I second that about plasma storms and SBs (sadly you can't build an SB in a magnetic cloud at all). But a Transcencia or a fully load Orky in a plasma storm is rough to deal with. Forces the enemy to go around.

No, magnetic clouds disable abilities and plasma storms disable strike craft.  A starbase in plasma storms are downright annoying to deal with.  A properly equipped and supported Transcencia in a plasma storm should be impervious to attack from anything except a swarm of Ogrovs with Targeting Uplink or an Orkulus.  Fortunately, as tough as an Orkulus is, you should be able to push it down through sheer brute force if you hit hard enough.

Last time I encountered an Orky at a plasma storm, I played it cool so the enemy thought I was building up, then suddenly showed up with 20 Destras, a few guardians, and a Progen.  Tanked my way through the starbase and brought it down.  If you hit hard and fast enough, Orkies die to frigate power.

 

Anyways, on to the topics raised by the original poster:

If you're playing without quick-start, you should always build your capital ship and your extractors right away.  If you anticipate a longer game with the enemy starting further away, upgrade your homeworld's population.  If you're starting with quick-start on (requires the Entrenchment expansion pack) all these things are already purchased for you.

Definitely expanding your empire is your top priority, as is scouting.  Depending on how far away the nearest enemy is, you'll either way to get two civic labs (for ice/volcanic planets) or two military labs (for military units). 

Stay lean on techs.  Focus on high priority and low-cost technologies.  Expensive technologies are only worthwhile for very large empires, and even then you don't want to get them all.  Focus more on growing your empire, your fleet, and adding more infrastructure (like trade ports). 

 

In the original game and Entrenchment, it's definitely worth it to fight the pirates.  You can easily fend them off with a single capital ship, a few turrets, and a repair platform.  In Diplomacy, pirates are much deadlier and bidding makes more sense.  Honestly, I'd recommend turning the feature off while you learn the game. 

There are lots of different approaches.  As Vasari, the Assailant is your best damage-dealer, while the Sentinel is your best damage absorber.  Nothing wrong with carriers laden with fighters and bombers, either.  As for durability, the best way to keep your fleet alive is to pack firepower and lots of it (this is especially true for Vasari).   Pound the enemy into a pulp before they can do the same to you.  You can use Overseers for healing if you like, but those are best reserved for capital ships.

As for capital ship to fleet ratio, generally your fleet size research should be one step ahead of your capital ship crew research.  That's a generalization; I frequently run capital ship heavy and capital ship light depending on my situation.  Capital ships give you less firepower for money spent, but more useful special abilities, while frigates give you muscle.  It takes some experience to balance the two.

Your best defense is the scout; know where and when the enemy will attack before he gets there, and then have your fleet in place to defend.  The best way to support a defending fleet is repair platforms.  These are very inexpensive, but can greatly extend the longevity if your units (particularly capital ships) in a fight.

Starbases are great for choke points and other critical "junction" planets, but they won't be able to defend your entire empire.  The best defense is always a mobile fleet, and starbases support the fleet.

Now, the AI can be easily lured to attack starbases that are simply too strong for it, and in this way you can definitely win against overwhelming forces with a single well-placed starbase, but a human player will avoid and maneuver around a starbase to make it less effective.  It's very difficult to use starbases effectively in multiplayer and you definitely need to rely more on your fleet.

The turret and hangar are woefully overpriced.  Not useless, but definitely something to avoid.  Use scouts to watch for larger attack forces, and use small groups of mobile defenders to fend off weaker forces.  Unsupported siege frigates are so fragile you can actually take them out with your scouts.  2-3 scouts per siege frigate is sufficient. 

No more than one per planet.  It doesn't really matter which planet you send them too, unless you're trying to use one of their special abilities to help out the guy.  In that case, read the special ability and target planets that would benefit more from it.

Experience is shared evenly.  If you have three capital ships in the gravity well, each gets 1/3rd experience.  Sometimes you want to split them up, sometimes you want to keep them as a single fighting force.  It really depends on what you're doing and what comboes your pulling off.

 

The bomber is the most dangerous combat unit in the late game, but each faction has a capital ship (Kol, Halcyon, and Kortul) that can shut them down, so you need to back them up with firepower.  Support cruisers and capital ship special abilities are absolutely huge, and the Advent and Vasari factions both have great superweapons for combat (the TEC's is great for shutting down the enemy economy, but once the opponent compensates for it, it's lackluster).

A TEC player this late in the game is in trouble.  The TEC fleet is strongest early-game, and just gets weaker in comparison to the other factions later on.  You need to be carrying an advantage from the early game, usually in the form of a bigger fleet or higher-level capital ships.  TEC basically is stuck using bombers, javelis LRM, or kodiak heavy cruisers for its damage output, but the problem is the other factions have lots of ways to shut down all of these unit types, so you need to compensate with overwhelming numbers or devious special abilities to counter the enemy.  Basically, it's about quantity for TEC, and if you don't have it, you're in big trouble.

