1.	GENERAL STRATEGIES 

 2. STAGES OF THE GAME                                                 

The game will have four basic parts: beginning, middle (when all races have pollution processor), end (then all races are known, and at least one has been eliminated), and advanced (when two or more races have maximized out their tech in physics, fields and chemistry). The beginning of the game is the MOST important part of the game, but hopefully you already know that. When picking your race, keep in mind of the game settings. For small universes, you will most likely win with a race that has a research bonus. For huge universes, races must have a balance in industry and tech, or the computer will run over your ass before you have a good fleet. Picking a race is one of the most important things that you will do in the game, because the race picks often determine how you can play. I often custom my race, because I have specific ways of playing the game, depending on galaxy size and number of opponents. For small galaxies, races with quick research are the most dangerous opponents. For larger galaxies, your most dangerous opponent will be the 'quick build' race, a race design specifically for having an explosion of industry when research is lacking. 

 3. PICKS                                                              

 4. BASIC BLITZING                                                     

In the beginning, you have two basic directions to go, depending on if the game is set to advanced civilization or not. If the game is set to pre-warp or average, you can do one of two things: try to do a research blitz or try to do a colonizing blitz. You will probably want to do the following in this order for a research blitz: research, e. computer, r. lab, h. farm, f. bays, a. factory, freighters, build the factory and the farm, adjust population, build one freighter fleet and one colony base if you can, research cloning center, build it, research neural scanner, planetary s. computer, build the computer, and at that point you can decide to go for autolab or either start researching better weapons or start colonizing planets. If your going for autolab, make sure you colonize all the planets in the beginning system first, so that you will get extra food and research from the h. farms and r. labs. You will probably want to do the following in this order for a 
colonizing blitz: research f. bays, a. factory, n. drive, freighters, colony ship, standard fuel cell, then build the factory, freighter, one scout, and all the colony ships you can. While you are building the ships, have some of your population in research, and get the r. lab. After you have the r. lab, get a better fuel cell. It is also recommended to research the following tech first in order for a successful game:

1. Research Lab - Gives you the early research you need to stay on equal terms with you opponents 
2. Reinforced Hull - Gives extra protection for your star bases in case of an early attack, and provided some insurance when attacking planets with missile bases or fighter garrisons.
3. Automated Factories - More than doubles existing production, need I say more?
4. Hydroponics Farm - Frees up one farmer to put to research (recommended) or production if you prefer.
5. Neural Scanner - Gives a +10 spy bonus that makes stealing tech lot easier if you opponent does not have this and can help defensive spies.
6. Supercomputer - This is the most important. If you assign most of your population to research the supercomputer will help you bury your opponents.

After you have achieved these technologies you should be ahead of or at the very least equal to your opponents accelerated research. Now you can quickly and easily research the following technologies that will significantly increase the power of you ships.

1. Mass Driver - Class I Shield is so weak it is practically worthless.
2. Tritanium Armor - You can always steal the fuel cells and ships with reinforced tritanium armor kill puny enemy ships that have only titanium.
3. Fusion Beams - Fusion beams make better point defense than lasers.
4. Tachyon Communications - Gives extra command points for more ships (has to be researched to get to neutron blasters)
5. Neutron Blasters - Kills marines and causes moderate damage making ships easier to take over.

In advanced civilizations, the first thing you want to do is the obvious: look at what your colonies don't have, and build it. If the systems you control have extra habitable planets that haven't been colonized, colonize them immediately after the planet in that system has an a. factory up. If you don't have a. factory, research it. If you can't research it, seriously think about starting a new game. By the time you get a. factory from any of the other races, they will have a 
definite advantage over you, because I guarantee that the computer players will trade that tech around with other computer players immediately after the game starts. 

 5. SHIP DESIGN                                                        

Such infinite possibilities... In the beginning and even in the middle of the game, the missile ship is a formidable weapon. Cheap but powerful, it is ideal for emergencies and support in a fleet. Basic design is to take a destroyer with a battle pod and put 2x missile racks of mired nuclear missiles. The mirv nukes are more damaging that any missile, up until the merculite and the nuclear missile start to cost the same, but at that point you should have a fleet of titans or doom stars. 
The missile boat becomes especially useful when you have the following tech: zortium armor, fast missile racks, battle pods, and structural analyzer. This is a ship that can do 300 to 600 damage in one combat turn, and with a bunch of these, you can definitely smack the hell out of a target. 

