Yep, tough is as smart as it gets.

conquering settled planets of evil races, especially ones with capitals (to obtain the planetary bonuses these guys got from their evil ethical choices)

Now THAT is a sneaky tactic...

go all out evil in the beginning, take all the nifty planetary bonuses, then research xeno ethics, and choose your alignment. I've ended up with some VERY nice economic planets that way.

lol, thats exactly what I do. Unfortunatly, I only managed a 28% starship bonus this time. My big strategy is to go america style. I make sure I have the best economy, or at least one which I can accumulate a nice treasury from. I then buy out all the mining stations off each race. With all of them together, I become a massive super power. With a massive economy. I use the morale boosts to raise taxes and I reach fantastic incomes. I can they go and conquer neighbouring nations which are hostile. Then I become un-challenged because my economy is so good, I splash out on all the latest techs for my ships, refiting all of them and my militray rating tripples. I can also use the influence to gain some extra worlds until I decide to go back to a stable galaxy when i've had enough of cultural conquest. I've played to games on tough now, this is my second, the first was a bit volitile in places but the seconds been a breeze in the ocean. Going to take a look at those nice evil bonuses Razius talks about. I think I'll give them the technology so they can do it, then I will conquer them.

I'm playing on tough, I have a patch, whether thats 1.1 i'm not sure, i'll have to check. I can buy a mining station for 6000 if it's only the first level. When it's been upgraded it costs me much more. Though, beaware that I always go for the diplomatic upgrades, and went for full Demplomacy as my starting stats, and build the galactic wonders for it so I always have a massive diplomatic advantage. I think my starting Deplomacy was an 80% bonus. I try to buy the stations as early in the game as possibly, as later on I found that in my other game the Drengi were a pain to buy off. Think I ended up spending over 100 to get 3 bases. Though my treasury is at 2 million so I can afford what ever price they want, and I'm more than willing to give it too them. Most of my starbases arn't upgraded to the max, and quite a few are at the lowest upgrade level. Hope that helps. Price of the starbases though isn't really a problem. If they want to charge me 1 million for all their bases, they can have it lol.
Tell me more about this fleet, I have (for the first time) a good ethical allignment, what are these weapons you speak of? Also, my military at the moment is an exspenditure of 947 BC. I have an income of 22623 so thats pretty small but I manage to have a much more powerful military with a lower exspenditure than the other races. Whats your might rating like (rank would be useful). I like to keep a good rating so people won't attack me. Also, how many ships do you have?
I'm looking into the idea of a very small but very effective fleet. Oh and another thing, is there any way to tell what bonuses planets have, as the only way I know at the moment is by writing it down when it tells me, but there's going to be better worlds which I conquer with higher starship bonuses but at the moment, I don't know what worlds they are?

Cheers