Due to the relative lack of guides about how to play Sins of the Prophets online I decided I would post a few guides, quips, and tips as to how to play it with the most success. I mostly play as the UNSC, so I have a great deal of Knowledge as to how to get ahead fairly quickly in the games that I play. I have a tendency to play on heroic difficulty or better, so this guide is for those who play at that or better, because playing at a normal difficulty or easier is fairly straightforward.
Firstly the UNSC has a great deal in common with the TEC when it comes to how the economy is managed. Getting trade ports, refinery stations, and upgrades to crystal and metal extraction rates is very important for success in the game, as it will soon become the basis for building fleets of ships and upgrading your tech. In addition, empires in SOTP can afford to upgrade their fleet capacity early on in the game, because the cost for doing so is so low. There is a limit to doing this, howeve. Upgrading your fleet capacity to past level three or four in the first 30 minutes of the game can ruin your chances of success early on as easily as planet underdevelopment can, so start as small as you can and expand to past your first 10 or fifteen planets before you really start to expand your fleets into literal juggernaughts. However, during such time neglecting your research into civil and military trees will leave you underpowered and weak to face a determined enemy later on, so applying basic upgrades is crucial to economic and military success later on in the game.
Secondly it is rather important to realise early on how much hull points, repair rates, targeting ships and Fleet Diversity matters on UNSC starships and fleets. Early on most ships have very little armor and a comparatively low pool of health against a mid-game or late game opponent, so upgrading their amount of hull points and armor is very important early and later on. Repairwise it really does depend on in the later portions of the game where the fleet balance matters. In the early stages of the game if you need something repaired just build a repair station or two, or upgrade the hulls of your ships, as the upgrades also provide a boost in repair rates for the first two tiers of upgrades.
This is directed towards people who get the game, play a couple of minutes in and get into their first fleet battle and assume the combat is exactly like it was in Sins of a Solar Empire and, for reasons that escape me, decide to use all the ships in their fleet and target one enemy ship, and in the engagement that ensues, lose half their fleets yet somehow win the day. If this has happened to you I'll tell you why. In the Halo lore the MAC cannon that was deployed onto UNSC ships do do massive amounts of damage against unshielded targets, and could make huge dents into shielded ones. Wasting five or six mac shots on one enemy ship in a balanced fight is a massive waste of your resources available, because not only do you end up wasting three to four of your shots on the target, but the reload time for your mac rounds is on average over two minutes, and the enemy isn't making the same mistake you are in this regard. So in this try doing either one or two shots to a ship, and have your AAA and Archer Missiles handle the rest of the HP left on these ships. This advice isn't for the people who are facing down covenant foes, but for the starting expansion. If you spread your shots out you can severely thin out the enemy before he can get his rounds off, thus preserving more of your fleet.
That's targeting ships for you, and for the most part this same advice applies against covenant ships, but you need more MAC rounds to accomplish the same result, but not much more. If you're getting into massive fleet on fleet battles against covenant armadas then the advice I give you now is critical. Have a little bit of everything in your fleets, set your engagement range to hold position or local area to keep cohesion, and have as many capital ships as feasibly possible. Keep this in mind though, what kinds of ships you have in your fleet matters, and what kinds of capital ships you have are crucial as well. If you look at the stats of all the capital ships and combat vessels the UNSC gets, then most newcoming people would resort to spamming carriers, destroyers, and Halcyons while building as many supercarriers, Autumns, and battlecruisers as the could. but this is also incredibly stupid, because carriers, while able to spawn fighters and bombers, are incredibly easy to kill. Halcyons are incredibly tough, but have almost no alpha damage. Destroyers have good armor, HP and damage, but have next to no AA capability and are rather expensive in fleet supply and in resources and time to build. Supercarriers have many buffs, HP and Health, but are immensely expensive, are time consuming, and cost a lot of fleet supply to build. Autumns are postwar ships, and being so, are immensely tough, have a massive amount of alpha damage in all areas, and are able to capture enemy ships, so out of all of these, they aren't a bad idea to spam. Orion Battlecruisers, however, aren't. While they have the firepower to tear assault carriers to nice little grunt bits, and will reliably do so in two shots, which they are known for, they don't have much in the way of missiles or AAA, and don't have the HP to survive protracted engagements. The best fleet is one that has a healthy balances of frigates, destroyers, carriers, and Capital Ships.
If you're one to have entire fleet vs entire fleet battles, try having the majority of you ships be either Paris or Stalwart frigates, around 25/35 destroyers, six to seven carriers (you really don't need as many as that even, because all capital ships carry fighters or bombers) and a spread out selection of capital ships. Obviously you need the one Supercarrier to buff your entire fleet. You need either 2 or 3 Valiants to boost the engagement range of your ships, two Battlecruisers to deal with super destroyers or assault carriers with ease, two or three assault ships if you're attacking that planet and either a lot of Marathons or a lot of Autumns, though you should have at least one marathon in the fleet at any time because they get an ability that allows your ships to dodge 25% of all enemy fire, which is an immense advantage in big engagements.
Well I'm done rambling for the moment. If you want me to post about a topic in the game send me a message at aaronrbsanford@gmail.com and I'll post to the most of my ability. If this gets a lot of reads then I'll add more to the guide but until then farewell