Advent will want to build their fleet around the Iconus Guardian.  Its two abilities are absolutely critical to keeping your forces intact.  Its first ability is called shield projection, which allows the guardian to absorb some of the damage dealt to nearby friendly units.  You combine this with the shield regeneration ability of the Progenitor Mothership.  The result is massive shield regeneration abilities.  This can make the Advent fleet nearly impervious to damage while the combo is active, and if the enemy can't hit with overwhelming power or shut down these abilities, they won't even scratch you.  The other ability of the Iconus Guardian is repulsion, an ability that pushes away enemy units.  This can be used to keep enemies where you want them and protect your valuable capital ships. 

Vasari is the most dangerous faction if they can max out their fleet.  And really, it's no one thing, it's everything about this faction that comes together into a beautiful synthesis.  The brutal phase missile weapon, the devious stikulus subverter that can leave enemy frigates completely helpless, the Kortul Devastator that can simply disable enemy strike craft weapons, a Skirantra/Overseer combo offering massive healing, putting up minefields and starbases in enemy territory... and let's not forget the antics you can pull with phase stabilizers and kosturas.  This is just a faction that has everything going for it late-game.  If you get this far as Vasari, you have so many awesome options available.

Agreed, and unfortunately there's no real solution to this.  At a certain level, you have to be watchful.  If you don't see it happen, doesn't matter how many scouts you have there...

Let them give you missions, then complete those missions.  If you're good about completing every assigned mission, you can very quickly get full alliances with almost everyone.



You should always strive to fill your fleet capacity after it's been researched.  The big question is when to research fleet capacity.  That's a difficult question to answer, and it's about balancing your needs and resources.  


I can't answer your question on fleets because I actually don't use the fleet feature.  I command my units manually.



Generally speaking, if the front-line moves forward, you should always build a new frigate factory.  You need to have it as close as possible all the time to keep momentum.  Now, if you're moving very quickly or steamrolling a mostly defenseless opponent you can definitely skip planets and build your frigate factory once you've hit real resistance, but when you're doing serious fighting, always have a frigate factory right at the front.

However, you should not scuttle old factories immediately.  Keep several redundant factories available at all times.  This is important for three reasons: one, if your factories die you have backups so unit production continues; two, if you need to build a couple extra units to fight off harassing enemies, your factories are right there to do it; three, if you need to pump units quickly this gives you a lot of backup production power to do it.

This is all great information to give me a great start.

 

Something I read somewhere that I'd like to have confirmed...building multiple trade ports on the same planet IS a good idea?  Each of them will add a significant amount of credits?  In this case should you designate a few systems as "trade systems"? And just build the mines and the trade ports?

Reading the wiki, I assume it is worthwhile to build orbital refineries...I thought in the game it said that it took up 4 logistics slots...that seems like a HUGE cost, compared to having an extra two of each research center.  Do you usually build them?

A couple more questions.

 

How do you get a planet to culture flip?  There have been times where I've surrounded an asteroid on all sides and had my culture go all the way through the jump to their planet on every side and still had it not flip.  Is there a trick I'm missing or is it nearly impossible to flip a planet?

 

Also it seems right now my biggest hurdle is how to manage my empire well, particularly my ships.  How do you all get your fleets organized? I have been using hotkeys to manage my fleets, but it seems difficult to manage still and a lot of the time I feel like I spend as much time tracking down lost ships as managing the battle.  Is there any tips you can give me in this aspect? How do you organize your ships? How do you navigate around your empire? What's the best way to use the planet menu on the left side of the screen?

Planets under the effect of enemy culture will slowly lose loyalty.  If loyalty hits zero, the planet turns neutral, and the culture should also prevent the enemy from recolonizing.

The problem is that their own culture centers fight back against your culture, while friendly capital ships reduce the effect of your culture.  If they have both standing on guard, it can be basically impossible to make the planet "turn".

 

 

Often times they'll do it themselves without needing any convincing.  They'll just show up and attack a starbase that's clearly too powerful for them.  I think the big problem is that the AI isn't accounting for the effect of repair platforms, which can effectively double a starbase's longevity and probably throws its threat assessment right out the window.

If they aren't attacking, the best way to lure them in is to jump your fleet out of the gravity well.  This will remove your fleet from the threat assessment of that gravity well... even though you can just turn around and jump back in a moment's notice.

Generally speaking, once they're in the gravity well fighting, they will not retreat and will usually charge head-first at the starbase.

 

The AI seems to have a "tunnel vision" for specific planets.  They know where they want to attack next, and generally ignore or neglect all other targets.  You probably put that starbase on a planet the AI was intent on ignoring.  You have to look at where the AI has deployed its fleet and try to figure out where you can get the fleet to "aggro".

Usually my vs-AI strategy is to quickly get a colony right in its face as a forward staging post, which of course tends to draw all its attacks and makes it a prime location for a starbase death trap.  To give you an idea of how quick I'm talking about, I'm talking about 10-15 minutes into the game.