Good to hear that.
3 priorities to keep in mind: economy > defense > offense.
To be able to use your fleet for attacking you need to have solid defenses so you don't have to bounce back and forth with your fleet. You can actually focus on attacking and know your defenses will do their job. And to be able to keep up with the economic attrition you need to have enough resources (resource asteroids).
"economy" includes resources and production speed. You need enough resource asteroids to actually get the resources but you also need enough Engineers
(Mark II and III?) to use the resources fast enough.
"defense" and "offense" include exactly what you think. (also turrets can be used for defense
and offense.)
You just need to balance those 3.