noob here, a little overwhelmed

Corvettes are the best unit to expand with, as they're fast, cheap, easy to research and destroy siege frigates quickly. Then just build your Akkan colonizer cap and take all the weakly defended neutral planets around. You'll may need to research Ice/Volcanic colonization techs to take those planets, so if you need them get those early as well. Make sure you get the first population upgrade or two on each planet so you don't have negative income from underdevelopment, and build resource extractors right away. At first focus on just expanding, then when there are no more planets you can take, you'll develop your economy mostly on trade.

If you want more depth, check out my steam guide.

DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF EXPECTING THAT YOU'LL BE ABLE TO DEFEND YOURSELF WITH STARBASES AND SUCH WHEN YOU HAVE LESS AREA THAN YOUR ENEMY!!!!!      It may be an effective tactic against the ai, but against any human you'll get crushed.  All out expansion is the order of the day in sins, and don't forget that.

Do not queue up a bunch of research at once.  You may be tempted to research all 4 of those laser techs at once, but when you queue it up, it takes the resources from your total.  It's far better to use those resources in a better manner, and research that stuff once the previous one finishes.

for instance, based on the proven equation of:

Women = money * time

time = money

thus

Women = money^2

it is far more valuable to keep the money for later.

With those 5000 credits, you could get a lot of women, ya?  Wouldn't it be better to build 5 trade ports, become a corrupt shipping magnate, get enough money for the next tier of research in time for the current one to finish building, and then later, through investments in the future in the form of trade ports, have 25 million credits.

then you have

(A Lot Of Women)^2

Therefore, it is a very good thing not to have that 5000 credits tied up in research instead of making you money.

I often make the mistake if i don't queue some research i will forget it later.. like the 4 titan research, i often forget the 4th one and wonder where the hell is my titan, even in online skilled matches.. so maybe 2-3 research queued is not a really bad thing if you are likely to forgot and it is an important one.. but true, it can kill you if you put all your early money in queued research

Don't build 10 capital ships in the beginning, it will leave you no chance even against Hard AI, and don't only rely on them, if you see you cant keep a capitalship alive for more than 1 minute dont build one, try to build more ships instead. Even against players it is not impossible to win without your capitalship.

Don't insist on building a shiptype your enemy is excellent against. Like building corvettes against light frigates mixed with flak frigates. Try to adjust to your enemy.

Hard to find balance in fleet building, economy building and technological advancement, but over time you will get used to it, just needs practice. Just don't overdo any of these making the other 2 underdeveloped, maybe technology can be neglected more than the other 2.

TEC rebels, it works most times to spam javelis mixed with other ships based on your enemys used ship types, really hard to counter, even if it is AI opponent, will fail miserably. Corvettes and light frigates are good too for rushingin the early minutes, but against harder ai-s before fleet you will need starbases in choke points.

But if you remember, money is the root of all evil.  In other words, money² = evil. But according to your proof above, money² also = women. I leave it to the reader to apply the transitive property.

Yes women are evil

Thanks for the tips...not to bug you guys and I know its not SC, but can we go a little in depth with BOs (for the record, I come from CoH, not SC). 

Also, is your first capital ship supposed to be free?

Let x=1...

Then x2=x....and thus x2-1=x-1...

Doing some factoring, x2-1=(x-1)(x+1) (which, as you may recall, all still equals x-1)...

So we have (x-1)(x+1)= (x-1)...after simplifying, we get x+1=1...and now we substitute in x to find that 2=1....

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfgX0fyNeLc

Yes, your first capital ship is free, except that it still takes 50 command points.

Build order depends a bit on which faction you are playing (I see you like TEC rebels), but also what type of game you are playing, i.e. single player, multiplayer with locked teams, multiplayer free-for-all, or a couple of players with a bunch of AI players around you.  Level of difficulty for single player and multiple humans + AI players also affects optimal opening moves.

Happy to chime in once I know what type of game you want help with.  It seems like you are playing TEC rebels in a standard single player game with easy or normal difficulty settings, but I just want to double-check.

Indeed.  Money is the root of all evil, thus women are evil^2

However, women are desired, so does this desire therefore mean that all men are evil as well?

Could the elusive symptom of this be the phenomenon called Sad Lonely Seleucus, colloquially known as trolling?

What this discovery could mean for the medical field is astonishing, however, all data pertaining to this is strictly limited by the board of homeland trolling security, in order to save face if new treatments developed from this discovery and they prove ineffective when applied against this incurable disease.

It is certain, however, that the victims of this disease need medical treatment immediately, so Washington has approved a series of tests that will take place upon a willing test subject.  This subject has chosen to keep his identity anonymous at this time, citing embarrassment and to spite someone he calls "An information hungry slug".  Because of the secrecy involved in this operation, the government has decided to approve his appeal for anonymity for now.

(www.dhs.gov)

It's impossible to really discuss them without a specific scenario  To put that into context, it took be a while to realize BO meant build order. In Sins its better just to know what is good when then have any sort of premade plan going into it beyond your initial expansion plans. At the very least we need to know are you planning on just playing the AI or multiplayer. And even then we have all the role issues in MP that make any real discussion of them require paragraphs of conditionals.

For learning the game, really just starting with your colony capital ships and corvettes while making sure your planets are generating positive revenue is all you really need to learn. The real learning comes by playing things and trying things out. If you'd rather experiment undisturbed, I've made a custom map where the AI can't attack you here. There's still some challenging battles if you want to fight them, but there is no AI power going to expand or attack you (except for the pirates if you have them on).

On the other hand of the spectrum if you're wanting to get to the competitive scene right away, really watching some replays or youtube videos of MP games is worth far more than any text I'd type.

LFs arent good?

I want to play multiplayer

lf's are good in the very early stages of a game, perhaps just after corvettes first come out.  as time goes on, powerful area-of-effect abilities come into play and make them totally obsolete.  For instance, an advent rebel titan at level 10 will probably obliterate 500 light frigates in 10-15 seconds

LFs are good combined with Corvettes, as they counter each others counters. So early game you should probably focus on building those. Corvettes are just better for pure expansion against the militia, but if you're playing human players early you'll want a mixture of both (pure Corvette spam dies quickly to flak).

The most general unit progression for a multiplayer game usually starts out with LF + Corvettes and ends with titans, support cruisers, carriers and Corvettes. In the middle it can be pretty unpredictable. Sometimes LFs + Corvettes last until titans are deployed, but others a player may lose their early fleet and may build something else, so you can see a lot of different setups here.

That's hyperbole even for an Eradica, as it will need more than 1 attack and the cooldown of Chastic Burst is 30 seconds. 

whatever...

it would still rape them easily

what kind of units are good in middle game? kodiaks? kols? starbases? ect

HCs are the best if you are at a time when fleets are pretty big but the titan(s) you are facing are low level (like level 1, maybe level 2)...

If you are facing lvl 3 titans or higher, you probably aren't going to get away with HCs (unless it's a TL titan) and will need to use bombers or corvettes....of course, if it's a VL titan then you are pretty much hosed unless you have your own fleet of decent level titan and caps...

That said, often players are carrying over their early game fleets into the mid-game, so the "ideal" fleet composition isn't particarly relevant...

against ai or humans?

starbases and other defenses are great against the ai, but not so good against humans since they will just stand off and destroy them with ogrovs or bombers.

Heavy cruisers are good bets late game, since they have far more health than frigates and so can survive for longer against titan aoe.

Kols are not very good at this time. Make a couple for the flak burst and that is it, but before that you need to have at least one marza, akkan, sova, and dunov.   

In rebellion the marza is my favorite starting cap because of missile barrage, but the akkan is great too