I'm just offering how new players to online sose should guage themselves when wondering how good they will be compared to the players online.  I'm not saying that the strategies they will learn in single player will work online but the ability to manage military and econ will help when going online

Minimum I would say beating 1 unfair AI agressive (helps when dealing with online rushes)

Decent online players can beat 3-4 unfair ai's (make sure all the ais are in one locked teams)

Better players can beat 6-9 unfair AI's (again make sure they are in the same team)

Top players can beat 9 unfair AI's with no SB's.

This is the statement that I desagree with so much. I don't go out looking for newer players because it's no fun. There's no real challenge. Not to discredit the new player, but experience teaches you how to balance military/economy/fleet/planet aborbtion. Newer players cannot have as good an understanding so they're not fun to play.

Plus. What good does it do to crush a newb? Shatter his belief in the game that he has been making good progress? Make him believe the game isn't fun? NOOOOO.

I pull those poeple aside and give them advice in comp stomps. The list of poeple I've done this with is pretty long now.

Yeah, but there's no point in playing online when the quality of sportsmanship is much much better on hamachi. AND the lag isn't as bad. AND ICO can't drop you 'cause you aren't ON ICO! MWhahahahAHha!!!!

seriously though, ico is evil.

I purchased the game around February of 2009 and wow! it is a fun game. I looked at ICO online briefly during the initial buy but have always been into Single Player. Eventually I ventured into the forum for this game and discovered the wealth of information available. This lead to downloading fantastic MODS developed by the gaming community. Eventually I wanted more out of the game and finally logged into ICO a month or so ago. It was a tough transition not really ever playing online competitive games before. My first mistake was joining a 5v5 pug game. I think they may have thought I was a smurf, although, I only knew this term at the time as being really small blue creatures. I have been playing fairly regulary over the last month or so and have improved my game substantially (my wife can confirm the fairly regulary as this is a new complaint lately, lol)

Here is my advice for new players

• Be patient. There aren't a lot of players online, maybe 80-120 players most nights (5-10 waiting in the Lobby), less during the day. I see way to many people hop online, ask if anyone is playing and log off 5 minutes later only to miss a game starting up. Don't expect a lot of small talk in the lobby either. After you play a while you will have more whisper conversations on the side than what you will see public in the Lobby.
• Look for smaller games or host 2v2, 3v3 or ffa (4 or so players). These are easier to find players of equal skill or to balance teams if a couple of better players join. Also, ffa works pretty well if you want a match were it doesn't matter if someone leaves early or you can only find 3 players to join. In fact a 2v2 can turn into a ffa if the other players agree.
• If you are new and want help try asking. Several players are willing to do a comp stomp to help new players learn how to expand or counter units. Ask during games what counters X, etc. Most good players like to share especially if it helps them win. Here is a great unit faq that includes the counters you will need https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/319926 (Posted by Raging Amish).
• Read the strategy forums. There are several good posts written that detail unit strengths and weaknesses, how and when to entrench, how to counter spammers, etc (See previous point). Plus they are fun to read.
• Seriously, watch the replays. Focus on what the better players did in the game. Focus on how they expand, when they build trade ports, when the research military/eco/defence. Players have different approaches so you will see different strategies that you might incorporate into your own style of play.
• DON'T quit just because you lost your first capital ship or battle. This is frustrating even if when the opossing player does this. Try to stay alive, frankly its more fun to be a nuisance to the opposing player especially if they are better than you and learned a lot in the process. Eventually you may lose, but you may have bought time for a better player on your team to invade their planets while they were spending way to much time trying to take down the noob. To this point learn to use defensive structures, especially repair bays. Here is a great post on how to defend a planet https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/366181 (Posted by Raging Amish).
• Avoid 5v5 skilled or 5v5 pug games. Eventually you may want to join these but ensure you are ready with both skill and hardware. These games get big with lots of units running around. I have found that frankly my current hardware is severely challenged in these games. I hate to drop but eventually you will get asked to leave due to lagging out the game. My solution is, as I love this game so much, to upgrade my hardware this week. When you do join these games though you will find some funny phrases repeated such as: "Your Smurfs beat our Smurfs!", "I guess our Smurfs where really noobs after all!", "Our noobs weren't as good as your noobs!", etc. Try not to take offense to this, as in my opinion it appears to be fun banter between people who seem to know each other fairly well. Also, don't be offended if you get booted before a game starts that doesn't match your record. Balance can be really important in these larger games especially if you are investing 1-2 hours or more of gameplay.
• You CAN play/host online even if ICO says your IP is not visible. Just make sure Alloy is checked.
• There ARE two versions of SINS... Regular(Vanilla) and Entrenchment. You will only be able to see games that are hosted in the version you are currently logged into. You will however see how many games are being hosted. Therefore, if you see 3 games hosted but only 1 game which you can't/won't join then exit SINS and log in using the other version to see if there is a game you can join. This may seem tedious but I have been able to play many games in both versions and find the process acceptable, though I have no idea why they don't show all the games available so you could decide whether or not you wanted to swich... further more it would be nice to see what version people are running in the lobby as well). Eventually you will make friends in both versions making it easier to find games.
• If you are hosting a game you can change channels to the lobby and try to recruit people into your game. The advantage of this is you are being proactive and people may be more willing to join when asked. The other advantage is people can see who is hosting the game. Also use titles that indicate the kind of game you are hosting 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, FFA, etc. You can add noob only but there aren't usually a lot of people online so you may be limiting who joins, plus you won't be a noob for long so it pays to play better people. Also, Generally speaking the host makes the rules, but feel free to ask when you get people to join if there are any options they want such as pirates, locked teams for FFA, etc. If you are looking for a balance remember to check their records with the Person/Magnifying glass icon.
• If you are still having problems finding games online. Buy the game as a gift for a family member or friend and bring them online with you. Eventually you will feel comfortable enough to join the games being hosted online and expand the fun you can have with the game.
• If you still don't like playing online atleast try some of the MODS listed in the forum and show your support to the modders. They are doing some excellent work for free in addition to extending the fun of this game.

