Because the three minutes it takes you to build extractors in a 3 hour game is too long? Also, colony ships are fine. If you want faster caps, build the Colony Cap first instead of the battleship. That can jump in, fight, and cap in no time.

There are certain maps that start you with units, extractors, structures, etc. Also, its unlikely to have a 4 hour multiplayer game, unless you do 2 people on a massive map or 5v5, all really good players. Either way, the 5 minutes you save in the beginning is not even worth talking about given the length of these games.

No matter what civ you are, extractors immediately is very important/smart. Depending on your strat though, you might not need more than 3-4 of each type.

If you want things faster DrathKar, then make a map where you start with billion credits and go play it. Compared to any other 4x, sins plays very fast. And compared to RTS it is nice and slow, which I like.

if you play on the right map sizes games are generally a reasonable length. I play 1v1s with my buddy on 13-18 planet maps. These games generally take about an hour fifteen to an hour and a half. I don't think we've ever played for longer than an hour and 40 minutes.

2v2s are probably the same so long as the map size is proper.

(we play with everything set to fast)

This are fun games that definitely have a sense of early-game, mid-game, and late-game. And you have to choose your techs very very carefully because there definitely won't be time to get everything.


Also, extractors at the start. if you want an agressive start, I recommend building your capship factory before you build extractors. Then go metal extractors. Becaue you need metal to build light frigates. You probably only need one. You can hold off on the crystal extractor until you have the right amount of light frigates.

Figure an extractor cost about the same as a light frigates, so if you're trying to be really agressive you can get that frigate out that much sooner if you odn't build the extractor. And I definitely don't upgrade infrastructure right away, because it's more important for me to get the frigates out promptly.

Again, this only applies to an aggressive start, which usually means fast creeping to level up capship, then go hang around the enemy asteroid to annoy him. You're not going to rush and destroy him in five minutes, but you can put him off balance pretty well. And even though you've creeped several planets, you don't expand too quickly otherwise you'll ruin yourself with infrastructure debt.

ironcily I dont like fast starts in CIV... the starting build orders in CIV vastly effected how well you did and I generaly have better starts then most...

On the otherhand it was annoying when someone wouldnt click end turn for the first 30 turns

in SINS I cant see anything that it does... the above post... by the time you RUSH the enemy they normaly have scouts know your comming and can have more ships there then you have strung out over systems comming to reinforce while there fighting on home turf and can build defences.. and then your noty only lost a rush but your got resources behind ontop of what you lost shipwise

Actually you can tweak your build quite a bit depending on when you build extractors. Crystal extractor along with cap factory are usually my first builds, but from there I usually have four or five other things going before the metal extractors. Depending on map as Vasari I'll have 3 scouts out looking for neutral extractors and colony frigate queued up before I bother with metal.

Watch some of the replays at https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/308726 and you'll see that hardly anyone in high-level multiplayer hits all of their extractors first thing.

Point is, something as small as prioritizing your beginning build order - extractors included, can influence the next hour of play. Quickstart maps exist and are good if you want to jump right in to a single player game, but part of the greatness of Sins is making small choices with large consequences from the first moments of play til the last.

Edit: also, I'd say most online games I've played are over in less than an hour. Stay away from FFA and multi-system or huge maps and you should see the same