If you missed it, first check out Scott's updated guide:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10151&t=380441
His guide covers more of the basics for new players and his preferences, while this guide aims to maximize. It would be a shame not to benefit from all his work!

Resource Ownership
All resources in the empire belong to the state. Civilians mine and transport these resources, but do not profit from them directly. When a foreign empire, independent, or pirate buys any resources, the money goes directly to the state. Similarly, when independent or empire civilians buy a ship, they pay the value of the ship to the State. When the state buys a ship, the State pays the full credit cost, and those credits are removed from the game.

Credits
Almost all credits in the game come from civilians. They generate revenue while living in a colony. On Hard and up, your empire will have less revenue than the others, given an equal start. For many empires, it is the prime source of income.
Revenue = Population * Development
Raise population through migration and growth. Growth rate has a base from race, the change from happiness caps at 30 happiness, Growth funding increases growth up to 100%, and some luxury resources directly raise growth. Leader skill and empire modifiers apply.
Base Development is proportional to population, up to 50% at 5 billion people. Luxury resources and facilities determine the rest of development. Development bonuses gets diminishing returns at 120% and soft caps at 150%.

Cashflow includes one-time expenses but not income, poorly reflecting economic health.

Taxes
Automation aims to maximize your Tax Income safely. With default settings, it does a good job. Your colony runs the risk of rebellion at about -15 happiness. At +5, no single event will suddenly cause a colony to rebel. Manually controlling tax at the capital in the early game, you can instead maximize growth with a target of 30 Happiness and full Growth funding or allow civilians to save some money with 0 tax so they can afford a mining base or ships. Later, you can use it at other colonies to force a rebellion to raise assimilation by 30% or to cede control of a colony you can't afford (you can now cede control of a colony without a rebellion).

Aside from raising Revenue, getting more Happiness is the next best way to raise Tax Income. Multipliers do very little as they go off the colony's final Happiness value before applying. A +100% bonus to Happiness equals +4 for a colony that would normally have +4. You need flat bonuses:

• Recreation and Medical facilities, from +6 to +10 at high tech, multiple do not stack. Can be from any orbiting station aside from mining.
  
• High-quality environments, up to +30 without cheating
  
• High development provides a large bonus to Happiness
  
• Reputation caps somewhere around ±10
  
• Anything to reduce corruption indirectly improves Happiness

Corruption
This represents an absolute loss of credits. As the Galactopedia suggests, you can minimize Corruption with leadership skill, government type, and the administration facility. Distance from the capital raises corruption, so if your empire becomes large, either develop the Galactic Administration Megalopolis endgame tech or pick a more central capital. You can reduce taxes to decrease Corruption as well, as you can acquire Private Cash through other means, but generally, the lost credits to corruption are worth having high taxes.

Expenses: Maintenance in Funding Levels

No matter the empire's condition, maintenance costs are always paid. Not allocating enough from taxes to maintenance does not impact how much is spent on it!

I encourage manual control of Funding Levels, even if largely operating under automation. With automated construction, the AI will freely build until the specified maintenance amount is reached while heeding other considerations. Be sure to keep Ship and Troop maintenance sufficient- or the automation will scrap/disband units! Likewise for Facilities if construction is automated.

The maintenance costs of a ship are determined when a ship is released from construction. So, if you gain a leader with substantial maintenance skills or build a shipyard (not a starport), retrofit your ships to update their maintenance costs.

Excess Funding
As much as possible, try to have state Maintenance costs low enough to allow Colony Tax to provide funds for growth. Fully funding Growth doubles population growth across the empire. This has the greatest impact when you do not have any colonies at MAX population. During the early stage of the game, it is the best investment you can make. It is still a solid investment throughout the game, as the civilians will make only so many passenger ships for migration and tourism.

Without research funding, you only get half the output from Research Labs. And by comparison, Crash Research costs about 190 credits per research point. Until the empire has started to fill in its boots, this potential from funding is a huge chunk of its research output yet remains a valuable expense throughout the game. You can check how much research Excess funding can provide here:
Maximizing Growth and Research is considered to be vital to success for most empires.