yes -.-

i do believe he meant 1 on 9, not ffa

I typically cannot play online due to children so I spare others of the burden of that fun    YOUR Welcome

LoL...I suppose an all Marza / Hoshiko strategy would work...once your first couple Marzas hit level 6, they could level the rest, and it would become gravy after that.

Try making a fleet full of Marzas and bringing them up to Level 6.  The AI would just walk right into the missile barrages.  Now imagine 16 Level 6 Marzas missile barraging an entire 2000 supply points worth of fleet.

well I guess this thread is strongly related to our mental or should I say morale.

fear of pro players kick ur butt in MP games? Look, in all games if u want to become a pro ASAP u'll just have to fight the pros and if u lose VERY BADLY on a regular basis , eventually makes u tough when u've become a pro urself. but if u fear well u'll never become a pro forever

Ibgsloan, what you say has merit.  However, I really think that Sins's low online multiplayer player counts have almost nothing to do with the people playing it online nor the multiplayer portion of the game itself.  Perhaps it accounts for a difference of 150 players, but it doesn't explain why the game doesn't have 1000 people on at once.

If you look at the numbers, we peak at about 150 people online at once on the weekends, which is 0.015% of 1 million.  (Let's assume that the game has sold about 1 million copies by now, which doesn't seem unreasonable.)  Wouldn't you think that, regardless of whether or not people are rude online, that a much higher percentage of people would want to play it online during prime gaming time?  It seems reasonable to think (being conservative) that 2% of all purchasers -- 20,000 people -- would want to play it online regularly and that 10% of that group would play it during prime time (0.2%), which means that it should have about 2000 people playing it online at once during prime time on the weekends--people who are online multiplayer veterans with thick skins who wouldn't be deterred by smurfing and unsociable behavior.

However, even shortly after Sins was released when you would expect to see a higher percentage of people online and more people who would be playing it at as their #1 game, the online player counts were rarely higher than 300 people with about 250 or 270 being most common.

Therefore, I really don't think that Sins's low online player counts problem has much of anything to do with technical issues (minidumps, hosting problems, desyncs, etc.) nor behavioral issues  Rather--the fundamental problem is just that 98% of all Sins players have no interest and never had any interest in even trying it online in the first place.  (Stardock and Ironclad must have stats somewhere showing what percentage of purchasers ever created ICO accounts.)  Why?  I don't know.  Perhaps the game's marketing just ended up appealing to single player only people and turned off online players or maybe the online types pirated the game and play it over Hamachi.  Based on my own personal research, one very common sentiment is that people think the game must take 8 or 16 hours to play online.  (A single player 10 empire FFA game could take that long, so people naturally assume that an online Sins game would take that long, too, making it impractical for online play.)  Other people have complained about having poor Internet connections, but that would affect all games that could be played online and not just Sins, so cross that one off.

What the online multiplayer game really needs is promotion on the part of Ironclad and Stardock to reach out to the single player community and to encourage them to try online multiplayer (and to dispell the 8 or 16 hour myth).  However, neither company has any interest in doing that since those people have already bought the game and dealing with online multiplayer issues would be a royal pain in the derriere.  (Why would you want to make more work for yourself for no direct gain?)

DS -  Not to put too fine a point on it, but wouldn't both companies be better served by increasing marketing among traditional multi-player venues than trying to "convert" single-player customers into multi-player customers?  As you said, it doesn't make any economic sense to do it the other way around: no matter how much success they might find, that wouldn't result in any extra sales (although it would at least give you multi-player types some more opponents to face). 

I think some well placed advertisements would be the cure for what ails the multi-player segment of the game.  Perhaps as we draw closer to Diplomacy's release, that might come to fruition.  On the other hand, Sins is a well-known game by this time and opinions may be settled until a sequel/full expansion comes along.