Don't use the core ships. Design your own. Otherwise the AI will slauhter you on any sort of decent settings.

You don't have to make them pretty, but by fitting all the best weapons etc. they will be far better than the core versions.

Core ships are really great


...for decorating your wastebasket.

Since about my third game I have not built a single core ship, and as soon as there is no more exploration to do that "flagship" is recycled for scrap.

Here are a few general recommendations for one method of starting out, you may decide this is not your style but it's one way that I've used successfully:

Optional: Making sure you have Stellar Cartography as a starting technology pick will help this strategy quite a bit, especially if your settings for habitable planets and planets per star are on the rare side.

1. Crank your taxes down to zero, expenditures up to 100%, and set your research slider to 100%. You may have to deliberately set your military and social to zero to get research all the way to 100%. Don't worry, this won't stay this way for very long, but you don't need any military or social spending just yet.

2. Go into the ship designer and select a cargo hull. Attach one colony module and one engine (you should only have one at present), then as many Basic Life Support as you can fit (I believe I can usually fit 2, but I've ben playing Apolyton CTP for the last week or so).

3. Set your home planet to building one of these, and then immediately buy it. Also buy a Basic Factory, prefferably on a production-bonus square. (This is why military and social spending are set to zero, they would be wasted)

4. Send your Flagship off to search for anomalies, or explore the uncharted regions of space, the final frontier...

5. Send the slow starting colony ship to a nice nearby star, you don't need to colonize the low-PQ planet that's in your starting system, save it for later or let someone else colonize it, it will flip to your culture soon enough. If you chose Stellar Cartography you can see which stars have planets (though habitability is not guaranteed).

6. Run one turn and collect your new, faster, longer-range colony ship. Send it to a star with planets, prefferably one near the edge of another race's territory, to snag their nearby planets first. You should have plenty of time to worry about planets that you can reach and they can't later, and this strategy will hopefully rob them of the chance to get their closest potential colonies established. Remember, noone can invade planets until they research Planetary Invasion. This will also protect you for a good while, as you don't need any ships in orbit to defend planets - they can only attack ships, not colonies, yet.

7. Buy another of your custom colony ship, then if you bought your first basic factory on a production-bonus square, buy a Market, otherwise buy another basic factory. Run another turn, and send the new ship off.

8. Buy a third colony ship. You don't need to buy any more planetary facilities now, but if you can afford it, go ahead. What you mostly need rigth now is production, so lean towards that. My normal order for all planets (without bonus squares) is factory, factory, factory, market, entertainment, research. I often add a single basic farm but never on a farming bonus square, as that will cause big morale problems later on.

9. With any luck, your flagship has found some cash anomalies, and you can coast on that cash. You don't need to buy anything more, but if you happen to have a lot of extra cash (over 2500BC) it's not a bad idea.

When your cash gets low (under 1000BC), it's time to go to your economy settings again. Try to keep overall expenditures at 100%, but you may not be able to do this consistently. I personally set Research to 60% and Military and Social both to 20%, but it's not the only method and may not be the best for you. Crank up the taxes until your cash flow is positive, or at least not too deeply negative, but try to keep the morale of your planets from going red.

Depending on the number of habitable planets likely in your galaxy ( a tiny galaxy with rare stars, rare planets and rare habitable planets won't have even enough for those 3 colony ships to be used, in which case you should spend your money on building your planet(s) up ), continue building (but not buying) colony ships as you see fit.

From here on, there are many ways to go, but as I am not particularly warlike I recommend researching Trade as soon as possible and sending a trade ship to each rave. Races who have something to lose (trade income) by attacking you will be less likely to attack you. Fast ships (research engine techs) and long-range ships (research basic logistics to get to the life support track) will give you the best chance of setting up trade with everyone quickly.

After that, I tend to build a lot of constructors. My race of cute, squirrel-like critters is, in fact, a vicious influence engine, much like Poke-Mon, and I have successfully managed to culture flip all 9 races' homeworlds without getting attacked in one game on Normal.

i started without bying game online i do not no what to do

To get yourself prepared, play one game where you do pretty much nothing but research the hull line, and preset yourself a set of hulls from Tiny to Huge. I personally don't waste time on Tiny, but the rest make NICE stepping stones to build a fleet with by the time the colony rush is over.

That way a ship immediately ready for upgrade is available the moment the tech hits, and you can roll out with your best weapons without needing to wait for the preset ships to catch up. It takes a lot of pressure off the player not having to go down all the odd tech paths to pick up the needed keys to unlock preset ship designs.

There's been times where I've unlocked large hulls with fairly low tech when I'm surrounded by a lot of aggressive AIs and need something to make a stand.

Rule of thumb

Never, ever, under any circumstances, under threat of torture or even certain death, (Because that is what will happen anyway if you do) Build core ships. They are just plain dumb and a waste of good material.

However, I do like to take the core ship design and upgrade with what I want to put on them, keeping the already existing jewelry. I like it anyway.

I just read my earlier post and realized how idiotic it truly sounded....

"Ohhh... the core ships suck, they are worthless, do not use them, they are a waste of good material, blah blah blah...... oh and by the way... I like using the core ship designs." (I said this because I like playing the game, not taking time to make cool ship designs.)

This has to be a first... I am flaming myself. Anyone ever see that before?

Anyhow....

I build core ships and sell them to warring races

my defense forces are much better gunned than the crap I sold them and let them build their army around.

This is the best use for the core ships I have seen thus far. Seems they do have some value after all.

thats a gd idea, a quick way of making money if you need it, i too have trouble designing ships that are capable of beating the AI.

1. Crank your taxes down to zero, expenditures up to 100%, and set your research slider to 100%. You may have to deliberately set your military and social to zero to get research all the way to 100%. Don't worry, this won't stay this way for very long, but you don't need any military or social spending just yet.

You only need to lower your taxes to the point where your morale is 100% on all your planets for the maximum bonus from high morale.
Effects of Morale

I don't waste money on buying colony ships. I find buying factories on titles with a manufactory bonus provides better value. Before long I am building a fast colony ship on my home world every 2 turns, even with military spending at around 40%.

To stay ahead in the tech race with the AIs at the top 3 difficult levels you must be agressively tech trading. So my first goal is getting the Universal Translator, if I don't start the game with that tech. Techs that boost your diplomacy are very important to tech trading; never trade these to the AIs! Tech trading will also help keep you from going broke, along with a couple of fast survey ships so that you find the money anomalies before the AIs! Early techs that boost your production like Planetary Improvements are also important.

thats a gd idea, a quick way of making money if you need it, i too have trouble designing ships that are capable of beating the AI.

You don't design ships to beat the AI, you design ships to fool the AI. Never use ships to beat the AI except the ones you upgrade just before going into battle hehehe. This tacktic works fantastically.