Your basic attack ship will be of the largest size you can build, fitted with noting but heavy beam weapons. Unless your beam weapons suck, always fit your ship with heavy armor, battle pods, maybe an ecm jammer or a battle scanner, and as many of the second best HV modified beam weapon, without any bombs or missiles. Use your second best beam weapon, because usually you can do more damage with the increased number. That only applies when you have graviton beam and beyond.

A defender ship is a ship that you get with more advanced tech. It is a ship that is meant to be targeted, and it is for destroying missiles that are targeting other ships. Usually you can build this ship if you have the creative ability, and it is great for small fleets. You fit a cruiser with inertia stabilizer or nullifier, multi-phase shields, shield capacitors, augmented engines, and a lightning field if you have it. It is also a good idea to put a battle scanner, heavy armor, automated repair unit, and reinforced hull if you have those too. The rest of the space should be filled with point defense mass drivers. A capture ship is a cruiser fitted with a battle pod and all the assault shuttles it can carry.

 6. RUNNING YOUR EMPIRE                                               

Try to centralize everything. Make a few planets do nothing but research, make a few do nothing but farming, and make a few do nothing but build ships. Even though your empire might get hit hard if it losses its farming planet, but if you centralize everything, production and research tend to go faster. 

Hit system with monsters as soon as you have deuterium fuel cells and battle pods, since most monsters do not survive the attack of 4 or 5 missile ships. Kill the guardian as soon as you can. If you are attack by an antaren ship(s), try to build or refit ships with assault shuttles. Most of the time you never capture a ship, but when you do, you get a good ship that can be scraped for great tech. Late in the game, if you have creative, you will have sufficient tech to build 2 rare ship designs, the stealth ship and the drone. A drone is a frigate fitted with a phasing cloak, a wide-area ecm jammer, and a warp dissipitator. A stealth ship is basically an attack ship fitted with a phasing cloak. Place several drones through out the enemy empire to monitor their actions secretly. 

THE LONG WAY TO VICTORY

First of all, you have to be playing a long term race. The best built in races for this are the Meklars and the Psilons. The Psilons' Creativity allow them to create killer fleets late in the game which no other race can match, while the Meklars' production bonus allow them to get an early start on colonization which allows them to offset any opponents advantages by sheer number of workforce. The idea is to keep your empire out of trouble until you have amassed a big enough force to destroy everyone else. This works very well in Pre-Warp civilizations with the largest galaxies -- this will give you more than enough time to use your racial advantages to it's fullest.

FAST AND FURIOUS

This strategy is a good one and it allows you to play several games within the time span it takes to play a Long-term game. (Not as enjoyable though, IMHO) The races best for this are the Mrrshans and the Elerians, the warrior races. The Mrrshans have the Warlord ability, which allows them to build more ships without experiencing maintenance problems, plus, those ships start out one level higher than norms allowing you to pump out Veteran crew with each ship. (Assuming you have the Space Academy) The Elerians on the other hand, can build ships very quickly due to their Feudalistic govt. and they don't need to bother with Transports -- just Mind Control every colony you come across! As you may have concluded from reading the paragraph above, the idea is to churn out several ships, then seek and destroy everybody you come across before the long term races can "set up". Hunting is easier on small galaxies, and you deny the LT races the time to set up by choosing Advanced Civilization. 

 7. ADVANCED BLITZING                                                 

Against merely impossible-level computer players, blitzing is a virtually guaranteed win even in a huge universe. Last weekend, I practiced blitzing in Impossible/Large/Average Age/8 Empire/Pre-warp universes with a UNI/Tel/AHW/RHW/LHW/Ship Attack +20 combo against the standard races. Until I grew very tired, I won by conquest in every game by turn 190 to 210. Of course I refused a win by vote at a much earlier stage. In a huge universe, I think the most powerful combo is UI/Tele/Omni/AHW/RHW. Usually I don't pick Omni, but for QEC yes maybe it's worth it. To blitz Tolerant, Lithovore, Subterranean, High Population Growth, Creative, Science +2, Industry +2 races might be difficult, yes. You certainly wouldn't want one of those for an initial neighbor: I had enough trouble fending off aggro Psilons when Mentar 
started off within Deuterium distance - they always seemed to have Tritanium Heavy Armor and maybe Missile Bases by the time I reached them (turn 60 odd), and soon they'd retaliate with a Battleship of their own.