If you want to prioritize Excess funding, drop Reserved to 0%, adjusting only the Excess proportion for Growth and Research as you need. Manual control of Funding Levels is one of the easiest parts of the game. The Maintenance values can be left where they are with manual construction. If you wish to keep Funding automated, simply monitor your Maintenance and keep your cashflow green as much as possible. If you wish to keep ship construction automated without tanking your Excess funding, allocate most of your funds to Troop and/or Facility maintenance.

In most normal games, maximizing both while grabbing every research base, you can propel your empire to have the most research and be competitive with the fastest-growing empires on Normal difficulty without winning any wars.

Always have Excess funding?
In certain circumstances, keeping Maintenance low to provide Excess funding is undesirable. With a large Bonus Income and modest to low Colony Tax, you should use the money to maximize the empire's progress through diplomacy or force (like a Boskara should). If you expect war with a credible threat, preparing a larger army for the short-term need to defend yourself would be wise- don't wait until the war is upon you. If your bonus income is large enough, a wave of terraforming at your larger colonies (by diameter) and low suitability (especially sub-20) is a great investment to make your future Colony Tax much larger.

What about pirate protection agreements?
Early on, generally pay the pirates- otherwise, it will hurt more, be it in early ship production, raid losses, or both. Get armor and shield tech before dropping protection and challenging them- capture is a big bonus. 4-5 escorts in a fleet should be good enough for most pirates, though you may suffer a raid or two. The Clan of Superiority is the one you must pay for a while- they're too strong to fight. Tell your ships not to fire back if they show up and won't accept a protection agreement. Accept the losses and wait for them to become more amiable, or gift them money before raids, then pay them to leave.

Tip: You can negotiate free information- like locations and contacts- as gifts equally valuable as credits. 25k worth of information is roughly +10 relations, just like credits. You can use this to push to a NAP at about +12 standing!

Resource management is the lifeblood of any thriving empire- carefully choosing which resources to prioritize can make or break your empire. With 16 strategic resources available, identifying the most crucial ones is essential. Know when and where you need these indispensable assets. A glance at the information in the Resources tab and the stock at your capital will allow you to enhance your empire's capabilities greatly. Periodically, you should check up on how your empire is handling itself.

Quickly identifying resource needs
Following the advice of automation or largely leaving it to it will suffice for most empires. Whether or not you use automation, the first place you should look is at your capital's Resources & Stock Levels by clicking on "Resource Shortages".

Your capital is the highest priority for resources. It is not a coincidence that it is where you build the largest fleets from one location. All other colonies and stations only overstock a little past the Maintain target amount. When your colonies and stations are satisfied, all shipments go directly to your Capital. It is the warehouse of your empire. By checking what your capital is short on, you effectively understand what your empire needs.

Compared to the Resources tab that says the empire only has a modest production shortage and 24k in stock, the lack of Caslon at the capital is far more telling of the needs of the empire. As shown in the above image, Argon and Cuprica are fully stocked, Aculon far exceeds the target, and Carbonite and Dyrillium only exceed the target by a relatively small amount. With that snip, its clear that this empire needs to address Caslon immediately and look for more Carbonite and Dyrillium.

Quickly fixing a shortage
To address the Caslon shortage, use the filter under New Mining Locations. Sorted by Priority or Proximity, check each candidate from the top down - remember you must clear threats (the red lightning bolt) and be mindful of the location, looking on the galaxy map for the pings. If you find locations that satisfy your needs, order the base and let your construction ships automatically handle the rest. Assuming you have enough construction ships up for the task. See Caslon section for more about that resource.

Production Shortage
If the empire's estimated use of a resource is higher than its production, the dotted red border highlights the resource. This is a vague indication that you'll need more, but it's not always accurate. For example, your mining ships are excellent tools to gather Aculon, and their contribution is not accounted for in production. Conversely, luxury resources are a higher priority than the use vs. production implies- the more spread out the mines for luxury resources are, the better. Check the proximity of similar luxury resources when looking at a new mining base. If a colony near doesn't have an existing supply within a sector (100M radius) of what you're looking at, build it.
To get an idea of how big a sector is, check the dashed orange circle on the galaxy map of a ship with a Warp Bubble Generator hyperdrive. That is its 120M jump range. That circle is roughly the size of a sector.

