Addressing what I can, ignoring what I can't:



None are innately superior to the others. Mass drivers are the cheapest and do the least damage. Missiles are the most expensive and do the most damage. Beam weapons are between the two. So the manual tells me, at least.



I usually play on smaller maps than you do (Medium or Large), so my advice in this area is limited. Personally, I make a beeline for Impulse Drive, for that additional +1 speed, then get the essential diplomacy/infrastructure techs and then I move on to building a military (I play for Conquest victories). I would suspect, however, that with the extra time you have on the larger maps that you may be able to research more techs before moving to the military ones than I do (life support and extreme colonization techs come to mind as ones that could be more important in your games than mine).



You'll get better results by specializing each of your worlds and achieving balance only at the Empire-level. Have each planet be almost exclusively factories, or almost exclusively labs, or almost exclusively economy buildings. Many of the key buildings operate on a percentage system - +20% to industry, for example - and therefore they are most effective when applied to as big a base as possible. If all your worlds only have two factories, that base production is never going to be very high. But if you have a world with 8-10 factories and then stack a bonus on top of that, you get a lot more bang for your buck.

- Ash

Even dumb people can learn to play well. They need more time to learn to play well.

Lucky for you, I just updated my guide a few minutes ago (at time of writing this reply). The Terrans were among those updated.
TA 101

I would recommend you play Tiny, or other smaller maps on low difficulty. The reason is, if you are new to this game, it'll give you some time to learn the game mechanics, and if you are comming from DA, it will give you some time to adjust to the changes.



The stuff I do varies from game to game, but I'll provide some suggestions.

You should try to get "Universal Translator" early on, if for no other reason than knowing you can trade techs for cash.

Avoid techs that improves buildings early on. Those buildings ussually (Thalans are one such exception) cost more to maintain and take longer to build. However, you may wish to consider researching the first economic buildings tech because it provides +10% economic bonus, and the first morale buildings tech because it provides +15% morale.



I use my mining ship to do early scouting. My first concern is determing which stars have planets, and which of those have habitable planets.

Once I have a few planets under my control, I build a better scout ship to scan the universe with a magnifying glass. One of your nearby sectors might have a galactic resource hidden under a parsec of unexplored space.

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I'm assuming you are new to this game. As such, I'm going to suggest that you spend your points when setting up your civ on economics first, morale second, and whatever remains on population growth. Also, pick the Ferderalist party since it provides a large economic bonus. You can worry about trying something different once you understand the game better.

I usually get 1 morale building as quickly as possible. I also tend to leave my taxes at whatever level is necessary to get 100% morale until I'm broke. I figure it works out kinda like this:

49% taxes in early game gets me 10 credits
29% taxes in early game gets me 6 credits


49% taxes in mid-game with double the population growth up until now gets me 500 credits
49% taxes in mid-game with normal population growth because I've been taxing the hell outta my people the whole time gets me 250 credits

It doesn't take too many mid-game turns until I catch up.

Regarding starports: Build them only where you have the production to use them, unless you need a quick ship. (for those "Where the hell did HE come from?!" moments) A 2 factory world with a starport isn't doing anything with it. A 10 factory world can crank stuff out.

Most of my planets cap at 8 billion people. If I build a farm, it's because this planet is an economy planet. A 125% increase in taxes from my economy buildings looks much nicer from a planet with 16 billion people than 8 billion, even if they need 2-3 morale structures to support them. Under NO circumstances should you exceed 18 billion.

I would turn minor races on, and go for 8 of them. They are excellent trading partners, and you can take them over mid-game and get a really nice planet for it.



I would drop the population and research bonuses and go for max Morale and +10% each to military and social production.



100% production is a good idea, but 60% in military early on is not a good idea, especially on the larger maps. With the large, gigantic, and immense maps the colonization rush is WAY less important than on the smaller maps. A good human player can take out an AI empire twice the size of his own as long as he can maintain a one-front war and has a tech and income lead due to smart early choices. So don't rush the military while hamstringing your internal growth. Instead focus on Social growth early on along with some research. Once you have a solid home planet colonize like mad.
Personally I do 1% military, 99% social, and 0 research, then I "Focus" on research on all planets, occasionally turning research up to 99% to "rush research" a specific tech I need immediately.



I used to try to develop planets like this. It doesn't work very well because your factory production is always to slow. Instead I suggest putting factories on all but two of the starting free squares on your home planet. Put morale on one of the remaining squares, and an economic or research on the other.

Future planets should be focused into economy, production, or research. Regardless of the focus plan all of them should start with one or two production and a morale. Economy and production planets should have two or one farms (respectively) as well. If you are trying the 1/99/0 strategy though then only build research on +300% or +700% research locations as your industry planets are the real source of your research.



I actually don't recommend colonizing mars on big maps. Let the AI take it and then you can flip it right back. Do this with most 4 star planets near larger planets you already have owned for a while... Unless you have nothing better to colonize, then take them.
Also, NEVER build starports first. On all planets factories are built first, however many you plan to have, then morale and farms and research, and anything else you are building. Then at the very end you build your Starport. Why? Because a new planet has low income (because of low population), and just paying maintenance and social production is expensive enough. If you are actually building ships as well you are going to be spending too much which will ultimately slow your expansion. Indeed, you would be better off building nothing at all for quite a while on many new planets, especially non-production planets. For instance, if you set down on a PQ9 planet and immediately start building one industry, one morale, two farms, and four banks what will happen? You will be paying a ton of maintenance on these structures as they get built, far more maintenance and production costs than the planets low population can pay for. Even when you are done building the population will likely not be close to sufficient to pay the maintenance, even with the economic buildings. Instead (in the early game), wait about 30 turns, then start building. Your planet will already be positive when you start building, and will be about even when you finish, but then it will grow rapidly from there.



With the focus on industry on your home planet this should be down to about 4 weeks, which is going to help your colony rush a whole lot.



Early on grab a couple speed upgrades and/or miniaturization, whatever it takes to get a 4 speed or maybe even 5 speed colony ship. Get a range increase as well. Then grab econ, social production, and military production. Work communications in there as well to start talking to other species. At this point on really high difficulties you will be getting war threats, so go straight to military techs and production now. Otherwise, grab an industry tech and upgrade your production facilities before doing military stuff.



Already answered.



Use your survey ship only to scout anomalies. If you want to scout the area, use your miner... Although you could also commute your miner to a colony ship, pick up a load of people right away, and scout/colonize with it. Some people mine the immediate area first, then do this for the small production benefit.



You have my thoughts on all this already.