There seems little more to learn from the AI's strategies. Against impossible-level computer players, here is the drill to win: 

During all research, I will generally research until between 25 - 50% chance of breakthrough, and then shift EVERYONE to production. Even if you have NOBODY researching and 0 RP, you still get the accumulated probability each turn. So I keep only one person on production until the research has a decent chance of breakthrough (25-50%), then I shift everybody to production until the breakthrough occurs, then I shift all but one person back to research. Anyway, with this prelude, here is the process. 

1. Keep one person on production at all times, accumulating resources for when you want them. 
2. First research Computers and Research Labs, and build a lab. 
3. Then research Reinforced Hull and Factories, and build a factory. 
4. Then research Power and Chemistry. 
5. Build a scout. The ext. fuel cells has the same range as you will have after researching Duet, so you can plan your outposts. Make the scout with ext. fuel and reinforced hull, but no weapons.  
6. Research Deut. fuel. 
7. Research outposts. 
8. Build a string of outposts to your target race. Pick a good slave race for your first target: tolerant, etc., and pick someone fairly close. (I will go further for a good slave race rather than hit a closer race that is not as good.)                                                  
Sakkra, Silicoid, Klackon, Trilarian have served well. 
9. Upon building your last outpost, you will know how far it is to the target, i.e. whether your cruiser will need extended fuel cells and what technology your target has, so how much firepower you will need to defeat him. 
10. Build one or two missile cruisers as necessary, ALONG with your weaponless scout. You will have to judge based on the technology of your target whether you need to research level 3 chemistry in order to get MIRV nukes (more than twice as effective). Use hit and run. When attacking, move your scout back to the rear corner as quickly as possible. [Fire] both volleys of missiles from your Cruiser(s), and So that's two salvos of as many missiles as will fit. Then retreat your Cruiser(s). Having the scout staying around will ensure that all of your missiles hit. 
11. Attack and conquer slave race. With a good slave race, you can move nearly all manufacturing to slave race (more ships and outposts), and shift your home world to strictly research (except one person). 
12. Pick next race to conquer, and repeat. 
13. Typical results: first conquest turn 40-50. Second conquest turn 60-80. Galaxy conquered turn 130 - 160. 

((This is not accurate. I tested this and at turn 41 I just finished the scout and was researching Fuel. This means, if I followed the guidelines, I have yet to learn Outpost and have no Cruiser even started. The scout just finished. This could be due to my game being at PeWarp, but if it was AdvTech, you start with BB(s). - KG))

 8. COLONIZATION - HOW TO GET STARTED                                  

One of the nice things about MOOII is that you can colonize hostile planets immediately. Unlike the original Master of Orion, where you had to research Controlled Tundra environment, and other Controlled environments! Actually, this feature offers beginners pits to fall on. Do not waste your time (and your colony ship) colonizing the first planet you can get your hands on - be choosy! The 2 governing features to look for in a planet are it's mineral abundance, and size (not population capacity, those are two different things). Next, the Gravity, and lastly the environment. When choosing a planet, try to determine the amount of production it can give off at full population, against the amount of time required to get it running. When you start a new colony, make sure you have enough freighters and surplus food to feed the colonists. The idea is to keep all those pioneers busy doing Industry until they can stabilize and feed themselves. In other words, keep those colonists building Automated Factories, Soil Enrichment, Terraforming, whatever, instead of making them feed themselves. 
Toxic planets are the worst planets in the game. You can't Terraform them! Unlike Radiated, in which you can erect a Radiation shield which converts it to Barren. Toxic planets are hopeless planets, so avoid them. When you start a new colony, you have to make the build queue count. There are buildings which boost a colony's capabilities. The production boosters should be the first to go for -- they allow you to bring out the other stuff much quicker. Morale boosters are great, but only if there is something for them to boost. They work best in a planet already in optimum production. Cloning Centers are good starters for a colony, that's what I build first. They boost population growth. After all, what good are the other facilities if there's no one to use them? I follow up with production boosters and pollution controllers. My first building list looks like this, Building Queue:

