First 4 Hours of gameplay for beginner: spammy pirates, spammy AI.

Nah.  Balance between units at this point in the game's history is actually some of the best.  It used to be that spamming Long Range Frigates (LRF) would win most any game.  Then with Rebellion's beta came Corvettes.  They're pretty balanced now, but at one time they could knock out pretty much anything in their path.  Now you can't really spam anything* to win because you'll be countered.  Corvettes>LRF>Light Frigates (LF)>Flak>Corvettes.

You can't choose the starting position unless you make your own map in a program included in the download called Galaxy Forge.  You can pick the faction and difficulty of each player though as well as game speeds and victory conditions.

Also for a noob, I recommend disabling pirates.  Getting hit by them first can really put a dent in your expansion.  Late-game, they're just exp for your capitals and titan, but early on they are pretty brutal.  Honestly, most MP games disable them anyways.

You can always play MP compstomps as it allows you to get real-time feedback from other players.  Also, what level of AI were you going against?

*There is of course an exception to this.  Late-game you can spam light carriers (LC) and load them up with bombers.  You will eventually reach a point known as "critical mass" at which point they will kill anything in their first pass.  That is the only IWINBUTTON in the game (contrary to some of the people in the SP community who complain about superweapons being OP because they aren't and are easily dealt with).

Head over to the strategy section and read up a bit.  Most things are a bit outdated, but you should get the gist of things.

As for your playstyle, I recommend the TEC Loyalists as they focus on turtling not to mention the TEC is the most straightforward race in the game and thus is the best for new players.

Pirates usually give new players a hard time.  Luckily, they can be disabled, and many players turn them off.  The enemy AI difficulty setting can also be set before the game begins; simply left- or right-click the little chevron button next to the AI team selector (you'll also see a question mark there, that determines how the AI plays the game).  Set the AI to easy for the first couple games, and as long as the pirates are disabled, you'll find that the AI fairly tame.  There are also predesigned maps that will get you fighting your opponent faster than a random map, like Point Blank or Quickstrike. 

I tend to play defensively as well, though in this game the importance of defense is determined by the number of choke points in the map.  It's not uncommon for small maps to have a single choke point between the two factions; seize this world and fortify it, and the AI will never be able to beat you, at least on Hard (my standard setting).  While your scouts are off exploring the system, have your first capital ship and a small supporting fleet run around and kill militia on colonizable worlds.  If your first ship is a mothership (capital ship that can colonize, always my first choice in a random map) you'll get a bit of an edge on your economy, both due to the bonus the capital ship's colonize ability provides and from taking less time to take a planet than a colony frigate would.  It's important to expand fairly aggressively in the beginning of the game, so that you can keep up economically with your enemies.  Once you've got a few worlds under your control and have found all the choke points on the map, head to them and capture them.  Congratulations!  If you're able to keep ahold of these choke points with no enemy worlds behind it, you have now won.  I'm sure you will get a lot more advice from people a lot more skilled than I, but the above is my normal play style, and it's working like a charm for me.

It is if you plan on getting good at it...but if you are looking for just casual play and pretty pew pews, Sins will still be just fine, you just got to get used to it...FYI, left and right clicking pretty much toggles or cycles any option button in the game....

Since you aren't playing against a human or anything, you can get away with some "streamlined" strategies...buidling lots of corvettes and light frigates is a good early game fleet...later on, move to lots of heavy cruisers and carriers with bombers...you can concern yourself with the counter system later once you are more comfortable with the basics...

If you looked up anything about this game, you'd find it has a learning curve. You're going to lose at first, don't take it personally. The game really is a lot of fun, even for single players once you know what you're doing.

The first thing you need to go is just play through a whole game, getting some first hand experience with the tech trees and unit types. Yes the pirates will make that a pain, leave them off until you're comfortable, and in fact most people have them off all the time. You may find it easier to do on this map as well, its set up so that the AI will never be able to attack you, and if you take the time to go through every planet you'll encounter almost every unit in the game. You may want to leave the pirates on as a source of combat experience in this case. To play it, put it in your My Games -> Ironclad Games -> SoaSE:R -> GalaxyForge folder.

There are three major mistakes newbs tend to make (all of which deal with game pacing, which is something you just have to learn with practice), not expanding fast enough, building too many capitalships, and researching too many trivial techs early on. More details in this thread, you might find it helpful if you're doing any of those things.

A look into the Sins of a Solar Empire Wiki is also very helpful.

https://www.sinsofasolarempire.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Ah yes, this was my entry to Sins as well. The good news is, once you get a basic build order down there will be no spam. You will have to build a steady stream of units and send them to your choke points, but that's mostly in the early game while you're building up your economy. After this initial phase, the tech tree starts to become very important and you can kill AI ships at a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio without even microing.

Bounty is not the most effective thing to spend money on when you're starting, every spare credit should go instead to colonization, planetary population upgrades, trade ports, or buying the metal/crystal you need for those things. Let the pirates come for you and have just enough ships ready that you can destroy them. This will level up your cap ships, which has a huge effect on their survivability. Once you have 3-4 capships at level 4+ and a titan, you can start laying waste.

Or you can do something completely different. I'm sure the MP people out there have more effective strategies than that. But overall, if you enjoy SC:FA and playing defensively then this is actually one of the best SP RTS games out there.

