Couple Questions

[Zirce]

Hey all
So i've read through several guides and started many games, but never got very far.
My main problems are scouting and supply.

So how do I scout the galaxy when my scouts can't make it 2 jumps away from home, if I go and clear tachyon outposts all those planets will go on alert?
Supply, how do you get those high priority objectives like a golem/ars thats many jumps from your homeworld without capturing every planet inbetween and skyrocketing the aip?

[Arc-3N-4B]

@Alert - A planet going on alert only stays alert when hostile ships are on it or on a planet adjacent to it, if memory serves. Destroying the tachyon sentries will only put it on alert for as long as your ships are there.

@Supply - All your planets grant supply to themselves and to adjacent planets. You do not need to connect the planet to your homeworld.

[Zirce]

Thanks for the quick reply

[Zair]

@Supply - All your planets grant supply to themselves and to adjacent planets. You do not need to connect the planet to your homeworld.

There are a few units in the game that can block supply - when this happens, a planet that would ordinarily be in supply will find itself without, causing you to be unable to build there even if you have a command station righ next door. The most usual culprit is one of the four AI Co-Processors spread throughout the galaxy.

[Kahuna]

Supply, how do you get those high priority objectives like a golem/ars thats many jumps from your homeworld without capturing every planet inbetween and skyrocketing the aip?

4. Beachheading
In short beachheading means attacking and building on an AI planet. Building Turrets, Fortresses or other some other (normally) defensive structures on an AI planet. To build stuff you don't need to own the planet. All you need is supply. And all of your Command Stations provide supply to all adjacent planets. Beachheading can also mean capturing an AI planet very rapidly by just destroying the AI Command Station and building your own without even trying to destroy the Guard Posts or other AI structures. Just destroy the AI Command Station, build your own and then build turrets. This kind of beachheading allows you to beachhead planets much further than 1 hop away from your planets. You can even deep strike 6 hops and then do this. As soon as you destroy the AI Command Station it's no longer considered as deep striking so the AI will stop gathering threat. So you don't have to capture every planet on your way to AI homeworlds. A planet every 6 hops is enough.

Assault Transports attrition 26% of their life when going trough a wormhole without supply. This means fourth non supply hop will destroy it. Since your Command Stations provide supply to all adjacent planets it will be the fifth hop that will destroy the Assault Transport if you leave from one of your planets. So if you have a planet in both ends the Assault Transport can travel 6 hops without being destroyed. This means capturing a planet every 6 hops is enough..

[tadrinth]

Whenever the AI spawns reinforcements, it sends them primarily to planets on alert.  That's most of what being on alert does (though some AI structures may also respond to a planet being alerted, keep an eye out). 

It's fine to alert planets temporarily, one or two sets of reinforcements generally don't cause much of an issue.

The main worry is permanently alerting high-mark AI planets, especially those that you haven't neutered and/or will need to pass through.  If you leave a core world on alert for half the game, it's going to be covered with defenders and much more painful to crack. 

[Malkiel]

The supply question having been covered excellently by Kahuna, I'll focus on scouting.

TL;DR version: send a big old blob of scouts and scrap all but 1 survivor once they're safely in the target system.

I use the "cheap" way of scouting, unlocking scout starship mark IV at 1 second into the game and using it to scout the entire galaxy because it has tachyon immunity.
Barring this method (which eats 7500 of your initial research) it becomes important to understand what cloaking boosters are.

1) cloaking boosters are fired by 1 cloaked ship at a nearby cloaked ship and basically "absorb" the first detection that would hit the boosted ship, allowing it to remain cloaked.
2) A ship firing a cloaking booster cannot itself receive a cloaking boost.

in practice, this means that if you send 4 scouts, a,b,c,and d out.. a boosts c and b boosts d. first tachyon gaurdian, a and b get decloaked, others remain hidden as they speed past. A and B probably die. c begins boosting D. second tachyon your scout hit, c gets decloaked, D slips past without being detected.

so.. 4 scouts mark I to pass 2 tachyon detectors. since there is 1 tachyon unit on each side of a wormhole, it takes 4 scouts for 1 jump deep (assuming you sent fighters to clear tachyons immediately adjacent to you)
since it takes 4 times as many per jump if using mark 1, and mark 1 has a 10 ship cap.. you pretty much have to unlock mark 2 or use transports for anything past this. since mark 2 has more than 1 cloaking booster, the math gets messy and I'm not going there in this post. Thus, the TL;DR version above is my advice.

personal sidenote: apparently my fingers think the proper spelling of tachyon is "tachyone", I had to go correct every instance of that word in this post. bad fingers, bad!