Josh's General Tips
Another unwanted tip topic that is disorderly and informative; a very formal tone is established here. Aimed for mostly all players, mostly to those who are willing to macro. This is a very generalized guide, and won't help you unless you understand what I speaketh upon. Adapt to your style of gameplay. I need to stop capitalizing unit names/etc..
Ships
Anything that can be massed is exceptional--Infiltrators, Laser Gatling, Spy Planes, Autocannons, you name it. Generally, once you reach a certain critical mass, you will have greater firepower and decrease casualties. Infiltrators I have found are great, and are very light on the economy so you can obtain their ~1K ship cap at the start of the game fairly easily.
Ammunition Boosters are a great match for anything that moves at its speed--which is 12. Missile Frigates, therefore, are great paired with it. The maximum multiplier for attack is 5X; with T3 Frigates that means base 3K becomes 15K per shot, mixed with that great range. Frigates generally are the best base ship; they seem to survive anything and again, have a long range. Keep enemy ships out of range, and kite the enemy by keeping your Frigates in range.
Efficiency reduces if you group-move units that move faster than the rest, and especially to ships that have a limited range, eg. Cruisers + Fighters, fighters will have to get in range and that will require more micro unless you are lazy as to move the whole group towards your target, negating your shield protection.
My list of ships not to choose include anything that is fragile, too specialized and not combat-worthy, excessive resource cost (unless mid-late game), low ship cap, and generally anything else useless.
Queue
My strategy for queuing ships is for always putting the factories on loop, then queue up higher tiers in greater numbers--holding shift and clicking three times will produce 15 of that ship.
15 for T3 ship category, 5 for T2 ship category, 1 for T1 ship category, + scout.
This equates to having minimal macro, but allows your factories to create more T3 ships than the lesser, first; when the queue is finished, it loops/etc. and when your ship cap reaches max for a tier, it will stop producing that tier temporarily and covers the next tier. I generally do this for every ship I unlock (excluding the base, and when economy is strained). You should always have scouts on free hand, since they cost nearly nothing and take 3s to construct.
I usually don't stop this queue unless I have to--this includes sudden economy downturns, ala 2009, or long-term power outages.
Defense
Always build defenses accordingly. If you're slightly hardcore when it comes to AI War, you would always <DELETE> unneeded defenses that both drain power and take up its respective ship cap; if you clear them up, you can field more of them elsewhere. Always place main defenses in range of enemy wormholes, biased towards the nearest cluster of harvesters (AI always heads towards those). Tractors, basic turrets, etc. and if you notice cloaked ships, place tachyons. I usually build initially 5 basic turrets, and 5 tractors, and adjust accordingly. Laser turrets are low in knowledge cost, and have long range. Common for me to either use basic or laser turrets sparingly (1 per cluster) to defend harvesters if cloaked ships still get past--these must be in range of the harvesters, not around them.
Macro
When I'm not observing FRD fail win on offense (as intended), my general strategy on macro would be to always watch all ships. Avoid over-extension, keep Starships near the main center mass of units to boost their attack to 5X, etc..
When necessary, put ships into group-attack mode, especially slow-moving ships like Missile Frigates--waypoint these to destroy the hardpoints by SHIFT+ALT left-click. Having a fast sweeper unit to pick off enemy units is a win--but you will have to macro these yourself. Teleporting units are proficient in this task, as long as you macro them to avoid projectiles. Avoid at all costs in using FRD unless you want to wreck your economy recovering the ships you will soon lose; I generally won't early game, but later, if I have enough resources, I will suffice with laziness.
Since the AI is very unpredictable, you can employ a strategy that I am rather fond of. The AI usually attacks your planet you are from; therefore, destroy the Command Station and Warp Gate, then retreat your units to the wormhole facing your planet. You have to decide ahead of time if you can make it or not--if you can't, try to sacrifice some units in attacking the Command while you keep your units at the wormhole. Parasitic units (esp. Leech Starships) are excellent for this role because since ZG they can't capture defenses anymore--and since all the enemy ships come flying at you, it is a great opportunity to capitalize on this, literally. Afterward, feel free to FRD.
Bottom-line: Don't FRD. If you need to, FRD after you have baited all the AI ships, leaving the defenses remaining. Watch out for Special Guard Posts (chunky asteroid things), as they have a nice fondling attack to whichever ships get in range, and reload in 1s. It has a minimal range, so ships such as Frigates can outrange it.
Research
Don't research too early, don't research too late. If you have a spam-able ship type, research to T3 immediately, queue using my technique. Don't waste research. Avoid defense research, avoid anything you don't really need. Only defense worthy of being researched anywhere near early game are Laser turrets, as they have a long range. Missile, Lightning, higher tier turrets are a waste of knowledge. Lightning especially, as it AOEs but costs considerable resources, and power, and generally does little to no damage at all. Useless. Always max out your turret cap (and scuttle free turrets before doing this) before you research the second tier of defenses, always--usually this means you absolutely need to have that many turrets.
Avoid Starships unless you can rush to take nearby planets ASAP. You want to maximize your economy rapidly, not stall it early game. I still recommend Raid Starships, more so early game because T1 ships are useless to leech via Leech Starships.