Construction Ship's Automation
While full automatic control usually suffices, you should be mindful of how many ships are available to construct bases. In the early-mid game, you'll need a handful of constructors restoring disabled and derelict ships, at least one reserved for research bases to claim any potential research locations you find. Check the Abandoned Ships and Bases tab under Exploration to know how many you need for restoration. The Construction Ships under Ship Construction helps identify if you need more construction ships to build mining bases. This is important; whoever builds the base has the claim on resources, and taking bases from them will cost reputation or money.

Most resources are gathered at mining bases and colonies. When a freighter is ready for a new order, it checks for locations with stock levels exceeding their target "Maintain" amount. The freighter reserves an appropriate amount, depending on the availability of resources at the station/colony. When the freighter arrives, it picks up only what it reserved when the order was made. Once all nearby locations are satisfied, further shipments are sent to the Capital.

Freighters prioritize resources in high demand, resulting in smaller and more frequent shipments from high-demand sources. Note that when a resource is in high demand, shipment sizes may be adjusted based on the recipient's needs, and large demands are not prioritized over small ones. Freighters will reserve resources from locations with On Hand amounts above the Maintain level. However, this is not a hard rule, and multiple freighters can reserve simultaneously, each taking an equal, reduced amount from the station. Fuel ships and refueling are not subject to this process.

In some cases, freighters will seek bulk orders for specific locations, such as new colonies and spaceports that have recently built something significant. This applies to all resources, including Caslon for colonies and bases. To fulfill these orders, freighters still only draw from locations with excess resources, primarily your capital colony. This makes your capital the main warehouse of your empire. These bulk shipments justify using larger freighters that can easily fill their cargo capacity in this use. Be sure to protect your new colonies, as those initial shipments can be a costly loss!

Maximum Stock
When a location reaches its maximum storage capacity, it will no longer accept additional shipments of a specific resource. Each colony's maximum storage is proportional to its population, and each resource has its own separate storage. For instance, the amount of Hexodorium stored does not affect the storage capacity for Steel in the same colony. A station orbiting a colony, excluding asteroid mining bases, shares the colony's storage capacity. Although the station adds to the total capacity, its contribution is relatively small compared to the colony's storage. The capital, however, benefits from a significantly larger storage capacity.

Stations have an absolute maximum capacity, which considers the combined total of all resources. Mining bases automatically set invisible limits for each resource proportionate to the empire's needs, both globally and locally. For example, a Caslon/Krypton mine in a sector with only one fuel base will reserve most of its space for Caslon, especially if another Krypton mine is nearby. This allocation ensures that the mining base meets the specific resource demands of its surrounding area.

A spaceport facilitates more efficient resource transfer than planetside facilities can. However, the demand for more resources might not be the best thing for your empire.

Stock Levels at Colonies and Bases
Managing On Hand and Maintain resource stock levels at colonies can be challenging, as they are subject to the fluctuations caused by freighters delivering and taking excess resources. These levels require constant adjustments according to the proximity and availability of resources and their comparative demand in relation to nearby colonies. Automation handles this effectively. However, if you're experiencing shortages, manually controlling demand temporarily can help your empire consolidate its resource needs. A few well-stocked colonies are preferable to numerous colonies with sporadic shortages.

Spaceports
Spaceports offer immense value by providing research, boosting colony happiness, enabling quick loading and unloading of resources at their docks, constructing ships, and serving as defense fortresses, including enhancing ground defense. With a spaceport at every colony, you can maximize research output and facilitate large-scale state and civilian fleet retrofitting. Although the AI doesn't build a spaceport at every colony, doing so isn't without benefits.

Be aware that a spaceport's presence alters a colony's demands, increasing Maintain levels to accommodate its ability to construct and retrofit ships with a construction yard. This increase is roughly 50% for strategic resources and around 400-800% for Caslon. While the research lab is valuable, placing such high demand for Caslon at every colony can strain logistics to the point that your empire breaks. If your empire struggles to supply Caslon or any strategic resources and you cannot increase your supply, consider postponing spaceport construction, or take steps to ensure your empire doesn't break as covered in the Caslon section.

