You have asked some very good questions about this excellent game, which I cannot presume to answer because I'm barely out of the Newby stage myself. But I do have some comments you might find helpful.

The available game options as to size and makeup of the galaxy, yourself and your opponents make the game so variable that strategy tips have to be in generalities unless you specify which options have been selected. There are four victory conditions and the game options allow you to eliminate anywhere from none to three of them...thereby totally changing the winning strategy. For any given game options, the experts here can tell you the strategy to win that particular game, but that same strategy will not work for another game with different options. I think this is more true for Dark Avatar than for any of the civilzations games that have gone before. After playing a few trial games to learn the mechanics and principles of the game, I'm now on the downhill side of winning a game at the Normal level and I can see a couple of broad general principles that must apply to any game in the Dark Avatar framework.

The most basic key to any DA game is population growth. DA is heavily weighted toward good management of your economy. The sliders that control your approval, taxes and spending control the percentage of your research and military production that you can actually get from your colonies. More population means more tax revenues. More tax revenues means more available spending and a higher percentage of your research and military production capabilities put into use. Simple as that. (In a game my strongest colony had a military production of 141 shields at 100% spending and could kick out a warship every few turns. I got into financial trouble and had to adjust the spending slider. The colony's military production capacity dropped to 33 shields.) The conclusion is that you must give enough attention to increasing your population growth by keeping your approval rate above 50%, by building farms to increase the population caps on your colonies, and later by building fertility clinics, to speed up your population growth and thereby gain tax revenues to offset the costs of maintenance of your productive facilities and ships.

The second conclusion is that later in the game when you add new colonies by conquest or colonizing uninhabitable planets, which will usually have negative cash flow when you first acquire them, you need to do whatever you can to make each colony at least break even. Otherwise they will drag your economy down and make you adjust the sliders.

A more subtle effect of population growth is that under the rules of DA, the best defense for your colonies is more population. In a game, as the war against the strongest alien went on, I noticed two things: One, there was no way I could possibly have enough ships orbiting every one of my planets to defend against even a moderately strong fleet attack by the alien. Second, when I considered which one of the alien's planets to invade, I had to stick to the ones with only 6 population...to invade a planet with a higher population would take too many transports to have enough troops to win the ground battle. Putting the two together, the easiest and best way to make it difficult for an alien to capture one of your colonies is to get its population up hgiher than the basic 6, the higher the better. A higher population cap and population growth at a colony means not only more tax collections but stronger defense. What more could you ask?

Another general thing about DA is that you need to take the building of starbases, and space mining seriouly. You need all the revenues you can get from any source and these are good ones. You can automate space miners and survey ships. If you build your trade routes from colonies that are close enough together, modules on an economy starbase within 8 pc will multiply not only the colonies' production but also the trade revenues. (Also, it seems that modules on military starbases can significantly increase the strength of ships built on colonies within the 8 pc range. The manual doesn't give any details on this, but I noticed that a one of my new warships built near a military starbase had much higher points of attack and defense than its design rating...I assume this was the effect of the starbase.)

Another generality is that because of the multiplying effect of the higher levels of procuction and research facilities, you gain by making each colony a specialist in either research or production rather than having all colonies balanced. Do the math. I if you have two colonies at 15 research and 15 production and build an upgrade like manufacturing capital or invention matrix you are only multipling 15. If one has 30 research and the other 30 manufacturing you are multiplying 30. Twice the effect.

A small matter, but one that has been a help since I figured it out, is that when you trade techs with an alien, when you have it green and just before you send the deal, click on his money button and see how much cash he will add to the deal...I've picked up surprising amounts of cash this way. I try to do as much of my trading with the minor races as possible so as to not strengthen potential enemies' techs, and have picked up some much needed cash times by selling obsolete techs outright to the minor races...but I am careful to not sell one I woudn't want to fall into the hands of potential enemies because the minor race might trade it to them.

I'm not really good at this game, I struggle to win, but these are things that seem to be dependable. Hope this is a help.

I have found that I need very few research labs to remain technologically competitive, and a mere 2-4 planets devoted to research will eventually push me to the top (gigantic galaxy, average amount of habitable planets, normal research rate, tough AI, neutral alignment). I do trade a lot of technology though; if you have that turned off you will likely need more labs.

