Hi guys, first post. 

First of all I want to thank the Devs for this excellent game.  It is so exciting to watch huge fleets from mulitple empires fighting over a single planetary system with the ability to zoom in and out, rotate, pause and micro manage your heart away like the true nerd I am.     I am a long time gamer starting with games like Empire and Command HQ.  These comments are for single player only.

Now to the heart of the manner.

1. Strikecraft.  Unbeatable and the ultimate weapon of the game as 1.09 stands right now.  Cap ships are purely support for your carriers.  Much like the real navy evolved.  The reasons are many but the primary reason is that a game like SiNs with a fleet size cap makes strike craft a force mulitplier and the only way to enlarge your destructive power is by scrapping flak, bombard and most other efforts to put as many carriers on the field of battle as possible.
• SC move faster, allowing hit and run raids.  By the time an enemy cap ship reacts, SC are already doing damage and your main fleet doesn't even have to enter the fray, just sit idly by the edge of the grav well ready to retreat at the first sign of a larger force approaching.
• SC regenerate with anti matter and since your strike force doesn't have to move much, has plenty unless totally overwhelmed by a greater SC force.
• Carriers seem like total meatshields and usually end up living through most engagements.  They really are hard to kill.
• A single carrier is like a fast frigate factory: mobility and good protection.  It seems like each SC is really a frigate with reincarnation.
2. Defense vessels.  I don't use them.  Don't research them.  Don't need them.   The AI sometimes build them and they are nothing but a nuisance.  I have won too many games with all hard AI players where I never researched Defense vessels or Bombard vessels and by default, never produced a single one.
• Flak should be more powerful and possibly have greater range.   They should be able to nail 70pct of everything in the grav well but do almost negligible damage to anything other than SC. 
• Defense vessels should be as almost as effective killing fighters as bombers.  Perhaps a range increase as alluded to above will correct that but it seems fighters always aren't really countered by anything in the game at the moment.
3. The AI isn't bad but could use some fleet management upgrades.  I really like the epic battles but it seems the AI likes to fight multiple enemies on mulitple fronts and then I get to fight the rag-tag fleet with 15 bombard vessels and one Cap ship. 
• I have no insight here except the AI suffer from no-solid-front syndrome and doesn't leave itself any options except rush into the middle of the grav well and duke it out with the structures while fighters and bombers attrite them until a fleet shows up, retreat and get attrited to nothing.
•  Enemy AI, in the 1.09 version, should allow the fighters and bombers to soften up the defenses while it sits on the edge of the grav well and send scouts to nearby star systems looking for a rescuing fleet.  If there isn't one that can make it in the next 3 minutes or so, jump in.  If there is one approaching, regroup and find a better target or make a feint somewhere else.
• Old movement orders need to be reviewed.  Too many small groups of AI ships warp into a raging inferno of my ships when the other fleet has been retreating for at least 30 seconds or so which is longer than phase jumps take so it had a chance to cancel the fatal move order.
• I turn off pirates and lock teams.  It is too easy to make allies with everyone except one guy and just do that ad nauseum until nobody is left.  Terrible shame.  The AI should not be so easy to manipulate and should look out for their overall best interests.  Everytime someone takes a new planet they should get more hate for the person getting it, AI or player.  I always want to thwart the #1 player and the AI should too, regardless of missions.  I would say scrap missions altogether or make the effects much much more subdued and geared for the overall benefit of balance of power.
4. Research comes too fast and yet, doesn't come fast enough.  Every game I have played has ended with me getting research done and then the slow slogging of attriting the enemy.  Research should be a never ending task.  In other words, there should be some hard choices made about research because going down one line of research would almost preclude you from exploring the other lines due to cost.  This would give some much needed strategy to the research game.
5. Balance
• Starting positions need to be indentical in terms of accessible resources and expansion.  Maybe a weighting system?  Too many games have been restarted due to very poor starting positions or very ideal (I want a good game so it needs to be fair.)  Also, when playing teams, it seems to want to kill one player very quick by sandwiching them in between enemies. 
• AI tends to colonize dead asteroids due to the auto colonize feature.  This gives them a budget shortfall early in the game with no way of correcting it.
• AI gets very confused about defending and massing in a built up star system or a gas giant.  Instead of choosing the built up system they tend to form fleets in undefended sectors and get scattered easily.
• The pirate's system really kills any AI that decides to build towards it.  It seems the AI likes to react to pirates in their sectors even if the pirates are headed to another enemy sector.  Why kill the enemy of your enemy?  Having pirates come early game is bad bad for the AI.  Why not scale pirates based on the target?.  Or instead, make pirates steal money via embargo instead of bombing your planet and structures until you run them off. 

Well, that's all for now.  I have other stuff but I'm too busy playing.  

Once again, great game and I hope the feedback helps.