Technology improves logistics (of course...)
• Increase small freighter cargo capacity with technology and acquire larger freighters.
  
• Research faster drives- the Equinox, namely.
  
• Research mining tech.
  
• Use Fusion reactors.

From here on is mostly opinion based on experience. The advice in the following sections for handling logistics and economy has proven quite effective, which may trivialize the economic game for you.


The game was designed with a focus on automation. Like your war machine's dominance, your empire can generate income and resources in ways the AI cannot even recognize as a threat.

You should be able to outpace the AI in simple galaxies with the basics covered. Teekans may grow out of control. You may need to undercut them. Yet, they don't know the difference between friendly trade and a market takeover. They'll grab important resources but let them go without much resistance. Sometimes, they'll get stuck without fuel and seize up. To run a smooth economy, mimic the AI while watching for your under-produced resources. Don't mind going in the red for a while; keep steadily expanding, invade a couple of enemy capital colonies, and you'll be the giant in the playground.

With the basics done, that's all a leader needs to know. Pay no mind to things like migration or resource costs. That is enough to bring hegemony to the galaxy if you wish.

Still, it's because the AI is as good as it is that you can leave it at that. Kudos to the devs!

Really. As long as you don't break your empire's logistics, your empire has a great advantage with you behind it. The galaxy will have to be deliberately made difficult for your hard-working people. If you use the following methods in a simple galaxy, the challenge will be over before it begins. That said...



...let's cover how to bury the competition even at a technological disadvantage. This is the Space Orc approach, my mentality of dominance.

Instead of seeing the available resources as a blur like this...

...focus on the few resources that may otherwise result in critical shortages and seize opportunities to propel your empire to galactic dominance.
Thank goodness this is automated. It does a good job, too, so long as your processor isn't overloaded. You only need to be cognizant of 8 strategic resources and Caslon in most cases.

You'll find that your civilians will provide enough material to fuel your empire most of the time under automated guidance. However, it's deliberately not flawless; other empires sometimes succumb to critical shortages, and yours is no exception if allowing the AI to call the shots. It is up to you to ensure your empire's success.

In the event you face a critical shortage in the early game
Do not wait for traders and a trickle of material. First, retire any non-essential ships that use the material. Check your designs, and swap out components that use the material, if possible. You can 'upgrade' stations in orbit of your capital and get the material from components and the hull returned in full. You can do the same for ships if you want to preserve some of the credit expense in building them. Ensure you do this after identifying a source so that you can immediately order a mining base at the location.

The following resources are critical at certain points in the game.

Steel
Everything needs steel. While it is one of the two most common resources in the game, it should be one of the first things you set a mining base on. If you don't have asteroids or a metallic moon around your home colony, seek a Rocky Metallic or Continental world to explore manually ASAP! You will quickly run out of steel otherwise. After you secure it, you can forget about it.

Silicon and Carbonite
While not rare, both are critical to early ships, and you don't start with a prolific amount. You can build a small host of ships and stations before securing some. Still, if your starting system lacks either, you must expedite hyperdrive technology to get the Warp Bubble Generator (Stable Warp Fields technology), so you can manually explore to find some. Like steel, once you have it, forget about it and let the automation guide you when you need more.

Polymer and Aculon
Polymer is exclusively found on worlds that can typically be colonized, and rich Aculon sources are rare. Both are needed in many mid-tier components and most hulls. If you build numerous smaller ships, you'll need a lot of both. Since frigates and destroyers form the bulk of most navies, prioritize their acquisition before mid-game and keep looking for more. The rate at which you mine these are a good measure of your empire's potential maximum ship production.

Hexodorium
This is one of the four rarest strategic resources in the game, yet it can be the one you need the most to build advanced ships. About 1 in 10 systems has any at all, and like Aculon, most sources are not rich. As it is also required for many advanced components, pay attention to any potential mines you spot. If you plan on building an unstoppable capital fleet, you'll need every Hexodorium supply you can get. Conversely, in the early-mid game, you need 0 Hexodorium- building a mining base for one only serves to claim it.