Thanks guys for tips. I won my first "easy" match. The AI was set to easy but somehow it wasn't so. What puzzled me is that once I kill their level 8 titan AI would rebuild it as level 8 and in very short time. So I was doing "hit and run" strategy to keep their operating costs up: full force to enemy sector and watch for phase line for enemy reinforcement. Once enemy comes in, I would retreat to the sector with lots of defence. Rinse and repeat until their numbers are weaken to take them head on.

I still think AI is cheating, I am pretty sure it is getting a certain fraction of resources for free.

If you were playing against the TEC faction, they do in fact get a resource bonus for everything you buy as a tier 8 technology, but you won't see that until the late game.  Beyond that, no AI below Hard get any bonuses.

If you're still playing defensively, I recommend playing as the TEC loyalists while you get a hang of the game.  They are specifically designed for turtling strategies, and are extremely difficult for the AI to make a dent against.

Titans are rebuilt at the level which they were destroyed. So a level 8 will be rebuilt as a level 8. That is a design choice by the dev's, and working as intended.

Make sure you build up your infrastructure on colonized worlds. Worlds with no infrastructure will become a major drain on your economy until you remedy this. If you cant max out the infrastructure right away at least build it up enough to where you don't lose credits. You need resources and credits fast to build up your fleets, and research. Planets that are a drain will seriously slow you down.

Hangar defense/Repair platforms are your friend if you are a turtler. Build more HD than Turrets. Use a few turrets just to keep stragglers from blowing up the HD. This works well until you can get starbases up. Mines are effective vs the AI, because the AI is stupid enough to ignore them.

Yes, the AI does cheat. Unfair, Cruel, and Vicious AI cheat by design to give veteran players a challenge. This isnt the first time ive seen people say that normal. or easy AI cheats, but those AI's are not designed to cheat.

Like was said before. Early game Pirates can be brutal. If you play with them enabled just be mindful of them. Ebay the pirates until you think you can handle them. By mid game they become more of an annoyance, but they are free experience for your caps, and titans. By late game pirates should be a cakewalk.

I want to clarify that on the harder difficulties, Im not sure on the lower difficulites. The AI in Rebellion will use scouts to counter mines. Ive seen them many of times jump in scouts(sometimes 20+, which is overkill IMHO) before their fleet and then proceed to clear a path as they charge their target.

Its not 100% perfect but its not like in Entrechment. Where you could mine phase lanes and watch them plow through them with out a second thought. 

So, dont expect mines to be as effect as they have been. They still help but like Starbases and other defensive structures, they AI will hit them hard. If you playing against the TEC, you can be sure your lose all your repair bays first. 

Ive never lost!
Because I quit and pretend it didn't happen

I like to hold 4 to 5 planets then defend them while I build Starbases to defend the vulnerable planets. 

Then you can expand in one direction with your fleet leaving your Starbases  to defend for you while you go have fun
 

Really, the only way to truly get good at the game is to either play multiplayer (extremely irritating for a beginner) or just keep hiking the difficulty on the AI.

Starbases are absolutely essential for a turtler.  Get them and get them fast (15 minutes max).  if you just want to whale on the AI, i would recommend downloading the distant stars mod.  Its an enhancement mod for the base game that smooths out the game, beefs up the effects, adds a few new defense platforms, dramatically increases the usefulness of the tech tree, (its quite possible to end up with a kol battleship doing upwards of 1000 dps with 10000 hp) and beefs up the pirates with capital ships and upgraded weapons, making buying them off a very doable winning strategy.

(Carbon, i'm not being your personal advertising service, i just really like the mod)

Adieu

12 hours and 1 AI on hard only?  It only takes me about 4 hours and three Vicious AI 52 planets.

Wow, don't be like that man...

I've done that before too.  Actually, i think that anyone who relishes fireworks has done this at one time or another.  Some people aren't like "Oh, i have a bigger fleet than they do, i'm gonna go crush them right now".  Some people actually enjoy overkill if you can believe it!

You play the game however you want to play it. SP, MP, Spammer, or Turtler. Its totally up to you. There is no one right way to play Sins. There is a wrong way. As some of the new guys found out the hard way Thats ok. You learn to overcome, and find ways to beat it.

I bought the game with rebellion with the urging of my friends on the steam sale.  I'm having problems right now in a game on the second highest difficulty 1v1 as Vasari Rebel against TEC loyalist.  Once I finish researching all the techs I need can I just blow up my research labs and keep the techs my friends tell me some of the techs go away but I don't know which ones or if this is true or not.  Basically what I'm asking is should I blow them all up and replace with culture/trade buildings?

As a general rule, passive upgrades stay and ship and ability researches go away.

Put another way, if you researched everything then scuttled your labs, you'd keep your extra hit points, damage, resource and trade income etc. You'd lose the ability to build anything but caps, light frigates, scouts and colony ships, and any unlocked abilities won't be useable, even on your already built ships. Superweapons also won't fire.

Interesting that is what I needed to know thanks for the input.

Also as a new player I'm starting to find that capital ships seem like they start sucking late game.  Some like the Advent Carrier and it's AOE blowback against fighters are useful in some situations and of course Malice on the Mothership, but for the most part I just like using my titan maybe 1 Cap and a balanced fleet.  It's also pretty much the reason I can't stand Vasari loyalist either I want to mass caps to use the techs they have but I just can't seem to manage it well.

Is there an easy wiki or reference for what is effective against what and standard fleet builds that work well together?

there is something for effectiveness on the wiki, yes.  If you want to see fleets, just ask a pro for a replay of one of his/her games.