you kill the remaining militia.  This is a great strategy for taking out heavy militia with minimal effort... and more importantly no casualties.