Also, what's the ideal fleet setup for colonizing early-game? I usually make a Jarrasul Evacuator + 8 light frigates to clean up quick, but I don't play online and haven't really learned any strategies.
Don't touch the light frigates; total waste of money early-game. They're good against Advent T0 spam, carrier cruiser rushes, and massed flak tactics, and that's it. The AI will never pull any of these, so they're only useful for disrupting support cruisers.
Instead, use scouts for combat purposes. They're cheaper, faster, and they get a damage bonus against the only two units in the militia you need to kill before colonizing: the Javelis LRM and Krosov Siege Frigate. Once you've killed the Krosovs, you can colonize the planet and the AI can no longer bombard it. You can then build a turret, and the only unit in the militia that outranges a turret is the Javelis. If all the Javelis are dead, then a small number of turrets (usually 1) will kill the remaining militia. Once the militia are all dead, you can scuttle the turret.
This is very cost-efficient for expansion, and small scout groups can often clear planets of Krosovs and Javelis on their own enabling a colony frigate to waltz in and finish the job, no real expenditure of combat units required. With these sorts of tactics, you can expand very quickly with relatively little effort.
Although it does create a slight problem down the line because scout frigates aren't that useful in serious battles, I think the quicker expansion rate is worth it.
Although not superb for fleet battles, scouts remain quite useful in other ways. The Vasari scouts in particular can acquire neutral extractors, which alone is well worth having a good mob of them. They are also great for hunting down straggler units like Krosovs that may stray into your territory, they can do scouting runs, and if mixed into your fleet will act as minesweepers. They're still not useless in combat, either. Their damage output is high enough to at least contribute against light-type units (ironically, the light frigate is actually a medium-type unit and highly resistant to them). All in all, the unit is versatile enough that building as many as 20 in the early-game is fully justifiable.
