Opening moves

Meh, I'm not an expert but...most people pick the Marza (good dps, planet bombing, and has Missile Barrage) for TEC starting off or the Kol(durability and strikecraft control). For the Vasari most people start with the colonizer because it good for colonizing and has Nano-Dissassembler which is for fighting 1 v 1 capital ships. As for Advent, people pick the colonizer (this one provides a great econ advantage early on and has shield regen) or the Radiance (for dps).

That being said, people typically pick their capital ship based on abilities and not just because it can colonize. For opening, people tend to build as many scouts as phase lanes leading out of their homeworld. If they did not build a colonizer ship they will build the colony frigate.

Your opening seems ok. You don't need to wait till mid game to harrass your opponent though. Depends on your definition of mid game, I suppose. Anyways, depending on the map, if you only have 3 planets during mid-game...you are going to be at a disadvantage. In MP people aggressively expand till they are next to their opponent.

you can clear militias faster with a Battleship but you cannot colonize planets faster because you are limited by two things.

the first limit is the antimatter supply on the Colony frigate. its stuck at 225, much lower than what cap ships have. it also has a much lower antimatter recharge rate and it loses a much greater amount of antimatter when it phase jumps. colonizer cap ships rarely do not have enough anti-matter to colonize a planet, colony frigates on the other hand run out very quickly. you'll be waiting on AM recharge alot once you're more than 1 jump away from homeworld.

the second limit is the inability of a colony frigate to go in and make a "hot drop colony", which is a phrase i use to indicate colonizing a world before the militia is cleared. the colony frigate is fragile and is a militia magnet. its not safe to bring it in until all the light frigates, heavy cruisers, and lrms in the grav well have been destroyed. with a colony cap ship on the other hand all you have to do is kill the siege frigates (which die very quickly to light frigates) and you can colonize the world while still fighting. in fact, you can then go and build some turrets and repair structures to help you finish off the militia. its possible in this way to colonize very heavily defended Terran or Desert worlds much earlier in the game you would normally be able to if you were only using colony frigates.

a final factor, while not a strict limit, is the bonuses you gain from using a colony cap ship. an Advent Mothership reduces the planet infrastructure costs of new colonies for a few minutes. a Vasari Evacuator makes structures build 20% faster for a few minutes. the TEC Akkan can add some free extractors on the resource rocks. these are side benefits that you can't get from the colony frigates. 

For Vasari and Advent, the colony cap ship is virtually the unassailable first choice.  They double as some of the best overall support caps for their respective factions as it is.  For TEC, the choice is a little more dubious.  The TEC colony cap is a support capital ship and is mediocre in a direct confrontation with a powerful high DPS enemy cap.  This makes it highly tempting to just go with a hard hitter like Marza or Kol and suck up the cost of a colony frigate or two.  Akkan also doesn't get any special benefits from its colonize until you have two points in it, but by the time that starts to pay off the mighty Marza will really be paying off in terms of sheer power.

Typically the AI is not nearly as dangerous as a player in the early game.  It tends to build lots of light frigates, which fare poorly against caps and LRF.  As well, they don't single out your capital ships.  A player, on the other hand, can be hitting you with higher tech level units and really doing a number.  As a result, it's actually easy to get away with a cap and a few light frigates for the first 10-15 minutes against an AI, but a player won't let you get away with that.  Against players, you virtually always have to lead with 2 military labs (although Vasari can get away with only one, since their assailant frigate requires only the one lab)

I see, thank you all for the info. For now I try small maps of 9 planets with 1-2 choke points.

Tomorrow I will try to expand with the Vasari "egg" Capital ship followed by assailants once I want to see how this will work out.

Must be fun to colonise a planet faster than the destruction of the orbital structures. As assailants seem quite tough I might as well try some early harassement on undefended planets and continuously resupply my main fleet with new assailants till I have enough for better defended targets.

Thank you all again.

As Darvin said for Advent (mostly) and Vasari they're colonizers ARE the most powerful and if a vasari takes ANYTHING but the space egg then something is very,very wrong with them. Normal and hard AI don't prove much since they only spam light frigates for first 15 min or so and build random caps.

This is what i do.

1.Build cap ship factory que colonizer cap or Marza fo TEC.

2. Scout 2-4 depending on map, location etc

3.Upgrade planet population.

4.If Vasari mil lab for assilants, If advent 2 mil labs (1 first then 1 more in like 2 min) for carriers. If TEC 2 for LRMS (THIS IS ASSUMING THAT YOU HAVE AT LEAST 1 ROID TO Start

4b. if no roids then 2 civic labs for ice/volcano

5. Send cap out to colonize roid (NO LIGHT FRIGATES)

6. First i coloinze roid forget the stupid militia ships after its colonized kill the seige (it doesn't have enough time to kill planet.)

7.Upgrade build extractors etc.