For the initial colony rush, I pretty much operate from my homeworld alone. I build four factories, and fill the rest with econ/morale. When the option is available I overbuild one tile with diplomatic translators. As for my other colonies though, I begin building a factory once I arrive but it takes a while to finish (which is the point; don't want to destroy my economy), so my homeworld bears all the manufacturing responsibility for this phase of the game.

I research Impulse drive right away, and build a custom colony ship with one module and an engine (speed is key in gigantic maps). Then galactic warfare and space militarization for the production bonus. Then I just get the easy, quick techs for trading, though I will mention that Stellar cartography is very useful and you can avoid having to build scouts if you can already see where the planet clusters are.

My final piece of advise is if you spot a mining resource (not the asteroids) immediately switch your starport to build a constructor and claim it right away; they can be more valuable than planets eventually.

1) when I start the game up which race is a good 'beginner' one to use, I generally like to colonise like a demon, and not worry so much about defense so my 10 pts are usually planet quality lvl 1 and speed lvl 1 and then 2 pts of filler...if there is a better plan please let me know...-btw my party is the one with the +20 economy

I'm playing DL, but the basics are the same. Ignore the PQ and Speed bonuses. I spend all of my points on +30% economy (more money from your tax base), +max% on morale (able to charge higher tax rate), and the rest on Soldiering if I am going to play for a Military Victory or Research for a Tech Victory. I take the Industrialist (+20% Military and Civilian production).

2)what is a good build order for my homeworld, I've been going with 1 factory then a research lab 2 factories, research lab, economy center...
2A)and for the little class 4-6 planets, should I just devote them to research?

I always rush build my first factory, que up 2 more factories, then farm, morale, & econ buildings. At that point, I stop building on my home world and save the spaces for Trade Goods or Gal Achievements.

3) money, and how do I keep from running out of it I only rush build 2 things in the beginning of the game, the first factory and my first colony ship...but I still start running out of cash rather quickly... what should I do?

Money is never a problem if you keep an eye on your cash flow, reset your sliders accordingly, and ALWAYS research the next level of econ tech BEFORE you research and upgrade your factories and labs. I have had WAY too many close calls cash-wise because I captured an enemy world and stole a higher level factory or lab tech than I was prepared for. If this happens, all you can do is crash-research the next econ tech, then adjust each worlds build que to finish the new econ buildings first.

4) ship design, is there a way to have the computer auto build designs as new hulls come out or do I always have to do it from the ground up

NO, you have to do it yourself. The few pre-designed ships are worthless. Always think about the next generation of weapon, defense, engine, and miniaturization before commiting yourself to a major design overhaul. I know many players will redesign with each new level of tech, but that is just a waste of time and effort in my opinion.

5)Research, what should I be going for in the early (and by the way when am I out of the early game lol) stages, and what should I go for as far as weapons go to be able to defend myself early, but wont be wasted research later (if that makes any sense whatsoever...

Impulse, Galactic Warfare, Space Militarization, Planetary Improvements, Impulse 2, Ion, Ion 2, then the path to basic miniaturization - this has always worked for me - by the time I have this list done, I have colony ships with 7 - 11 movement while the AI is still using colony ships with 3. That usually gives me the edge in grabbing the high PQ worlds, leaving the crappy worlds for the AI or for my follow up waves towards the end of colonization rush. PS, always stop colonizing when there are 10 - 15 worlds left. That gives you 6 months or more game time to consolidate and complete construction on your worlds while the AI's try to outdo each other for the last few worlds.


GOOD LUCK,

Dax

The only way to alter production by planet is to use the "focus". When looking at a planet look at the top where it shows military, social, and research. Somewhere in the boxes (I think the top-right corner) is a little icon. Clicking it will slightly increase production in that area while slightly decreasing production in the other areas. Personally, I rarely use this feature; only if I am racing another civ for a trade good or something that I can't buy outright will I focus the social production for a while. However, there is actually a very powerful strategy that involves micromanaging the focus feature, and by doing so a person need only build labs OR factories, not both. I don't know much more than that though, search the forums if you like.

Go into the shipyard, create a new cargo hull, and then go to the 'Module' tab (the last tab on the top left). There should be a Colony module that you can add to ships. Each colony module allows 500 million colonists to be transported on that ship. When you research Trade, you will also find the trade module in the same tab; put this on a ship to make it a trader.

It's usually not a good idea to colonize a planet of PQ <5 in the first place; send your colony transports to find a better planet. If you do have these planets, I would put either econ or research. Don't bother trying to make a ship building planet there though.