For Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion players who want to join the 5s community, this guide will explain how to. Lets find out.
Intro
This is mostly a guide for new players wanting to join the 5s community. But honestly some of the concepts explained here are not mastered by 95% of the player base. So almost everyone can benefit from reading it. To be able to understand the guide you need to understand the game on a very basic level at least, what most unit do, what most structures do and be able to understand what the basic techs do. I recommend reading Zabik guide to get a basic understanding if you are completely lost and play until you can beat the unfair AI 1v1.
The community!
Couple things to know here:
- A) You are not guaranteed to get to play on your first try, it highly depends on the host, if it is one of my lobbies, you speak English and has read this guide you will 100% play, for other hosts it highly depends.
- B) Teams are usually balanced in a way it doesn’t matter if you suck so just try to do well and have fun and don’t stress about it too much.
- C) 5s players are incredibly salty, if you do well, because for example, you mastered this guide, you will be called a smurf, I honestly don’t have any solution to this beside having a public steam profile and not trolling.
- D) 5s players likes to brag how they are so good and its impossible for new players to join the community, it is not true, if you have decent RTS experience and focus on improving you will be better than 50% of them within a week.
Now that begs the question, why would you want to play with these morons? Well… SOASE team games are in my opinion, the peak of the RTS experience both in complexity and possible teamwork. I highly recommend joining my discord to hang with the nicer part of the player base. https://discord.gg/NNdDGmqNTC
The lobby !
Step by step guide:
- 1- Go to team 10 (it’s the waiting team before teams are made)
- 2- Once the lobby is made, the teams will be made by experienced members of the community, all you must do is pay attention and go on the team you are told to, (in the case of captains picking, you will be picked last most likely so wait your turn)
- 3- Try to be as friendly as possible, it’s hard in this community I know, do your best.
The races:
- Advent: Advent have the best Light Frigate and a lot of fun abilities to play with, if you are the type of RTS players that like spell casters advent is for you! They rely on light frigate spam and abilities in 5s to dominate.
Notable techs and mechanics to be familiar with: Mass transcendence, Guardians Repulse, Bounty feed, synergy turrets and hangar shield, LF am steal. - TEC: Tec is pretty much the base faction. Everything is simple and intuitive, if you like to feel like you earned your victory through out strategizing your opponent, TEC is for you! They rely on playing solidly and having all your bases covered to win.
Notable techs and mechanics to be familiar with: Pervasive economy, Development mandate, Trade Chain, Redbutton and starbase trade. - Vasari: they are the most map dependent, when all the stars align (no pun intended) you will feel like a god, if you are map ♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the other hand, it can be miserable to play Vasari. They rely on starbases and neutral capturing to win.
Notable techs and mechanics to be familiar with: Scout/Neutrals, starbase building, Salvage, phase gates.
Rebellion races:
- Advent Loyal, a very balanced race, mostly defensive as you lack cheap bombing options, but you also have the strongest units, it’s up to you how you want to use that advantage. Has a strong anti-titan titan and average corvettes. (most beginner friendly race and the one I will write the agro guide for)
Notable techs to be familiar with: Planet for planet, ancient retribution, Global unity, the 50% extra culture and the faster culture kill. - Advent rebel, another very balanced race, even more defensive than AL, plays relatively similar for the early game. Has a very strong anti fleet titan and versatile corvettes.
Notable techs to be familiar with: Resurrect/Clone and WAIL. - TEC Loyal, A very specific race, slightly better allins than TR, early game you should either greed like climate change doesn’t exist or rely on your extremely strong corvettes to win on the spot. (If you like microing little ships that die when you sneeze at them) this is the race for you. The titan is the best by far at high level and very strong corvettes.
Notable techs to be familiar with 25% tax eco, novalith, militia. - TEC Rebel, A relatively balanced race, weak defensively but strong combined eco/agro potential which forces you to either take risk to get your stuff going or to get a small advantage and use TR tools to convert your advantage into a win. TR has a good option for every situation and late game they have the strongest fleet by far if you know what you are doing. If are a risk averse strategy mastermind TR is the race for you. The corvettes are alright, and the titan is pretty weak in a vacuum but it helpful to convert a advantage like the rest of the TR toolbox.
