I didn't see an up to date thread for tips, so I figured I would make a thread.
My tips are:
1. Dedicate a civilian shipyard to building fuel harvester stations. This massively reduces how much you need to worry about fuel consumption.
- I usually go for a 100,000 ton design that has about 30 sorium harvesters, 5 ultra large tanks, and a refueling system. A single slipway can build like 1.25 per year, and I pair them with a single refueling hub design that is built via construction factories, since the refueling hub costs 2,400 to build.
- Make sure to set the refueling hub station to have a higher refueling priority than the harvester station, and to set all the harvesters to "refuel own fleet tankers". This way, the harvesters will automatically transfer their fuel to the refueling hub.
2. Equip every survey ship with sensor buoy deployment equipment. Every time you order a ship to go to an unexplored jump point, have the ship "launch Ready Ordnance" at the point first. Once you go through the point, launch a 2nd buoy on the other side.
- I use a size 10 sensor buoy (check the no engine box, remove all the fuel and warhead, put the biggest active sensor you can plus a token amount of EM and TH passive sensors). A 30% size 10 launcher is only 150 tons, plus around a 500 ton magazine and the smallest missile fire control possible (5 tons).
- This is the easiest way to keep track of neutral ships moving through your territory, and what systems they are in. And if the sensor buoys are destroyed, you know that the race is hostile towards you now. You can even place the buoys in neutral NPR systems, allowing you to keep tabs on what ships the non-hostile NPR has (although it does spam you with contact change notifications).
- Just make sure you set up the ship combat settings for your survey ships. It doesn't warn you if it fails to deploy a buoy because you haven't set the launcher to be loaded with buoys.
- If a contact shows up in a surveyed system, but you didn't see it at the jump points, that usually means there is a dormant jump point in the system (Or its one of the spoiler races).
3. If you are fighting an NPR, it can be worth it to equip some of your designs with an emergency cryogenic transport module.
- Its only 50 tons, and any lifeboats you pick up will have the extra crew be placed into cryostasis, reducing the strain on the ship's life support. Capturing prisoners is a good way to gain intelligence, or to deny it to an NPR by rescuing your own lifeboats.
4. The Combat Information Center works for both missiles and beams, including point defense.
- For example, against enemy AMMs, my AMMs from my destroyers had a hit chance of 7%. But my battleship, which had a tactical bonus of 35% thanks to its captain and tactical officer, had a hit chance of 10%.
5. You can design sensor probes to scout suspected enemy locations without needing to risk a ship. Build a missile with no warhead, sensors, and long range.
- You can then fire the missile at waypoints via the ship combat screen (you assign the waypoint like how you would assign a target to a missile fire control, except there is no max range aside from how far the missile can travel)
- Generally you want the sensors on the missile to have greater than ~3 million km range, as that will usually outrange enemy AMMs