A little help??

[CtrlAltDel]

Ok...so I've played a bunch of games, and I still don't get it. Let me rephrase...I've started a bunch of games...
I'm having a lot of difficulty doing well. I am I really lame or is this game hard to jump right into?
Are there any basic strategies that would help me out? What about game setup? Anything I should do to make the game easier for me?
Please help!!

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, what do you need help with?
IE. how do you lose?
Homeplanet getting killed early?
Overwhelming numbers?
Out teched?
Losing battles in Tactical combat?
Unable to build enough ships?
Stuck in one system?
Trouble with space objects (storms, blackholes)?
All of the above?

[Marty Ward]

Search the mod archive for the Dubious Strategy guide. It's a great starting point for learning the basics.

[Wolverine]

From my experience, the most important early game tactic is to isolate your home system from enemies as quick as possible. Scout the map and lay mines at any appropriate bottleneck warp points between you and your enemies.

From your shielded base of operations you can expand/conquer then repeat the process of mining bottlenecks.

This only works early on, until the AI builds up powerful Mine Sweepers, but given enough time to research tech and build up safely, any semi-competent human can outsmart the AI.