Notable techs to be familiar with: Savage Thrill/bombing income, Pirates yarrrrr - Vasari loyal: A very weird race, weak at everything but has insane insane eco potential when you master it, outside of that relies on capship/corvettes and starbases to win the game. If you like making other ships this is not the race for you.
Notable techs to be familiar with: Cap income, STTC. - Vasari rebel: VERY VERY defensive race, similar to VL in the early game but branches out really hard in the midgame, if you like winning games without having a big fleet this is the race for you. Or if you like to keep your opponent in a little box and play with your food for 30 min until its cost efficient to finally kill them this is for you. Or if you wanna feel like an American airline pilot, and flying your team across the map.
Notable techs to be familiar with: Last armor tech, moving starbases, shared gates.
Start of the game
there are 6* positions possible you can have: Eco, Agro, Sequential/double, Suicide, Sequential-Suicide.
- ECO: You are between two allies, hardest position to play well by far, will go more in detail in the ECO section.
- Agro, you are the wall between your eco and a ally, pretty much a 1v1, your job? Do not let the wall fall, also do not let your opponent get rich while you sit on your ass. Best case scenario? You kill your opponent.
- Sequential, just like Agro but behind your opponent there is a ally that also has is own opponent, if you sit on your ass, your ally could get 2v1 and cost you the game, you typically need to play sequential extremely aggressive. Which a lot of players do not, most common mistake in 5s IMO.
- Double, you in front of an opponent that is also one of your teammates only opponent, so you are essentially in a 2v1, usually it plays like sequential where you rush with all your might and try to take them out asap. HOWEVER, ECO + suicide is stronger than 2 doubling players assuming everyone is good, so sometimes its better for one of the double to put pressure while the other ones eco/prepare to hit a strong timing. Since you are a new player, you will 100% be the one putting pressure just know that sometimes your ally will not help you.
- Suicide: You are between two enemies, and no one is coming to save you! There are a lot of ways to play this position, you can run away, or you can try to survive as long as you can, since you are a new player, you shouldn’t try to take your eco feed to try to beat opponent but that is the best start for a top player. Also keep in mind, sometimes you will have an eco to feed you and sometimes you will not.
- Sequential-Suicide, it kind of plays like Suicide, but someone is coming to save you! Hopefully at least, usually the best start is to double the guy in between, if you are sequential suicide that means one of your opponents is also Sequential-suicide.
In those ♥♥♥♥♥♥ drawing each roman numeral is = to one position previously described can you name them? (also, if someone wants to remaster the drawings it would be really nice 😊)
Answers:
I = eco
II = sequential
III = sequential suicide
IV = Agro
V = double
VI = suicide
ECO spot
There are 3 kind of eco spot: Eco with suicide, Eco that feeds and Eco that fleets.
Since you are a new player, we will ignore eco that fleets as it is extremely hard to execute properly.
Now what is the difference between eco with suicide and eco that feeds? Basically, if you have a suicide as eco spot you are in a 2v2 with your suicide vs the 2 double spot, the rest of your team needs to fend for themselves. While if you have no suicide, you need to keep the whole team floating. Usually that includes giving resources to everyone that needs or, giving your best player all the money and hope they kill everyone (works often, trust me), usually you want to either feed for killing their opponent and star base to save from dying, however sometimes your ally is too far to star base so you will have to feed them to survive.
If your best players is vs the other team best player, ask your best player opinion on what to do, as usually if one of the 2 wins, it’s the end of the game.
Bounty vs Feed. So when you go up a fleet supply upgrade your “tax” increase, some of the income sources of the game are taxed ex: Extractor income, trade income, population income, and some isn’t like scuttling a ship, pervasive economy, bombing income for TR, salvage for vas etc.
Well feed is taxed by the receiver and bounty is not taxed! Also assuming the host didn’t troll and the DLCs are correctly installed bounty gets a 25% bonus. So, if you bounty your ally opponent 1k, your ally will get 1.25k credits once they harvest the bounty. While if your ally is on 19% fleet tax, they would get 810 credits. Advent get a extra 25% multiplicative bonus to bounty given at Tier 1, making advent eco actually much stronger early game. Also bounty scale with the amount put, it’s not linear but it’s close enough that if you put 5x more bounty on someone your ally will harvest a 4-5x more. The break point is around 50k where adding more bounty doesn’t help too much.
