Harassing and raiding works best in an RTS where even the basic extractor doesn't have 2500 HP. In age of empires, you could kill a villager here or a villager there and it would have a significant impact on his economy, because it took about 20 seconds to kill an unguarded villager.

In Sins, by the time your raiding force gets the extractor to half health he's already jumped his ships in and is about to take out your raiders. Now you might get the extractor at the cost of a ship or two, but how much did you really win by taking out a 250 credit extractor and losing about 800 credits and 100 metal in raiders? Not even the lost production from the extractor can begin to cover that.

The closest thing I've seen in sins that is actually kind of effective is when your opponent has more ships than you, so you run through his planets and destroy as much as you can without losing anything while you continue to build fleet.


To make raiding more viable, it might be a good idea for Ironclad to add a trickle cost of credits or something like that for a building to repair itself. Free repairs on a very expensive facility don't make sense anyways, unless there's some intergalactic insurance agency taking care of all the problems.

Also a good way to be remembered. And you'll never get a game going again.

In our Lan games, I use 1 Marza, 5 Flak, 5 Carriers (all fighters). Hanger Def are little problem with the Flak/Fighters, and the Marza can take out key buildings, and bombard planets. Your opponent absoulutly must make/move some kind of counter force to deal with it.

I send the above to an ememies rear planets if I see him comming in with a superior force at my front lines; they pull back 90% of the time. . .

Actually the only way to effectively to raid the enemy is, to distract him with ur main fleet then hit one of his back planets with a small bombarment fleet(6-8 deal effectively witht their colonies), the ai does it all the time in single player i also do it in mp too, once in an mp game i took out 4 of a guys colonies using this tactic.

Since sooo many ppl on these forums suggest no/little defence, sending in bombers to take down colonies like khire noted is the best form of harrasment.

Utter nonsense. It might have 4x elements but sins is still primarily an rts game and the usual tactics still apply. Just make sure you lead with a siege cap or carrier. I usually capture 2 asteroids then attack. Every building and point of population you get damages your opponent's economy and forces him to devote resources to defense instead of tech or expansions. If you hit and run there's really little your opponent can do but chase after you endlessly until he masses up a fleet and by that time the game is in your hands.

300 if its a large fleet game