I start by building frigates right away and going on a rampage conquering everything around me as quickly as possible. I use the colonizing capital ship. I love that stun skill it has, makes killing enemy capital ships easy. If a nice enemy planet is near me I launch a full scale attack and research military technologies. If there are no nice enemy planets I'll get some civic technologies going. From there on out it really depends on the circumstances.

i start with the always classic move..

start-->all programms-->stardockgames-->sinsofasolarempire.exe

its all on cruise control from there

I start out by first queuing up all the mines, followed by a capital ship yard. Then depending on the size of the map I pump out at least 3 scouts for a small map, more for larger maps.

I find that an important thing right off the start is to figure out asap where the choke points are where different plant types are, where the pirate base is and where the other players are. This way you can ensure you expand in the right directions preferably having as few front line systems as possible, a good distribution of resources and know which direction the pirates and other players will come from.

I then build 4 basic attack frigs, 1 battleship and one colony ship to clear out the plants/asteroids one jump from my home system.

I also build 2 civilian research stations so I can research the ability to colonize the near by planets (ie if a ice world is next door research that first). I hold off on military research stations until I have both the ability to colonize ice and volcanic planets and have upgraded the terran planets max pop once.

I usually build my economy first, metal, crystal and cash upgrades from the planet. Then I build a scout and scout automatically a bit, and then I build about 5-8 Kobalt light frigates to take care of the 2-3 nasties that dwell next to the colonizable planets/asteroids that are nearest to my home planet, and while the frigates are on their way, I build a colony ship and send it a bit after the frigates. I usually prefer colonies that have access to more crystal asteroids, since metal is never a problem in my games, but crystal is a major source of pain for the early start. I try to grab 1 or 2 colonies and then I build a military research facility and start enhancing my ships.

It's usually a smooth sailing from there, as the research really improve my ships and I can usually deal with any early threat coming my way at that time in the game.

1. Two-three scouts
2. Cap factory, battleship
3. Mines
4. Buy crystal
5. Get population upgrade for starting planet (oh you would not believe how much this helps and is overlooked)
6. Use remaining cash on Cobalt or equivalent.
7. Once I have enough Cobalts (situation dependent) I will begin pumping out colony ships.

Planets with 1x Siege and 1x Light are attacked with 3x Cobalt. Planets with anything but more than one LRM are taken by the battleship. I usually wait if there's a Terran or heavily fortified planet with LRM + flak + siege + light, my battleship usually can't take all of that.

Rule 1... If your planning on playing online. never give out how you start, that gives your enemy the ability of countering you and catching you with your pants down.

i play random faction (the game decides which faction i get each game)

I priorotize being rank 1 in military->fleet and maximizing your credit income i dont colonize snow and ice balls early anymore. Untill after almost everyone else starts doing this.

in the first minute

(buy any crystal you need for steps 1 to 3 on the black market)
1. build cap ship
2. que missionary / 2 scouts (put missionary on the edge of gravity well to next target)
3. upgrade homeworld population cap
4. Vasari: get military lab and research/build assailants to 100 fleet cap advent/tec: get 100 fleet cap light frigates
5. move cap ship / missionary to nearest asteroid along with any frigates you have attack any siege frigates and colonize the roid, build crystal extractors and upgrade population to neutralize underdevelopment.
6. keep sending your cap ship to asteroids to take extractors as needed (and upgrade pop to deal with underdevelopment). It is good to clear ice and fireballs of rebels when you pass by them (the experience will make your cap strong). If you find asteroid fields or junk yards make a second colonizer (advent/tec) or send a scout (vasari) to take extractors.
7. if you meet a desert/terran planet you send in your cap first then the frigates and you then focus LRM's then the cruisers and then everything else(LRMs have a habit of switching target to frigates).
-optional, get a second migrator
-redistribute resources on the black market so you can keep neutralizing underdevelopment and upgrading desert/terran / building extractors
8. advent/tec after 2 asteroid captures i build as many civilan research centers as i need to research trading centers and then i build atleast 3 of them untill i have 20-30 credits per second and then i get fleet size 250 and my 2nd cap and i start spamming whatever i need to crush my enemy.
-i rally ships on my first capital ship and just let them come.
9. while sieging enemy i try to get a forward planet near him to place down frigate factories so i can reinforce my front lines constantly and so i can directly build siege ships when i have control of the space of hostile homeworlds.

