A few noob questions

1. Just taxes, colonists and invasion troops.

2. Build influence starbases near them. Take over the offending enemy planets.

3. No easy answer to that one. There are all sorts of ways at designing good ships. Some of the ideas you suggested are good, but other ways work too. Experiment and have fun.

Tony

To reinforce (2) make sure you upgrade your influence starbases; research culture tech (+NN influence) and build the Restauraunt of Eternity (a distant cousin of the Restaurant on the Edge of the Universe, that somehow got the better end of the deal; before disappearing completely and being replaced with something even more bizarrely inexplicable). To supplement (3) there may not be a formula, but click on enemy ships and look at what they've got. At war with the Drengin? Did they build a ship that focused only on beams? Research deflector techs and missiles. You'll spank them (depending on the AI level)! Did they build a new ship that has a deflector defense? Research that singularity gun. It's a very counter-attack based approach, but it seems to be effective. Read the gameplay examples the devs posted in the journals, they're usually filled with the tit-for-tat on tech.

1. Has been answered above

2. Building influence starbases is one way though on the higher difficulty settings the AI starts to get annoyed if you build starbases near it's borders. Another way is to find planets that have an influence enhancing square and build an embassy on it. The other thing you can try to do is find Influence Resources and mine those. There are also techs that will increase your influence production.

3. The best advice I can give for building ships is to build whatever counters what your enemy is building. For example if he is building ships with beam weapons then you build ships with shields. Also if he has armor defenses but no other defensive techs then you might want to build beam or missile weapons. Early on it isn't very important that you get more then one weapon and one defense on a ship. As you get larger hulls and go up the weapon tree it becomes possible to put more then one of a type on a single ship. Also as you build ships put them into fleets. They are much more affective together then they are alone.

Don't try to mix different weapons or defenses on one ship. If you want to have variety in your ships build two or three versions of the same ship. I usually put together all the ship bling I want and then at the end slap on the weapons, engines, defenses, and modules I wanted. Then if I want to change the loadout I simply upgrade that ship replacing what I want and then rename it so the old one is still available too. It's quite fun to watch a fleet rip the enemy to shreads because it counters their build perfectly.

Okay, thanks!

One more thing: Is there a way to get the minor races planets on a diplomatic way? Or can you only attack them to get their planets?

The only way I know of to take a minor race's world is to invade it. I've never had them surrender to me nor has one of their worlds ever flipped to me due to influence. It may be possible. Like I said just hasn't happened yet.

3. Just a little more info... It has been demonstrated in other threads that it is rarely beneficial to put more than one type of weapon on a ship. Until you have some of the smaller defenses or miniaturization, I wouldn't recommend putting in defenses until medium hulled ships, and even then stick to one type of defense or max two types. Basically, your smaller, earlier fighters should focus on one type of weapon, no defense. 2nd or 3rd gen ships you can add some defense to counteract enemies weapon types. Once you get later in the game and have larger hulled ships the defenses and mixtures of defense types start to come into their own. As was mentioned alot of this depends on the enemies ship setups, and also if you incorporate military starbase bonuses into your plans. There are a ton of options, but focus on weapon techs first and add defenses later as they become more practical.

EDIT: Just remembered the second part of your question regarding quantities of ships. Your logistics ability affects how many ships you can put into a fleet. You basically have a trade off of more small ships or fewer larger ships, or a larger ship with a couple small ones to fill in. I have read people successfully using all strategies, so it really just depends on your preferences, research on hulls/logistics, and what the enemy is doing. Hope all this helps.

Yup, thanks!!!