try to counter a rush with healing structures and this will make your smaller army more powerful

Hi.  A warning - everyone rushes online, all of the time.  You will never see anything different.

In Sins, it is fairly difficult to counter a rush.  I think maybe the best thing you can try is play vasari, which gives you access to starbases and the "planet lockdown" with only 2 military labs.

As soon as the game starts, drop 2 military labs, and research starbase tech.  Also, build a skirantra (carrier) capship, because you will need fighters to protect the starbase from bombers, and the skirantra can heal the starbase.

Build a vasari starbase at whatever planet you are trying to protect.  Set the skirantra on hold position, and right click it on the starbase.  2 strats you try with the skirantra.  1 is select the healing special ability, and build all fighters so you can defend against bombers.  2 is select scramble bombers special ability, and build all bombers in order to kill enemy capships.

You will need AT LEAST 1 upgrade for the hull on the starbase to deal with a minimum attack, so upgrade it.  You may need further hull upgrades, and weapon upgrades as well.  Also, repair platforms in strategic locations are your best friend, along with keeping that skirantra following your starbase closely.

Properly executed, this strat will deal with assailants and disciples.  Thing is, if your enemy is smart, he will come back with a bunch of bombers.  Fortunately for you, you have the BEST COUNTER IN THE GAME for this, with the "phasic trap" ability on your hanger bays.  Thing is though, you'll need 4 mil labs to get this technology.  But what you would do is put a couple hanger bays in strategic locations (near your repair bays, for instance), DON'T BUILD ANY STRIKECRAFT so as to save all antimatter for the special ability, and when he targets your starbase with bombers, make sure the starbase is near a hanger.  The strikecraft are frozen and useless for a while, and you are free to attack him with your starbase.  When the strikecraft are released and he targets your starbase again, you go to another hanger, rinse, repeat.

If he bombs your planet with his capships, all you have to do is research the ability which locks the planet down with your starbase (it's only tier 2 with vasari).  Then he is wasting his time and must kill your starbase before he can take your planet.

Other than that, make sure you build all your planetary structures on this planet in a good strategic location, all clustered together so they can be protected by repair platforms and your starbase, and you will be in good shape, unless your opponents are pros, in which case there is nothing you can do except lose

Hey, thanks for all the responses. Some of it seems do-able, but let's take... uh... a hypothetical. This definitely has never happened to me. What are you talking about?

I follow closely the idea that if I can keep my choke-points heavily defended, then I've nothing to worry about because if the enemy can't get past that one defended planet then I've bought myself all the time I want. So, I have a (fully-upgraded Vasari) Star Base and Regeneration Bays a plenty, accented by several upgraded hanger bays, quite the network of point defense platforms, and a moderately large fleet containing a carrier capital ship and a Kortul. As fully expected and predicted by my expansive scouting fleet, a large enemy force jumps in and...

NO BATTLE ENSUES. They leave. No, not the way they came, but in fact towards my more core worlds, which by and large are rather undefended. EVEN WITH the Vasari's Phase Tunneling, which I did have in place, allowing my ships to in fact intercept the enemy fleet, which due to the fact that they jumped out of a well with a Star Base in it had significantly lower hull integrity among all its ships, I was totally eradicated without a single shot fired from or on anything in my choke well.

I mean, I'm sure no one is smart enough to figure this out, so it could never ever happen again... I mean, at all, it could never ever happen at all! But should someone randomly be clicking about the screen and just so happens to ACCIDENTALLY send their fleet on a similar course as the one described above, what would you, the wise strategists of the Sins Forums, suggest?

Thanks again! ^-^

P.S. It wasn't a hypothetical!

Not everyone and not all the time, but sufficiently often that you should be prepared.


First things first:  scout.

If the first you see of the enemy fleet is them invading one of your worlds, you're in serious trouble.  What if, instead of thirty assailants, that had been two Vulkoras desolators?  They could have bee-lined to your homeworld and destroyed it before you could get back.  The bottom line is that you need to be paying attention and actively scouting to know where your enemy is and what units he has.


As has already been mentioned, your best form of defense is repair bays.  These go A LONG ways to keeping your fleet alive.  Couple them with frigate factories (not on every planet, but such that reinforcements only need to make one jump to reach your front lines) and you can usually win any battle of attrition when on the defensive.


Don't count out starbases, just don't overuse them.  Placing them on key choke points is a great move.  Sure, your enemy can just go past them, but the thing is that if they want to get back either to retreat or defend they have to go through a starbase, taking away all antimatter and damaging their hulls.  Doing this repeatedly just isn't in the cards.  A well-placed starbase can be invaluable, but a poorly placed one is nothing short of a colossal expenditure.



This will give you a lot of mileage against the AI, but you'll need to throw it out the window when fighting human opponents.  What your opponent did was a textbook response.  It's actually a sign of a bad or inexperienced player if they don't do this!


