Notes:
I've changed the names of a few planets with large dangers to make them stand out a bit more(also I've marked them p0).
I played an hour and 20 minutes, took 2 planets(1 ars--gave us spiders), and cleared out one more that's on its way to a Radar jammer mk II + ion mk I and then only two hops away from a zenith power generator that we will likely want to take at some point. Also took out a data center so our progress is currently at 14.
Our main army is split between Orteve and Arxeza, and the next player can make the decision if we want to just leave Orteve neutered on our way to better targets or to take it, it has decent resources (2metal, 3 crystal) but nothing special on it.
An etiquette point to make. Please don't unlock techs that you don't use at all(pointing the finger at leech starships, mobile repair stations, grav turrets and exo-shields here). The first half of my play period would have been much less painful if I'd had some of that 8.5k knowledge available.
They had tanks, so we really needed at least one of the high range turrets, I ended up unlocking both missile mI's for bomber killing and laser mkI's. Note that at least lasers seem to have a min chance to hit of 80%, not sure what the min chance of missiles is but its reasonably high as well, both are great at killing tanks.
Thoughts on our opponents. One is clearly a zenith descendant, as they have all the zenith ships. I've run into two super fortesses, so the other may very well be the type that specializes in them(fortress baron).