Taking Planets Early on takes to much effort

Leave them alone until you get better ships, higher level caps.

Or, go Advent and pound that Shield Regeneration button repeatedly.

Bring the cap ship in first, wait for every rebel to target it and take up a firing position, and then bring your frigates in. Sometimes 1-2 rebel units will stop attacking the cap and attack your frigates after they come under fire from the frigates, but it's usually not enough to make a difference.

Your light frigates have a nasty habit of targeting the flak frigates first. This is a bad idea(tm), as flak frigates are mostly harmless to your ships, and have FAR more health than the other ships. Tell your frigates to bust the other, more dangerous ships first. Kodiaks, LRMs, and light frigates will end up killing your ships if you leave them be.

Go into a system with a Cap ship that has colonize ability. Focus on killing the bombers in the system. Once the bombers are dead colonize the planet and leave. Upgrade the planets pop. Now you have income from the planet and can come back later to clean up the militia.

I do this while having another small fleet and colony ship taking asteroids. Then I have a third fleet meetup with the cap ship and clean up militias. I'm making more money the whole time.

I normally go two capital ships right off the bat and I've found that two capital ships are more than a match for even a Terran planets militia if you use them right. If all you do is kill the siege ships like CMK mentioned above you could even move on to the next planet and the next just doing that until you've got a lot of planets.

I think the goal is to slow the speed of colonization. They don't want you just spamming 5 colony ships early on, and running around taking all the best planets.

I like to start with a heavy combat capital ship because they excel at dealing with these rebels (ships like the Kol), but then I only play single player. Ultimately you don't want to have your light frigates going up alone against rebel heavy cruisers if you can avoid it, so send your capital ship in first to draw fire. (The Radiance's ability to "taunt" enemies into attacking it excels at this.)

You can avoid this problem by getting a battleship cap instead of the colonizer. As advent, there hasn't been a single planet I couldn't take with a radiance, though sometimes your ship will get hurt pretty badly.

Serondal: you are wasting time and money while fighting. 2 caps ships is a waste of money in the beginning of the game. Better to spend on research centers, upgrades, more ships and pop upgrades.

Tridus. That's fine for single player if you want a leisurely game. In multiplayer it is essential to get your economy cooking ASAP. And I didn't say anything about having light ships going up against heavy cruisers as I said I have a third fleet to meet up with colony cap and do clean up. By then you could have the money to buy a second cap if that's your thing.

I agree with one of the other replies. Sometimes, your ships will target the flaks or the cobalts first, which is not necessarily the best of ideas. If you have a carrier cap, then yes, target the flaks, but if not, go for the harder hitting units first, like the LRM's. Think: Kodiak - priority, then LRM, cobalt, siege/garda. That generally minimizes the damage taken to your ships by eliminating the most powerful ships first/the most deadly to your starting fleet. If you come across a neutral colony, its generally best to avoid it if it is larger then normal, until you have a larger, more diverse fleet at your disposal.

You can actually capture the planet before you kill the enemy units. I do it all the time.

its easy to take out the militia's of most terran/desert planets with a modest fleet.

you're usually up against something like this:

4x Cobalt Light Frigates
2x Garza Flak Frigates
2x Javelis LRM Frigates
3x Krosov Siege Frigates
2x Kodiak Heavy Cruisers

that's a typical militia. you'll notice that the kodiaks and javelis are the only real damage dealers in that bunch. focus fire on those first (javelis first then kodiaks) and you'll take much less losses. take out the cobalts next, then the garzas and finally the krosovs.

this kind of militia is pretty easy to take out with a fleet of as little of 1 Capital Ship (leveled up to level 3) and 6 frigates (some mix of light frigates and LRM frigates, i like to use 2 lights/4 lrms). you'll probably lose 2 or even 3 of your frigates but you'll take out the militia no problem and gain alot of experience for your cap ship, which is worth alot more than 2 frigates anyway.

I rarely have this problem. Of course I almost always start out with a Radiance battleship, and animosity as the first ability. This makes capturing early planets a snap, as you don't lose nearly as many frigates in the process.

I personally don't even bother with cobalts/frigates. I just upgrade to LRM's/Assaliants and make about 6 of those with a battleship(not colonizer). Send in your cappy first, than your LRM's. If the kodiaks start to focus on the LRM's(probably will), hold, but when the lrm is about to die, send him back to your closest colony. Than when the next lrm is about to die, repeat.

Send in your capital first, after that just make sure to target all of the javelis lrm's first(their the only ai ships that switch targets.

BTW, if a scout or trade ship phases into the well,your frigs will likely start getting pounded.

I save a lot of money by just using two capital ships. I've gone to get 5 or 6 planets in my empire with full trade depots ect with just 2 capital ships and nothing else. If you use them right the only thing that can stop you is a pirate planet or the enemy fleet. All the while I've not upgraded my fleet at all so I'm getting full income from my planets with no fleet over head. It's worked very well for me so far.

You can actually capture the planet before you kill the enemy units. I do it all the time.

Yes then the bombers take the planet out or at least deal damage to the new population. Not a good move.

Hmm, didn't realize it was a problem. It's not for the Vasari. Just Build a Jarrasul, and take what I want. Can go through pretty much any militia, colonise a planet, and move on to the next planet, usually without waiting to heal. It's only a danger if there are 2 or more Kodiaks, two I can usually go through still, but it'll leave a single Jarrasul all banged up. I research Regeneration Bays as fast as possible, and put them in pretty much every system, and just make two trips to the nastiest planest.

However the other races can build two caps sooner than the Vasari's so it should work out.