remember it is paramount you improve your credit income rating. It is a popular thing to get ice and fireballs early on because you can but dont forget that asteroids are worth inbetween 3-5 credits per second as well (the worth of the resources you get from them) and they don't cost a whole of resources to become profitable and it only takes one upgrade to neutralize underdevelopment. Roids dont have as many logistic slots, but you cannot afford to use them this early in the game ANYWAY.
To make one ice/fireball profitable you must spend about 2100-200-200 (credits/metal/crystal) to colonize and another 1200-350-100 to turn one of them into some kind of income. That is an investment and a lethal sin to all opponents that i have met. I find trade ports are a much safer investment, they cost 750 credits and 60 cryst and metal and you can put them almost anywhere and they give you 1,5credits per second INSTANTLY and more per port as you get more and more!! Ice and snowballs in the early game are basicly expensive asteroids (you can't yet afford to use the logistics slots anyway), they cost a lot to make profitable. They are a long term investment and it is not something you can afford investing into, if your enemy is directing those funds in his military to attack you soon (like i do) and not thus not doing the same.

For all races i get the battlecruiser cap with their damage dealing skills primarily focussed. For advent i like to tech to their shield support cruisers and get the mothership that also regenerates shields. Those combined with illuminator (in a tightly packed fleet) is something none can stop early game (before 50 minutes). For advent i like to get the shield/laser upgrades first, vasari HP and LRM spam after i get 10 light frigates, tec i dont know the game doesn't like letting me play tech in 1v1 if i choose to be random " in big battles i focus on frigates and regroup when my capitol gets low or rebuild it somehow it was destroyed (yes, i can afford it).

In the early game a bigger fleet and more fleets give a much bigger and quicker return on your investment. The early game ends when you can afford to put monkeys on anything but an asteroid. If you so badly need the logistics, you can upgrade the roids, if you need the credits, the roids produce credits in the form of black market saleable resources. It is not the planets themselves that give you what you need to win.

Ill try out more agressive strategies (starting to attack him even quicker and taking advantage explicitly if he is teching ice/fireball colonization) when i find more skilled opponents. (Maybe i should try hard ai... takes 30+ minutes to get a good player to 1v1 or to find someone to 1v1 in FFA)

I have yet to loose a 1v1 (out of 6-8 or so) and do very good in FFA 2v2/3v3 (in one 1v1 game though, i nearly lost but played the pirate game and won). I dont have any replays in 1.02 yet.

Yes, I'm sure people are just writing this stuff down to look up later in case you use the same name, because they want to know that you use the Kol instead of the Marza or something.

I put my initial credits into researching belts and elastic wastebands to counter any chance of that.

I’m a Vasari player and have only played against the AI, so this may not work in other situations. I start by pressing the following on my keyboard in rapid succession: K W S A Q Q G A Q Q G D E G Ctrl-F6. Then I wait for my first scout to be built and send it to a neighboring world (I don’t yet trust the game with micromanaging something as important as my reconnaissance… I should probably bind the two scouts to fleets 9 and 0). Then I click on my home system. The moment I have 750 cash I press Q Q G.
I’ll soon have two scouts total, who I micromanage to find the nearby asteroid system, and then send off exploring other potential targets. The moment my Evacuator comes out, I give it the colonization upgrade and a fighter squadron and send it to an asteroid world. I get it to colonize at the earliest opportunity, and then leave for the next asteroid world (if there is one), or a non-asteroid if there isn’t. When it isn’t colonizing, it targets the defending siege frigate. If there is any enemies in orbit, the colony immediately builds a turret. If it’s only the light frigate left, the defense turret goes where it will be most useful in the long run (since the frigate will chase the turret). Otherwise, it goes just barely in range to hit the siege frigate. Then the colony gets both mining upgrades. If I’m neighboring only asteroids, ice, and volcanic worlds, I get 2 empire research and get the ability to colonize one of them (timed to be researched just before I’m in position to colonize it… usually still during combat so I can drop a turret into the battle). If not, I just dive for level 1 military research and get the missile frigates out (not because they are good ships, which they are, but because they consume less metal and so better balance my economy). After the first two or three worlds, its just pushing as many missile frigates to the front as possible. I want my starting Evacuator to level 6 before attacking my first enemy colony, since the planet drain ability is an amazing siege weapon.

Keystrokes are brutally efficient, and I knew exactly what he build simply by looking at that string of letters, simple and efficient!