8. Research carriers or long range frigates (LRM.Assilant for VAs/TEC) Carrier for Advent.

9. you have 2 choices continue researching and get rep platform for when cap needs to take terrans or deserts or start up LRM/assailant/carrier production

If your in the pocket then i go Eco and do everything above except subsitute all mil research with civ research. This works great for me but all of this has to be done fast and there is some selling and buying of resources on the market but i forget how much and what. This is what most players do but how fast you do it and how you can evaluate what you need where you are is what is important.

Edit Sorry if this is hard to read if it is unclear what i mean i will edit it or some grammar nazi will correct for me.

I don't like the idea of "No light frigates".  If you just depend on your colonizer cap ship to clear out that volcanic/ice world, your opponents will have colonized half the map before you are able to move on.  They are a must if you get stuck with nearby terran and desert worlds.

No not really.... Kill 1 or 2 of the seige frigs colonzie it and start pumping out the LRF's i mean most of the games ive seen Tyr play in he hardly builds light frigates at most one or 2 even if hes eco it doesn't make sense to spend that extra money. only to but out phased couple minutes later. Especially if your vasari then you should NEVER build Lf's

its just not true though. light frigates do just fine, especially for early colonizing. they kill the Siege, Flak, and Kodiaks that are so common in planet militias more efficiently thatn LRFs do. i'm not saying you should go and build 10-20 light frigates at the beginning of the game, thats clearly a stupid idea.

i'm saying that 4 or 5 lights makes a great escort for a colonizer cap ship and will greatly assist your colonizing speed for several reasons. just killing things faster is helpful in its own right but thats not the only benefit you gain out of it. it prevents your cap ship from having to sustain too much damage from planet militias, which means if you encounter significant enemy resistance (if he's rushing you, for example) you're not too likely to have to retreat your cap. 

they also work wonders for controlling neutral extractors. shooting up the scouts and colony frigs that people send to neutrals makes a big difference and light frigates are very good at this. they're also way fast and can actually get out to those neutral extractors faster than anything except scouts. 

don't dismiss them just because they get killed by LRFs. 

Transitive pointed out sometthing i missed LF are useful for protecting Extractors especially from the like of Tyr who is a gready bastard when it comes the Neutrals . But i guess it depends on the strategy i personally NEVER build LF's because i find using the extra moneyu for LRF research is a better use of money which is crucial in the early stages of the game but i guess that both could work given experience.

Since mid-late games have players spamming all kinds of support cruisers, I wouldn't call LF obsolete after a couple minutes. 

After reading all the above I tried replacing the light frigates with assailants and things worked out fine if not better. Specially with the egg ship. I am quite impressed about it.

What I don't get is how assailants are so effective? I mean is it because their greater range is enough to balance their lack of protection (hull and shields) compared to the light frigate?

Not to mention that  Vasari assailants have only a few damage upgrades. Not that I studied the military tree enough, but with a quick look it seemed so.

Now I will try to find out if it is possible an efficient expansion on two different routes. I think not but I have to try it out.

Thank you all again for the helpful info.

the reason Assailants do so much more damage than Skirmishers is because of their damage type.

Assailants do anti-medium type damage, which has good performance against almost everything. it does alot of extra damage to Light frigates and either 75% or 100% damage to almost everything else. 

Skirmishers do anti-heavy type damage, which is somewhat less potent. it does pretty good damage to heavy armor (the armor type of most cruisers, and also the Flak frigate) but doesn't do very good damage to anything else, its getting reduced to 75% or even 50% damage against alot of things. 

on top of the damage type difference Assailants have longer range and higher base DPS in general. they're much more effective on offense. thats their role really, offensive specialist. 

finally, it is incorrect that Assailants lack upgrades. in fact they have the most weapon upgrades available of any Vasari ship. you can research 8 upgrades for Phase Missiles and these upgrades effect both Assailants and your strike craft squadrons. the first 6 of those upgrades grant Shield Bypass, which is an amazingly potent effect. it allows missiles to have a percent change to completely ignore the shield and strike the hull directly. in addition to the direct hull strike a bypassing missile disregards shield damage mitigation so it will always deal 100% of its damage, if it bypasses. its friggin awesome. the last 2 upgrades on the missile path just provides +20% damage, boring but effective. 

Which is VERY annoying against advent who are heavily reliant on shielding for most of the game, completly bypassing those leaves only a weak and unarmored hull.

I use almost that exact tactic all the time, minus the colony frigate and scout. I start out by building a scout, then sending it on it's way, and then building a colony frigate, which I leave at my base so it doesn't die. Next I build a Battleship, then pair it up with 5 light frigates and go on conquering. I conquer 2 or 3 plantes, find a choke point, and set them there until I get another fleet. If I have enough money, I will make small task forces of light frigates for planetary defense and to eliminate defenders at neutrals. I find it very effective.