Make sure that the strategies for your ships are appropriate to their roles, which can be set in the ship design window. Boarding sihps need Capture Ships, troop transports need Capture Enemy Planet. Also, it is generally a good idea to modify all strategies to have all ship types "Break Formation." Staying in formation overrides individual ship strategies, and overall degrades fleet performance by moving ships out of range to fire their weapons. Strategies are accessible from Empire Options (crown icon) > Strategies.
Make sure to use
TDM modpack to play against the best AI available.
1. Other than not being able to warp-what is the down side of fighters? They seem perfect-can move where needed in the sector, wait at a warp point, avoid almost all weapons early then can ship out with carriers as needed in later game.
They tend to get chewed up by good PDC (mainly from TDM AIs and human opponents; stock AIs don't use enough PDC).
3. Anyone else use my "self-discovered" BORG style and have any other suggestions for me? (I love not researching missles or shields at all and capturing the technology to use on my "fire-drawing" ships.)
Wow behold the borg that runs up against ships with self destruct devices! Most human players and TDM AIs will use them after a while.
4. Any "newer" suggestions /guides that aren't several years old-refering to obsolete systems?
Most of the guides are still relevant, since the stock game has not changed much in terms of its data set in the past few years. Other than changing the ionic dispersers to not skip shields in 1.67, it's been pretty stable since Gold 1.60 came out.
6. Is there a way to have my fighters automaticly become "airborne" and fly to a waypoint? The constant management of cargo space on every planet gets grueling!
In a simultaneous game, you can order your planet to launch fighters, then hit repeat orders button (k hotkey). You can't do this in sequential mode, due to fighters being launched instantly there.
7. In a few threads some people mentioned that they could place orders at a planet to build a yard-then a ship (before it was built) could someone explain to me how please?
This is not possible. You can not add a ship to a queue if there is no SY on the planet. You can not use a fill queue to build ships at a planet without a SY. They will be added to the queue, but removed when you process the turn. Maybe in an earlier version they were not removed, but they are in Deluxe and Gold 1.91. If you scarp a SY, any ships in the queue are removed.
8. I have found in a tactics battle I can determine the speed and range of my opponents weapons--I plan to be "just out of range after he moves - then I rush foward and get the first shot - which greatly improves my successes- is there any method in "stratigic" that allows this method of "holding back" for the "right time to move" or am I unable to?
Not really. The best you can do is use Maximum Range strategy, maybe tweak the firing priorities a little. But you will never get the same kind of dancing you can get with tactical combat under manual control.
9. Are there tornements? I read something about a "Universe Tornement" (I think it was) but didn't search it yet-
There have been a number of them, but most (or all) have ended. I don't recall if King of the Hill is still going or not.
10. Is it EVER profitable to have a ship (I have tried several sizes) mine astroids for metals???
Use bigger ships and more miners on the ship.
Bases make great miners, since they are big and they get 50% maint. reduction.
11. Do "miners" need a space port in the sector to "feed the supplies" to the empire or is it just "done" by design or lack of thought in the matter?
By sector, I assume you mean system, since a sector is one square and spaceports work for the entire system. No, RM needs no spaceport or supplies. Supplies will be eaten up, but the resources will continue being produced once ship supplies hit 0. I don't think there was any lack of thought on the matter; how could you mine a system with a ring of asteroids around a dead star, but no planets at all, if you need a spaceport in the system?