new to the game, have some questions

1. Teams are set when you create the game and can't be broken; make certain to review the starting relations on each opponent when setting up a new map.

2. Have you explored the map and verified there are only six? You may have six opponents set with initial relation levels and three starting at unknown. They won't appear in the foreign relations screen until you've encountered their ships or planets.

3. The focus of the game is on custom-designed ships rather than the few pre-designed ones built in, and you will be far more competitive by taking advantage of that feature.

can you recommend any good tutorial on ship building, be that video or web page?  Did some googling on the subject, the top resulting video was listed as "ship building tutorial" and after watching it it was only a guy showing off his designs, not showing how to build a ship.  and yes, I changed my username since first post

I never used stock ships.

Just open the Shipyard, select the hull size, and add stuff until you run out of space.  Then look at the stats of the ship, in terms of range, speed, offense, defense.  It's that imple.

As you research, you "unlock" the larger hulls (with more space for stuff), the pieces get better, what you can fit into a given hull becomes more (miniaturization), etc.

The easiest thing to do is start a game on easy with the highest tech research rate.  This soon lets you "try out" all sorts of things as you quickly research the advances w/o any pressure from an opponent.

(1) I play on gigantic maps so my ship building revolves around the speed/range of my ships and their purpose.  I build fast long range freighters/constructors, or in some cases shells (i.e. ships with no trading or constructor modules, but lots of engines).  When the shell ship gets to the intended destination I upgrade it to one without engines of the same range with the trading or constructor module intact.  This allows you to send a faster ship with lots of engines where the trading or constructor modules would normally be.

(2) Remember to match the speeds/ranges of your transports to their protector vessels so they move at the same speed.

(3) Warship building is matching your capabilities against the likely opponents.  Obviously, location specific ships do not need engines or life support systems so you can use that space for more weapons and defenses.  Attack craft come in many flavors and should be mixed and matched accordingly.  I use tiny and small ships as attack only with weapons and no defenses.  Mediums are my usual first attacker for taking planets so early game they are attack only and mid-late they have a minimal level of defenses.  Large and massive ships have robust attack and defense numbers and form the backbone of my attack craft depending on the stage of the game (mid or late game).  Tiny and small ships are throw-aways in battle and sometimes absorb the first round hits.  This leaves the real attack craft (mediums and larger) a free round of attack to take out the most lethal opponents.

(4) If you played a few games you probably have some ship designs that are usable based upon the tech levels of their components.  This allows planning of research and resources to take the research and instantly apply it to your fleet.  For example, let's say I have an attack fleet with 8 warships and 5 transports.  I can send all of them to their destination while I am working on researching a better level of attack components.  You time it so that before the attack fleet moves into the enemies space you can upgrade the warships accordingly, saving you the travel time of getting the research completed, upgrading, then sending the ships.  One caveat is if you are at war upgrade half of the warship fleet as individual vessels and leave the non-upgraded ships in a fleet together by themselves.  This will protect the upgrading ships for the 1-3 week time it takes to upgrade (with 1 hp).  Then repeat with the upgraded ships protecting the individual upgrading ones.

Lots more stuff but this should suffice for awhile.

thanks for the replies, I have another question

Mining bases, they produce industrial units.  You can direct them to different planets.  If I understand this correctly industrial units are used to produce military and social items. So if I have a planet that is doing all of my unit building I direct all mining bases to this planet?  Same with social projects, if I have one that takes a long time to build I could direct bases to this planet to help speed up the process?

It sounds like mining bases act as factories in that they product industrial units that you can direct to where you need them.  Also, doesn't the amount of industrial units decline the longer the distance it is redirected?

Yes, the further the planet is from the mining base, the less of the output that actually reaches it.  So it's better for overall industrial output if you use the nearest planet to offload the industrial capacity.

I also had a question about ship design I can't seem to find an answer to.  If I add a ship design (designs as in components, weapons, etc, not the fluff) and they appear for me to build in game, they don't ever upgrade.  The stock ships upgrade to Mark II, Mark III, etc.  Does it do this automatically or do I have to create the different versions myself?

You have to create different versions yourself. There is an autocreate mode, but handcrafted ships are almost always superior.

when you create a ship design save it as a template and then when you have better techs use that template to upgrade your ships. My basic ships have general life support,lvl 3 impulse engines,basic minaturisation,and whatever weapon and defences I can get on them.I then upgrade to warp engines,adv life support,enhanced minaturisation,and 2nd gen weapons/defences etc.

Checkout the ship designs 2006-2012 threads for ideas for designs.tbh I'd rather design new ships all day than play the game but then I get to see them in combat

  There are so many details in GalCivII that I,  for one,  don't read many of the posts/documentations beforehand.  I've come close to reading all the manual that came with the game.  Am I in a try-it-first-read-the-manual-later minority?

theres some lets play Gal Civ 2 videos on youtube and 1 or 2 ship design lessons but I've learnt through playing for myself (checkout space battles 1-4 they maybe a little old but their still cool)