Kaasian and Osalia
The end-game weapon resources are about as rare as Hexodorium, with Kaasian being the rarest. The strongest weapons require both in large amounts. Some endgame weapons are remarkable because they don't use these if you're short on them. While they're not essential, they represent large empires' pinnacle potential.

For your convenience:

Worker Warships
Your warships are normally worthless when idle, more or less. Your early warships don't need to be dedicated warriors; they need only be good enough to deter some lousy pirates and maybe a space scorpion or three- five to eight of them in a fleet will do. The early ships could afford to use a mining engine and a cargo bay, even operating on a single reactor. With that, they go from a deterrent to granting some of the power of the Merchant Guilds.

Use them to grab any resource you haven't got a mine for yet, then any luxuries in your starting system. You also can't go wrong grabbing more Caslon. When enemies show up, rally them at your spaceport. Once your economy is rolling at full force, such warships lose their value but may occasionally be useful in spot shortages.


A fine example of a profitable, effective anti-pirate warship from the Boskara. With extra fuel. The current version only has 8 general slots, which means no DCU.

Private Militia
If you plan on fighting pirates instead of paying them, give your civilians missiles or torpedoes, a cautious attack stance, Never Retreat (they are disposable), and an engagement range of Same System. Your worker warships will then have an angry mob behind them. The pirates will go home whimpering.

Once your military is more than strong enough to deal with pirates, don't use private ships this way. They'll be too weak to contribute meaningfully.

Assault Pods
It is beneficial to let them flee to come back later. When they do, be ready with assault pods. They'll run again as soon as you bring down shields, but when they do, they'll have an angry team of marines looking for revenge for all the pirates have done the last few hundred years. Taking over the ship is far more valuable than destroying them and warrants taking the military approach. Retire the ships immediately, and attain the tech they have.

Unlike the other tips for early steps, keep using Assault Pods. They're effective weapons that make a profit.

Scuttling Freighters
Periodically, scuttling freighters will be a boon. The scrap remains will provide some of the resources and sometimes contain treasures. These can be thousands of credits, tech, system information, etc. The private economy will rebuild them, providing some much-needed early funds. It's solid in the early steps but isn't worth doing soon after. You can now shift or ctrl-click freighters in the civilian tab to scuttle multiple at a time.

Suitability and Planet Diameter
Aim for a minimum of 20 suitability, considering technology. This is the baseline for a colony to be worth your investment. High-suitability worlds are your ticket to prosperity, providing the foundation for rapid Growth and abundant Revenue. Focusing on these planets accelerates their development and prevents the drain on resources that comes from colonizing marginal worlds. Remember that improving low-suitability planets is a costly, time-consuming endeavor with a high risk (vulnerable to attack) and low reward. These worlds lack the Happiness and Growth boosts of their more suitable counterparts, and their maximum population is much smaller.

When evaluating a planet for colonization, consider its diameter, which should be large enough to support at least 5 billion inhabitants- my recommended target minimum for maximizing development. The graph below offers a helpful guide for determining a world's colonization potential based on its maximum population and diameter. High maximum population also means that your Revenue increases more quickly- Revenue has diminishing returns on a population over 50% of colony capacity. This similarly impacts Growth.


An old graph, still gives a good idea of size-to-quality relationship.
Credit: OptimiserOlorin on Official DW2 Discord

Being highly selective with your colonies saves on Support Costs. It also reduces the demand for luxuries, allowing your top-performing worlds to benefit from increased imports, leading to more Revenue, and faster. Expanding your empire is crucial, but be strategic in your choices; more colonies aren't necessarily better until the late game when pursuing victory conditions.

Always be on the lookout for expansion opportunities. If an ideal candidate for Migration isn't available, make a new one with the best options available. If relying on this method, be sure to maximize Excess Growth funding. You must keep growing; population is necessary for research and characters being generated. Note that the Ikkuro are especially capable of this approach.