Avoid scouts, because 10 T1 scouts can easily make it through your nearby planets, including IV. If they are destroyed, try again. Scouting is far more easier to do now because they automatically head to safe land. A spare hint on scouting is that they are not necessarily overcome by the idle garrisons on AI planets--the destruction of scouts could be the result of trains that happen to decloak your scouts. Perhaps research scouts later in the game to locate core planets.
Don't waste any research you don't need to. Save all knowledge that you don't need for the moment, and try avoiding the "unlock everything at start" because things will appear later game that suggests otherwise. I find it useless if you unlock too much at one time if your economy can't support it, and if you're not actually constructing your researched topics.
Engineers
T2 Engineers late game. Research, get it done. Have enough power for them. Control-group them. Move around where needed. Repair, assist, support. Very helpful to have a few assisting a new colonization attempt, as they will speed up both Colony Ship construction (ZG is 10 seconds, last pre-release was 10 min construction time), and your Command Station (this is for free). A side tip on that note, don't worry if minor forces (ie. Sniper) are attacking a constructing Command Station--it always regens HP until its constructed; of course, it would not be a good idea to do this when there are a lot of forces lingering/cloaked.
T2 Engineers to me are more helpful than Mobile Repairs, simply because they can be used for more than repairing fleets, can travel anywhere in an instant, can repair quickly due to teleport, etc.. Both cost knowledge, but with Engineers you get a far more multi-functioned support unit. T2 Engineers can be set in FRD, just keep an eye on them on enemy planets. If damaged, select the control-group and teleport them far and they will repair each other, then FRD again. AI usually doesn't prioritize Engineers over combat vessels.
Economy
Very simple: never allow your resource harvesters to be destroyed, always protect your CMD. Cloaked ships? Tachyon or decloaker. Wandering ships? Make sure you have tractored the wormhole with sufficient defenses. If necessary, put a few defenses in range of harvesters (seldom 1-2) but facing towards wormholes to maximize hit. Avoid Exo-Harvester Force Fields, since they -2 resource per structure, along with requiring power. Only if necessary, construct on endangered planets, scuttle unneeded because they can't be toggled.
Never construct T3 power generators unless necessary. Never idle power, eg. 100K. Toggle these off to save resources. Always construct T2 pgens, avoid T1. Toggle outermost pgens if possible (they won't affect your current power if destroyed, else you need to spend macro to toggle one back on). Remember it's your resources, and maximizing your efficiency is the best way to power your economy, literally again.
Side tip is to be alert at the bottom toolbar--I use this to toggle pgens because it reveals which are currently toggled, and clicking on them will insta-zoom onto the planet with the pgen. Caution of having multiple tiers of pgens is that they will become cluttered on that sidebar, so you will have to guess/etc. which ones are T2/etc..
Sidebar of Units
Helpful. Click on one of the categories of your ships, you select all them. Good for quick macro, but ruins grouping. Right-clicking on enemy icon will zoom in on it. Generally sidebar offers you intel on ships in planet, eg. where is my mobile builder, can't find that ball shape. Only shows if you have intel (scouts) on planet.
Galaxy View
Not very helpful except for changing planet views quickly. Remember to use the filters, eg. find on the sidebar, you can select "show knowledge, show fleets, show unused resource, etc.". Somewhat helpful to label planets with the P#, but make sure others understand. eg. label permamines via P0, label the connecting planet P0 so you don't forget and have the permamines fondle your ships.
Teamwork
Important. Build/gift your allies T2 pgens on planets you capture. Exchange metal/crystal instead of utilizing inefficient manufactories to exchange resource currency. If your allies don't mind, and you have good macro and attention/care, have them construct Control Nodes which allows everyone else to control their units/etc. so you can reconstruct harvesters, reposition fleets/etc. for them, in a subjugating courteous manner. Try to keep to yourself; eg. don't mix planet owners, have one general cluster area so you don't have planets in all places. Some players don't want this to happen anyways--they want to have sovereign reign.
Planets to Take
Always take planets that have the most resources first, while considering the amount of ships and tier level. Keep in mind you have a delicate balance of reinforcement time, ie. you wait too long, AI sends in reinforcements to bolster "Alerted to Presence" planets with psychic powers, or you go too early, ie. you get cuddly hugged . Please prepare your defenses on the other end for when you enrage send flowers to the AI, because they will go through and attack your connecting planet, so if you have no defenses whatsoever, they will be able to wander in and destroy your harvesters/CMD/your macro and sanity because you're waging a guerrilla and full-on war.
When you're nearly done taking over the planet (ie. prepare ships to defend CMD, or only defenses remain) then feel free to plop your Colony Ship of destruction. The AI will be so fearful of the brilliance that it will never attack your planet ever until it is done constructing. Therefore it's helpful if you begin attacking the AI planet, and make a Colony Ship ahead of time, but be sure to keep it somewhat away and close to the wormhole leading to that planet, or the Colony Ship will release party baloons and streamers when it is destroyed.
// Finishing on time... feel free to comment.
