Don't touch Paris. Spam Halcyons and high-damage capitals and build clusters of ODPs and hangars in orbit of your borderline worlds. Have some Artemis-class capital ships near every ODP cluster in order to deal with enemy DOS-class long range battleships.
The rest you can figure out yourself.
UNSC: Build Orion Carriers and a couple Marathons to escort alongside no more than 10-20 Paris per fleet as a basic composition.
Research the Destroyers for Anti-Ship and Stalwarts for Anti-Air for later fleets to replace the Paris.
Use the Orions to colonise planets whilst the escorts attack the pirates and whatever else is out there. Having a large number of Stalwarts can allow you to build carriers that solely have bombers, as they will help finish off the ships hit by MAC rounds and draw the attention of the enemy fleet and accompanying fighters. This will also expose the enemy bombers making a run for the fleet allowing the AAA to take them out quickly.
Keep the number of Sloops roaming up, send them out in pairs in case one is destroyed. You can use the Heavy Prowlers, but they need constant attention, as they don't have the "Explore" ability. Leaving mines in each system allow you to monitor the system.
Only build the Infinity if you have an enormous excess of resources. Smaller ships can get the job done.
That and you need a certain Spartan's Luck if you're fighting the Covenant.
hello I started playing a few months ago and so far I have won UNSC vs UNSC on an easy fortify AI only twice but I find I survive much longer by slightly over stretching my self fleet wise and economically but I compensate for this by fortifying my worlds with full ODP defence early on and placing at least one anchor station with slipspace beacons ASAP especially on my front line leading to every ship producing world I have so I can get ships to any fight quickly I also try to max out fleet cap to produce as many carriers as possible may the be light carriers epoch or Punic class to have a very good balance between bombers and fighters to overwhelm the enemy stalwarts and other AA defences all my cap ships have nukes if able as well as my stations I do keep some artimis class in reserve ready to combat the enemy infinity class using the cov killer ability. economy wise I try to get trade up ASAP and population upgraded I do try to do artefact research pretty early to try and get a good advantage so I can rush as many worlds as possible and pray to god I get a drive upgrade then I go for ship build speed so I can produce ships even faster than normal I haver found spamming halberds and eions works well with some large stalwart and cap ship support military reaserch is a high priority for me as I belive that if I can kill the enemy before they can kill me I will win
this is probably a very bad strategy but it works for me when I use it
I'm heavy into economy throughout any given match, and having a strong economy in Sins also means you typically can have a pretty powerful military in the mid-late game, but you're weak for rushes early-mid match, so you've got a bad Achilles Heel when that's your focus.
It works for me though, because if you're smart about it you can turtle for a while, while your economy bubble builds up.
The way to do it is to have a very small initial fleet that is all about fast and efficient expansion, that can take early game unoccupied worlds very quickly, that you can then bolster with upgrades that will boost your economy, like better population centers. This small fleet means you're not really going to be able to defend yourself outside of tactical structures like MAC/Hangers/Patrol Stations, and so when you're on the defense (which you will be) you need to be focusing partially on turtle-ling either some of your inner colonies so you don't get completely swept over, or building a good external defense line on some of your key boarder worlds where you can push an enemy to attack you at.
Basically, don't get any fleet upgrade until you hit the point where you absolutely need a fleet, because fleet supply upgrades (not capital ship slots, but fleet supply specifically) eat away at your economy, as there's a meta surrounding it where you now have to actually monetarily and resource-wise supply your fleet. At later upgrades you might be eating away 50 - 70% of your potential economy just to have a larger fleet, and you might not actually need that larger fleet because you're just focusing on tech early game, unless you're being rushed.
Pushing the civilian tech tree forward, building trade stations, resource extractors, upgrading your planet population upgrades, and making sure every planet has a resource boost structure like a Springhill helps massively push your economy upwards. By the time you're entering the end game your enemies may be spending everything they have to fight you, while you have strong defenses that they can't push through, and you can pump ships out that are fully upgraded because you've had the resources to upgrade a build ships the whole match.
This strategy works for me pretty well, but as I said before, it leaves you weak early - mid match, and you can definitely get trashed by even moderately sized fleets if you're not ready, because you really don't have a major force to defend yourself until late game.
Make fleets with 2 or more DDS class with supporting craft such as SDV and CPV, then just sit on the edge of the gravity well and let the fighters do the work for you. Easy peasy lemon sqweezy.
COV vs. UNSC: keep in mind this only really works if you know when and where the UNSC are going to attack in full force. Move all of your fleets to the leading edge of the gravity well, when the UNSC jumps in, they will be facing the other direction and won't be able to fire MAC rounds on you immediately, covenant ships will still be able to fire plasma torps and energy projectors at point blank range. If performed correctly, you will lose little to no ships, and the UNSC forces will lose all of their invading army likely before your patrol fleet even manages to get to the battlefield.
very true but my experience of this was a little bit different I was about to jump and attack the last major UNSC fleet and when I my fleet arrived it turned out that the ai was about to jump to attack the world that it had just lost 30 UNSC ships including a level 5 Infinity class vs 250 cov ships including a level 10 OAS class I lost nothing and the infinity went down in a matter of seconds so the above strat does work enjoy burning the human scum
Halcyon Spam: As far as i know this strategy has only been used against the covenant, but would probably work in UNSC vs UNSC. Set the frigate factory rally point of two or more planets to a single enemy planet, then construct as many Halcyon classes as possible in as steady of a stream as possible, the high HP and low cost of the Halcyon's will ensure that the enemy defenses will be inadequate to defend the planet alone, therefore the enemy fleet gets locked to a single defensive position, allowing openings for flanks or sneak attacks.
hit and run works well with the UNSC carriers send in a large carrier force with some other ships for defence and spam fighters on there resherch buildings this is only a diversion as the main fleet hopfully comes to engage your carrier strike fleet while you attack a difrent planet full on hopfully taking it but be carful if the enemy send there fleet to engage your small strike group then use the fighters for a small covering screen and GTFO back to a friendly planet then renforce your forces if losses were sustained good micr can prevent losses