Some say you need a massive population for higher research and should colonize everywhere. I think the cost of spreading a limited availability of luxury resources isn't worth it- you'll get massive research without resorting to this. However, you should aim to have a large population- just not by hitting up any planet with close to 20 suitability. Also, be aware that the devs outright said the game is not meant to be played to colonization saturation. Only paint the entire map if you really have fun doing that!

Invasion and Rebellion
Capturing independent colonies can boost your revenue, but taking prime enemy colonies offers an even greater payoff. However, managing freshly conquered worlds can be costly, as they may drain hundreds of thousands of credits over several years. Assimilation can also be lengthy, especially for naturally combative populations like the Mortalen.

Nonetheless, invasions are a simple and effective way to subsume large populations, similarly adding the benefits of new races. While it may cripple your Excess funding for years, it will be worth it in the long run. There is the forced rebellion approach, too... setting taxes absurdly high and inciting 3 rebellions. You'll damage the colony and diminish the population, but it is possibly always worth it. If you don't find it too cheesy.

An even more cost-effective approach is to incite rebellion within the target world instead of invading. Successful rebellions result in new owners gaining full assimilation with minimal support costs, and immediate high tax income. Many of these worlds will become independent with a neutral disposition towards your empire, making it easier to bribe them into joining you. Others may join your empire outright or ally with other empires, but there are ways to prevent this.


Imperialism; through the targeted forced dismantlement of the former establishment for profit.
"invasion stage 3 complete" by TheArtofSaul on DeviantArt

To incite a rebellion, your goal is to bring Happiness down to -15.

• Raise war weariness: Focus on State targets, particularly loaded troop transports and bases. Targeting civilians will raise your War Weariness.
  
• Establish a blockade: Prevent the target colony from receiving luxuries. Be aware that this will cause your ships to attack any freighter headed to the colony- including those of allies.
  
• Engage in a large resource raid: Conduct raids to acquire resources from the colony. This will cause a Happiness penalty and an increase in Corruption, further decreasing Happiness. Any ships with Assault Pods can raid. (No longer affects happiness)
  
• Apply pressure through bombardment: Focus on destroying development buildings and administration.
  
• Neutralize influential leaders: If the colony's leader provides War Weariness Reduction or reduces Corruption, find ways to remove them from power.
  
• Target critical facilities: Destroy any facilities elsewhere that contribute to empire-wide Development or Corruption reduction.
  
• Destabilize infrastructure: If the colony has very high Quality, reduce the population to below 5 billion to impact Development as much as needed.
  
• Dirty their reputation: Create a colony near their capital with a race opposed to them, then cede control. All but the most goody-goody empires can't help but take it by force.
  
• Use spies to incite rebellion: Once the colony is down to -10, a spy has a reasonable chance to spark a rebellion. If the spy succeeds, the colony will join your empire when the rebellion wins. If you eliminate the garrison through bombardment, they'll be unopposed.

Note: Fuel is much easier to manage now.

Every worthy empire is short on Caslon at some point, in some place. All the neighbors might go to war, buying up Caslon by the freighter full, trade deal or not. It could be nebulae cutting off a cluster of valuable colonies with only a sparse gas giant to supply them. Or, like most of us, built Spaceports impulsively and assembled a vast armada of deadly frigates. Deadly because after capturing those pesky Hive ships, they go on a tour of the empire, eating up more Caslon than the Hive ships would have done in damage. Even if you can afford the Caslon, every shipment not used on Caslon is a shipment of luxuries or excess resources traded with another empire.

The first step to avoiding a Caslon disaster is to use less in the first place.

Time to roll out tools for energy efficiency.
• After the first levels of warp drives and your primary weapon choice, reactors should be one of your leading technologies in ship components, regardless of your playstyle.
  
• Stations should have enough energy collectors to power the station fully during combat. Energy collectors do not deactivate in combat unless damaged.
  
• Minimize your ships not in a fleet, and set the Guard mission to 100%. Unattached ships tend to move around a lot, and ships on Guard don't constantly jump around your empire. Note that this does not force all out-of-fleet ships to take the Guard mission.
  
• Heed the recommendation to install energy collectors. While a ship is idle, energy collectors preserve fuel. This allows you to park your attack fleets when not in use to save fuel.
  