Cloning Center
Automated Factory
Pollution Processor
Robo Miners Plant
Atmospheric Renewer
Marine Barracks

(( If you are not sending pop to the planet, this order is not optimal, only 1 pop on industry, no need to jump on pollution processor, or renewer. -KG))

Biospheres can also be used instead of the Cloning Center, but you'll have to send in additional pioneers from already developed planets. As soon as that building queue is finished, you can branch out to several choices. Do you want to fortify it and deny the enemy the opportunity to conquer it? Do you want to boost production some more by building Morale boosters? Or maybe turn it into a paradise? It's up to you to judge what to do with this colony. The initial queue is just there to prepare the colony for whatever you want to do with it. 

 9. MILITARY TACTICS                                                   

While missiles are good early on I found that they don't do much good in a large galaxy, therefore I need a good computer (Cybertronic) and a good beam weapon. Lasers with all the upgrades work great until you get the graviton beam <- disputably a better choice than planetary gravity generators or tractor beams (depending on whether you want to stay ahead of the opposition in weapons or just keep up. I only know what works against a computer opponent, who you can keep of your back with politics. This probably wouldn't keep you safe against a real human. But, if you really want to know what I do... I don't get the EMP Cannon. I want to make a ship that can bombard a planet, but that is only armed with heavy mount beam weapons, an ECM Jammer, and a few Pd beams to help against missiles and pick off fighters because the jammer won't get rid of them. So I need the graviton beam, which is great for bombarding and destroying ground based weapons. In an Average Difficulty game against the computer the game is over when I get the plasma cannon. Even with the 1.31 patch the plasma cannon does just about the most total damage except that a lot of that is lost to shields, but Antarans don't have shields if the other guy has class X planetary shields then you can use auto firing disrupters. I don't get the stellar converter because the time warp facilitator and the auto firing disrupter work so much better except possibly against the Alkari 
(they have inertial nullifiers on their ships). After getting the graviton beam I usually get zortrium armor and anti-matter drives or stock exchange and then those two. This strategy often works better when your empire is smaller and looks too weak to bother with, to the computer. So you only have contend with one or two races wanting your colonies while the rest are too busy elsewhere. I, also, always get the next best communications system because I can never get enough command points since I get the robo-miner plant... what's the point in having battle stations if you can't produce the industrial 
points to build it in any realistic amount of time. I like the pre-designed races because they are interestingly balanced. 
They make for more interesting games. The most interesting games are when I'm the Klackon, but I'm best with the humans (if you discount the Alkari and the Psilon, the Psilon are too easy to play with as soon as you get the Gravity Generator and playing the Alkari with the inertial stabilizer is practically cheating against the computer opponents, who seldom have very good aiming computers) because the humans are very productive in technology, and that bonus goes to conquered colonists. Of coarse, the diplomacy option is a waste in a game with human players unless there are a lot of computer opponents. I also do well with the Sakkra when there aren't any Antarans; and the Darlock are great. My only problem is that Humans and Sakkra lose their technologies to the opponents a lot but that isn't a problem when I can go back to an auto saved game. Of coarse they both make a lot of money (the Sakkra get it from population) to support (up to 63 ) spies. 

Essentially what I'm saying is (even though I can beat the computer on the average difficulty easily and on the hard and impossible difficulty when I'm falling back on auto saved games). I'd hate to play in a game with humans that can attack as soon as they see an advantage and know that 2x missile-ships in conjunction with an empty frigate is an extremely powerful combination.   

 10. GUARDIAN                                                       

The Guardian is a monster that attacks any fleet arriving at the Orion system. The player who kills it receives 4 technologies which are mostly inaccessible through conventional research (listed at the bottom), gets first dibs at a rather nice planet, and gets a free battleship, which if he played fast enough, should be able to whack the other opponents' fleets handily. Under some circumstances, a good player should be able to finish off all of the opponents before 
acquiring the ability to kill the Guardian, but usually, a Guardian-kill can be considered a win.

THE MINIMAL GUARDIAN FLEET

In this sense, the considerations for "minimal" are with respect to research and production time. This allows some deviation depending on your research/production situation. As it turns out, the Guardian can be killed with two frigates and two cruisers, and no research beyond fast missile racks, zortrium armor, and emissions guidance system.

