hello everyone. I want to say i noticed a few people saying they were getting frustrated or found the game too difficult or what.

I sometimes have tough times with RTS games too of not being overun at first. however i found a great setting for "new comers" to start out with and get there feet wet

The best way to learn and understand sins is to just take your time with it. best way to do that is select a huge random galaxy (100 planets) and select just 2 other races on easy setting. this way it gives you plenty of time to develop your fleet and without feeling rushed.

It worked great for me. and the nice thing about it the more i learned through trial and error (and help from the chat room/forums) the better it got. Sure the first 2 hours were interesting .. as it took me two hours to figure out to colonise another planet all i needed to do was click on the missonary craft (as advent) under the freighters menu

but i never found myself too overwhelmed except wtith the pirates later on, but as suggested by other players once i got enough money i just bribed them every time right as the timer ran out and they pretty much left me alone.

even with a few hours "wasted" turtling because i was still figuring out things after 9 hours into it on the same game. i got myself a pretty nice little empire going on.

its a great game that aside from the pirates (which in the new patch can be turned off anyways) doesnt really make you feel "rushed" to just pump out the most ships and what.

you learn over time that its more about reaching planets, taking them over, building up there "status" and then making sure you firmly secure them

also another GREAT tool i didnt even know about untill later on is the auto explore feature of scouts. you can build 4 or 5 scouts and then right click on the menu to have them auto explore sectors. after a bit my home system was explored and i had a general idea of the layout of things

(also helped to find out where the pirate base is)

you may feel overwhelmed at first. and even wonder "oh grea why did i buy this?" but. give it time. relax. and just play around with it. I think in the end you will be more rewarded and have much more fun doing so.

i do like the pace of it. its not just about cranking out the best army. if you do. but ignore your planets deveopment it will end up costing you .

the only thing i really dont like is the diplomacy feature in ai games are pretty much useless. but i hope maybe in the future someone will make a mod or perhaps an update to fix that

well hope it helps

and remember take your time reading the forums for tips and check out the chat room too i found that very helpful and in a few cases where i had no idea what to do

(such as losing planets because of changing there facton to null) it helped me out a lot