Not looking to cheese my way to victory, in fact I'm probably the last person to do that (if any of you play LoL, I mained Aatrox to get to daimond, that's how off meta I am :P )  But I remember I played one online game a while back before the newest update and I was Vodyani against these two other guys one of which was playing the Sophons, and I delcared war on him (as I should do) and I didn't get to invade very far with my big ships before I got rofl stomped by his spam of his basic fighters filled to the brim with beams (this is when they still did the most damage of all modules, and were 50% at medium and 100% at short) and that was all he would build, this also has to do with shields being really weak then but it really grinded my gears that it actually smashed everything I have.

So with that bit of backstory I'm just looking to prepare myself when I jump into online all day tomorrow so I can play with the peeps who are playing for free :)

quick rundown:

slugs and missiles are worthless, only use your current military research tier white laser/beam

the new 5 speed engines are really good, put 2 of those on your hunters

(almost) never research more techs from a tier than is necessary to unlock next tier

Shields for some reason, deflect even slugs, and missiles. Slugs having hard time hitting thing, then get stop by shields, then stop again by armor. Missiles is in the same seat but Slugs eat them alive. This is the era of energy weapons.