Personally I've done this with my initial funds and its worked well so far... give me any feedback you like:
Just buy the initial factory on all new planets
Save all my money.. this allows me to crank up my industrial capacity usage up to 95%+ and if I take a loss of a few BC's each week its not a huge deal.
Make tons and tons of ships.. many of them just hulls with engines untill I get weapon tech's and some defense and planetary invasion (make mostly small hulls and cargo hulls)
Upon completion of said weapon techs + invasion I go and design my ships (troop ship and fighters) and upgrade my entire fleet (usually costs me around 3.5K BC)
Then I zerg the closest planets till I run out off troop transports, use the rest of my cash to do Information Warfare
By the end of my zerg I've usally got about 3-5 captured planets and my military has gone from 0 in one quarterly report to about 150-250 the next.
Any advice/feedback and even constructive criticism of my idea plz foward it on to me.
Any better ideas.... then DEFINATLY forward them on
Cykophrog
His Imperial Majesty the Lord High Ruler of the Terran Hegemony