If you had phase tunneling, then we're actually pretty far into the game and this isn't a rush anymore.  Secondly, if you needed phase tunneling to counter this (ie, the enemy's fleet got the drop on you) then you weren't scouting well enough.  Phase tunneling allows you to protect multiple fronts with one fleet, it supplements scouting, but it does not supplant scouting.


Your problem here was that the enemy fleet was so much more powerful than your's.  You need a competitive fleet, even if you plan to play defensively.  As I've already mentioned, scouting is quite important, and you need to keep your fleet positioned well.  You need to have a fleet in position to actively threaten the enemy and deter brazen offensives like these.  If your choke point is an asteroid, you can actually get a lot of mileage out of phase jump inhibitors to slow the enemy and to perhaps get some free shots off on their fleet.

Another option if you're determined to stay fleet light is starbase spam.  Starbase approximately every second planet, focusing on the more valuable and strategic ones.  When the enemy attacks, you head towards his empire and return the favour.  Stock up on bombarding capacity and start starbasing strategic worlds in his empire.  The goal is simple: when the dust settles, both sides will have ravaged much of other side, but you will control a network of starbases on the most valuable planets, blocking the enemy's movement and allowing you to pick targets of choice.  Of course, the risk here is that the enemy fleet is still much more powerful than your's.

If your having a hard time keeping up with them add a antorak marauder with only the speed ability on autocast.. they will never outrun you

 Also as they are running through concentrate fire with your bombers on the smaller ships...you will only get a few at a time in each gravity well but by the time they get to your home planet you should have nickel and dimed them down to a managable size.

PJIs are 700%!!!  Wow.  *Face-palm*  Why have I never used these???  Did they get a buff since Vanilla?

-Twilight Storm

Not sure since vanilla, since I wasn't around back then and don't remember much of the four or five games I played before I patched, but as long as I've been playing they've been at 700%.

Of course, they don't affect the entire gravity well so you just have to move outside of their area of effect, which makes them less than useful on any non-asteroid.  Sufficient bombers can destroy a PJI pretty easily, too, which limits their usefulness.

 

Disciple rush was huge in 1.18, but since the 1.19 patch it's been somewhat diminished since LRF spam no longer has a hard early game counter.  Some would say it doesn't really have a hard counter at all...

Pretty sure it has been 700% the entire time, maybe it was changed in one of the earliest patches, but it has been that way for longer than it hasn't.

Totally agree with this.

Well, this sorta makes my point. The whole idea with setting up PJI's is to try to force them to engage on that planet. However, undefended or poorly defending choke points are no better off than they were before adding a PJI. Properly setup the enemy has to decide if they can dedicate resources to destroying the repair bay, fighter and maybe flak protected PJI or will they have to deal with the advancing choke point fleet and bombers that are moving at their position. Better yet, did they even notice the PJI, lol. I've destroyed many capital ships and fleet online because they failed to notice a PJI whether advancing or retreating.

At most a single PJI on a Terran, Desert, etc will slow one phase lane into your system. You most likely won't be slowing their jump out and if there is more than one phase lane into your system it probably isn't much of a choke point candidate. It would also make sense to setup more than one PJI overlapping if you are attempting to deter access into your system. PJI's will only slow their jump so it's pretty much useless if you don't have some DPS dealing unit(s) nearby.

Asteroids make great potential choke points as pointed out because the PJI covers the entire gravity well.

I personally don't consider choke points as an early game strategy as it requires multiple labs/research to make effective (I would rather be building fleet). As indicated by others well placed repair bays (future choke points maybe) and frigate factories can add more to early game defense then overlly worrying about choke points. The best way to defeat an advancing fleet is to have the upper hand on your worlds as he tries to pass through. Also with those repair bays in place it's easy to retreat a capital ship or high value frigate out and around the repair bay and back into the action. Having those fortifications in place also helps in the same fashion if you gain the upper hand and start to advance as you can retreat your high value capital ships and frigates (i.e. carriers) back to your previously fortified position repair and re-engage.

 

i think i was in both games...lol

obviously i was the one rushing

first things first...you or your friend...ur not very good (the minute u can acknowledge this fact the better u will get)

second and most important thing for any and all rts...SCOUT...SCOUT..SCOUT...cant stress this enough

third...u cannot feed early in diplomacy because u must research 2 techs after building 3 civic labs to do so...

fourth...its not hard to have 30 ships and 2 caps within 20-30min. if u do not u will be crushed by who does

this game uses a rock-paper-scissors system...simply know what ur enemy is building (by SCOUTing) and build the counter..or go rock vs rock. true rushes are actualy scarce in this game...if a player colonizes towards u whilest making ships then attacks u when he gets to u...NOT A RUSH. a rush is when he heads for u immediatly at start (skipping colonizing) true rushes usualy only happen in 5v5 games where players start within 2-3 jumps of each other

this is a military rts....if u cant get a grasp of that fact then my advice is to stick with easy ais in single player...(or go play sim city ...)

lolz.  I'm not the only one.

*Points at Xer07*

He got me into it.

Kallen/Karen FTW!!!

-Twilight Storm