In my experience, diplomatic vics are the hardest to accomplish, I always go for straight forward, apocalyptic nuclear mega death! In that case, diplomatic victories are easy to accomplish- you simply nuclear mega-death all but one race, and ally with that last race. 'Gratz, newbie!
Might also be worth checking out any nearby starbases. Even something so benign as an economy or mining starbase can greatly extend someone's sensor range. Teancum is right, though; when a ship disappears into the fog of war in a certain direction, it's entirely reasonable to send ships out in that direction to look for it.
I just remake my ship design lines from game to game. My needs change every game, as does the order that I research technology. Plus, it's good for role-playing purposes; with each game start, I like to play my civilizations from the ground up, so having new ship designs every time helps reinforce the idea that they're making it anew.
As the others have said, don't worry about looks. My early ships were rather ugly; you should have seen my Laser Nose series of fighters. Big honking laser cannon right in the middle of the bow... *sigh* The discovery of resizing was a great boon to me, as well as the discovery that intersecting components don't always look bad. Let's see if I ever figure out how to use the extension mods... Anyway. Don't feel bad about making a butt-ugly monstrosity of guns and engines. In battle scene
I've taken up the custom of a two-letter abbreviation of the ship type, a number representing which edition it is, and a random name that sounds fierce. This is all for military ships; economy ships like constructors just get 'Constructor Mk 2'. Example: I'm playing a game as the Terrans. My current fighter model is the 'HF (Heavy Fighter) 04 (4th design) Lancer, because it has missiles and lasers that make for a very lance-like appearance. My current capitol ships are the FR02 (2nd fri