First cruiser has: 

1 2-shot ECCM ARM FST merculites 
4 2-shot ARM merculites 
6 2-shot MIRV ECCM merculites 
battle pods 
fast missile racks 
reinforced hull

Second cruiser has: 

2 2-shot ARM merculites 
6 2-shot MIRV ECCM merculites 
1 2-shot MIRV ECCM EMG merculite 
battle pods 
fast missile racks 
reinforced hull

Frigates have: 
1 2-shot MIRV ECCM EMG merculite 
battle pods

How this works: On the first turn, the Guardian will fire on one of the cruisers with both death rays and target it with both of its torpedoes. Regardless of which cruiser is hit, the frigates should fire and move forward eight to ten spaces. The EMG cruiser should move forward one space, fire both racks of ARM missiles, then both racks of non-EMG, then both racks of EMG, and sit still. The other cruiser should move forward one space, fire the ARM then the MIRV missiles, move forward two more spaces, fire the ECCM ARM FST missiles, and sit still. The Guardian will react by moving forward, killing the wounded cruiser with one death ray, a frigate with another, and about seven of the ARM missiles with its Point defense particle beams. The remaining frigate should then move about 6 more spaces toward the Guardian, and fire its remaining missile. The Guardian will charge, trigger its spatial compressor on the ECCM ARM FST missiles, leaving the non-fast missiles unharmed, and continue to plow into the pile of missiles. The MIRV missiles will usually clear the shield, and most likely, the EMG will blow the engine. If you want to be sure about the kill, add another frigate into the mix and do the same. Given the appropriate race and universe conditions, such a fleet can be assembled and sent close to turn 100 in a pre-warp game. Several races can pull this off by turn 120. When I get around to updating my races page, I'll fill in the details. The Guardian-kill can obviously be done more quickly in an advanced game given the proper parameters. In particular, a subterranean creative race in a 2-player huge universe can often finish off the Guardian before turn 20.

Other Considerations:

If you have good scanner technology (i.e. Neutron), you should be able to clear the shields with fewer missiles, so if you're the gambling type, you can drop the frigates from the fleet and put another EMG missile into the second cruiser. If you have serious command point difficulties, you can kill the Guardian with a single kamikaze battleship with the following: 

2 2-shot ECCM ARM FST merculites 
4 2-shot ECCM ARM merculites 
11 2-shot MIRV ECCM merculites 
2 2-shot MIRV ECCM EMG merculites 
battle pods 
fast missile racks 
reinforced hull

Unfortunately, this fleet is strictly inferior to the cruiser fleet above in terms of probability of killing the Guardian for two reasons: only 4 MIRV ECCM EMG missiles are fired, and at least 4 warheads need to make it through the lightning field and ECM to blow the engine, and only 22 MIRV merculites are fired, so the shield might not be cleared. Without neutron scanner technology, your chances are slightly less than 50%. Furthermore, if you do decide to add some frigates to the mix, the Guardian will fire on those first, so you need at least three to make any kind of difference in outcome. In addition, this fleet will generally lose all of its ships, while the cruiser fleet will not. Of course, the cruiser fleet will be relatively out of date once Orion is taken, anyway. 

Loknar's Tech:

Damper field - Quarters all damage, but eliminates shields (Watch for EMG)
Xentronium armor - Very cool - 10x armor and structure, resistance to armor-piercing beams, +30 ground combat 
Death ray - Very cool - Good in general, unrivaled damage in EMG time frame 
Black hole generator - Implodes ships, but takes space
Particle beam - Cool - Ignores shields, kicks butt with fighter garrison 
Reflection field - Pretty cool - Random chance for a beam weapon return-to-sender 
Spatial compressor - Sort of Cool - whacks incoming missiles, fighters, and stupid ships 
Quantum detonator - Not so cool - Decent protection against capture 
Neutronium bomb - Not so cool - Ground Bombardment 

Players on Intel-compatible machines will receive death ray technology every time and three random techs, while Macintosh users will receive a random selection of four. In addition to the technology listed above, you can get some unannounced "freebie" techs which range from useless to insanely cool (I've received Sub Space Teleporter more than once).