Now, how should you eco? You will have to learn that by experience but couple pointers.
1. Planets with more extractors > planets with less extractors.
2. Planets with more logistic slots >> planets with less logistic slots.
3. Cheaper planets >>> expensive planets.
4. Build trade ports on extra logistic slots, do not industry spec.
5. Do not research every tech in existence. Usually, 2-4 mining tech and culture/trade port and that all you need. Researching everything is the nr1 mistake of bad players.
6. DO NOT MAKE A FLEET, instead scout ahead and if you are going to get attacked by the other eco, build starbases!!!, if you are TEC you can just make starbases vs almost everything everywhere and pump trade upgrades on them once you stabilize, if you are advent, vs Vasari starbases attack you will also want hangar with the shield upgrade, if you are vas you can just make starbases. The logic is, if the enemy eco start getting ogrovs for example, feed your ally so they make corvettes for you or build hangar with fighters. You want to avoid fleeting at all costs if you are on the defensive, the tax will eat you alive. Example assuming you want to feed 50% of your income, and reinvest the rest, it should take you between 15 and 25 min to double your income depending on your skill, If you have 19% tax (2 Fleet supply) after about 45 min you will half as much income as you would have if you didn’t fleet and that without considering, starbases are usually way more cost efficient than fleet especially for tec and vas.
Fighting positions! as advent!
Fighting positions!
How should you play in fighting positions? Well, I will give a simple guide for advent loyal here, as it’s the easiest race to play and the best race to learn the game with.
So for fighting positions I mostly mean agro, sequential and sequential-suicide.
1. Start of the game, I recommend building radiance as first cap, even for experienced players but especially for new players, it’s a solid cap that won’t die on you instantly, has good dps and blocks all the strong strats vs advent (rank rush, dunnov, sova etc. And you need to build a lab! Here we will focus on mil lab openers with LF but know that a lot of other openers are valid.
2. Build order: Start radiance, start enough scouts so all your phase lanes are covered, ex if you have 4 phase lane from your hw, you build 2 extra scouts auto explore them, build 1 colo frigate, then build 5 more scouts and fill your supply with light frigate.
3. Send your 5 attack scouts straight to your opponent and your goal with them is to deny constructors on the front roid, send your radiance to your frontal roid/dwarf with colofrigs and send the lf to the back roid/dwarf. Somewhere in there get fleet supply and start spamming more light frigates almost all your money should go into light frigate.
4. Once your frontal roid is colonized send your colony frig to the back roid and once the militia there is killed send your lf forward, time to attack! Also around 15 lf get first laser upgrade and around 25 get the 2nd laser upgrade. Around the end of your fleet supply get the rest of your t1 upgrades and start your 2nd military lab.
Now it’s very possible the map makes it impossible for you to do it, but in general it should work.
Watch the video for extra information.
https://youtu.be/DsH4WrzaYrU big thanks to kral
Ship counters for advent. So what should you do if your opponent decides he doesn’t feel like making lf?
Versus corvettes you can just make lf they beat vets in a straight fight, however if the micro is hard for you, sprinkle in a flak per 5 lf it will help a lot.
Versus LRF (LRM Kanraks illums), you have options either make corvettes or scouts or sometimes just more LF. Corvettes kill LRF (Money for money) very quick, about 55 sec. So there is no danger of you losing a trade there if they only shoot your lf, the issue is that corvettes have a lot of counters both in ships and abilities but also in micro so I do not recommend for new players. It takes around 120 sec for a scout to kill a lrf (M4M) however, it is very hard to kill the scouts so what remains is will you trade on time? Well yes! It takes 150 sec+ for lrf to kill A-lf (M4M) So assuming no other disadvantage scout lf will always beat lf + lrf. Also, both scout and LF share the same damage type which is very sweet here, as you will decrease your time to kill by 10/20% while LRF upgrades are usually more expensive. For reference it takes 176 sec for lf to kill LRF (M4M). So, a huge army of LRF will beat a huge army of LF, however it’s expensive to research LRF and if you have momentum on your side your LF will do fine.
Versus HC: in low numbers you can just keep doing what you are doing, it takes 5 labs to get hc going and they take forever to build, but if the problems start to grow too big, you have 3 main options, Bombers, Gardians repulse or Dominas. Or a mix of the 3!
Versus carriers, Your LF incinerates them. And your flaks and fighters eat squadrons alive, it is usually a mistake to make carriers vs advent.
Now the flying elephant with 600 dps in the room, what do you do versus vasari starbases? Honestly there are as many counters as counter counter, the most basic answer is just to keep making lf until you have enough to break starbases without taking too big of a loss. Assuming perfect Vasari starbase micro, they are 2-4x as good as light frigates so you need to force them to make a lot of starbases! You can also try carrier spams, or rapture spam or try to out eco your opponent. Good luck in there.
Fluff:
Couple strats are banned in 5s; Z-axis, PfP abuse, VR pji ability, any way to make infinite money instantly. Also I highly recommend unhotkeying voice chat and putting the voice chat volume to 0.
Conclusion
Hopefully this helped!
If you have suggestions for another section HMU
Terminology and other stuff
Lobby acronyms:
Caps: they chose the teams
Fat: Worse player of the lobby, gets to be with the strongest
Green : ready up
Has someone/steamed etc: related to messageing on steam cause they are afk in lobbies
TVB- top vs bottom, 5 top ppl in lobby bs bottom 5
1212- players are on the same team on alternate order, player 1-3-5-7-9 are on the same team etc. (edited)
Ships
LF- light frigates
Vets- corvettes
Lrf- (lrm ilums kanrak)
hc/heavies- heavy cruisers
Cielos – very usefull support cruiser that increase dps by 66% vs a single target
Gardian/repulse, Extremely annoying support cruiser with an ability that pushes everything away, needs lrf to counter generally for tec/vas
SB- Star base
Envoys, cruisers in the diplomacy tree. (
Strategies
Rankrush/Rankrushing – going on opponent hw with a rankulas and a sb builder as vasari (needs a pretty strong response from other races to not die)
VR pji mines- building a lot of mines on the landing point of an opponent jumping in while using bidrectional jamming (banned in 5s)
PfP abuse- using the neutral ships to trigger pfp (banned in 5s)
z-axis, moving your ship around the 3d axis (banned in 5s)
maphacking, self explanatory, also (banned in 5s)
Shadow scouting, seeing if an opponent has a planet without having it scouted, you can also see if they built the extractors allowed in 5s.
Technologies
Perv- Pervasive economy, at the end of TEC civic tree gives 20% of credit of every other player purchases
Savage- Savage thrill 33% extra dps in a gravity well for TR when the planet takes damage.
Militia- 30% dps 4 armor for TL on grav well they own.
PfP- Planet for planet, when AL loses a planet they get 25% extra dps 10% range and 25% ability damage on all of their fleet for way too long
Salvage- Tech for vas that they gain 15% of credit/metal/crystal of everything that is killed in a grav well if they have a ship there (beside their own ships)
VR pji ability-bidirectional jamming, makes you stuck in phase lane forever (edited)
Structures
Pji- Phase jump inhibitor makes you 8x as long to jump out.
Repair- Repair platforms Heals your ships and your allies!
Abilities
MB- missile barage Marza ultimate takes 150 am at lvl6 deals a ♥♥♥♥ ton of damage in a big aoe
RB – Red button – safely overide protocol- tec sb ability that deals MASSIVE damage in 8k/12k range respectively (2/3 alt squares) cannot be disabled by anything else than armistice.
Wail- Wail of the sacrifice- AR use their culture temple to kill their planets dealing massive damage in adjacent gravity wells proportional to the pop (10 damage per pop at lvl 2)
And that wraps up today’s guide on [Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion] mathematico 5s guide. If you have any additional insights or tips to contribute, don’t hesitate to drop a comment below. For a more in-depth read, you can refer to the original article here by mathematico, who deserves all the credit. Happy gaming!