• If you're using a Deathball, a giant fleet meant to steamroll everything, use it judiciously. It takes a large stock of Caslon at one location to fill up an empty Deathball. Don't let that happen if you're not ready for it.

Fuel Ships
Lately, it seems every beta has improved fuel ships. Still, they don't do what the typical player would expect.
Don't think of them as real-life fuel ships. They are more like special-purpose, state-controlled fuel freighters with mining capability that deliver to ships instead of bases. They excel at spot-filling individual ships within fleets that have less fuel than the rest of the fleet for whatever reason. While they are not optimal under AI use, they function well enough to aid the empire's fuel logistics. To help them work better, try to make them as fast as possible, even going as far as forgoing a full loadout. Periodically assign idle tankers to mine the richest Caslon source in the empire. Fuel ships can mine a gas giant even if a mining station has already claimed it. Mining ships can't do that, and all the tankers in your empire can mine the same Gas Giant simultaneously.
Not mobile fuel bases; they still serve a purpose. "Er'Ressdpyee Sunset" by Onkel Ton on flickr

Fuel Ships can not easily keep your entire fleet fueled non-stop, though they're considerably better at it now than they have been. They no longer refuel mid-combat and will refuel ships when the fleet idles somewhere safe. Their behavior has changed considerably, and I have yet to delicately observe how the AI utilizes them as of 12/17/23.

To increase your fuel production beyond what the AI can do
• Use multiple mining engines on a single ship/station. Mining engines stack additively with no diminishing returns.
  
• Consider not engaging in trade agreements. If you're trying to stock up fuel, selling it doesn't align with your plans. Foreign ships will still buy resources, but not as much.
  
• Use plenty of Fuel Ships, construct them in Manual, and tell them to mine before setting them to Automatic.
  
• You can build a monitoring station alongside a Caslon mining base, filled with cargo bays and small mining engines. Freighters won't take fuel from it, but you can refuel fleets and tankers from them- consider using Remote Fuel Transfer. Monitoring stations are relatively cheap, so a construction ship can even set one up in unfriendly territory, but it will require protection.
  
• For dire fuel situations, an ergonomic Fuel Ship designed with massive cargo bays can fill up and be ordered to retire at a Spaceport where fuel is needed. This will transfer its Caslon to the colony and can easily be more affordable than purchasing Caslon from other empires.

Caslon shortage? It's nothing a horde of Fuel Ships can't fix. One of these primitive things can dish out enough Caslon to a colony or fuel depot to supply a large fleet. Or pump your capital full of Caslon and watch the spice flow.

If playing on hard, your empire should be earning less Revenue, and therefore less Tax Income, than every other empire at first. Your civilians will still earn enough to fuel a war machine that you can earn through Bonus Income and further draw from the wealth of other States. This is a big deal- but it isn't as easy as setting taxes to automatic.

Tourism
In the early game, empires could earn a major portion of their total income from tourism. If you're lucky enough to have a scenery bonus in your capital, and you usually are, you can earn upwards of 240,000 credits from tourism before getting your 2nd colony- and that's as a Hive Mind with a -20% tourism bonus! To take advantage of your civilian's tendencies to tip your space waitresses who faithfully forward them to the state, design your passenger ships with only a single basic fuel cell and the Skip Drive, set them to retreat when attacked, and put two docks on your resort. This will prevent them from sending migrants or tourists to other sources, making their only viable mission to send tourists to your resort and not slow down just because a pirate appears to tussle with your fleet. If you can, build an additional resort or two; this will prompt the AI to build more passenger ships for more tourism.

Tourists start at 30k per shuttle, 0.03 of a population unit. You'll not notice they're gone.

This is a preferable method to getting citizen wealth over shipbuilding. A resort can cost as little as 250 credits of maintenance and prevents your citizen wealth from going to other empires- and even draws some of theirs to you. Eventually, however, you'll need your passenger ships to migrate the population to young colonies. When that happens, you'll have to build more appealing resorts than your neighbors. Steal the best location(s) by marine boarding force if you have to, even breaking a NAP. They'll forgive you for it. Make your passenger ships with as much capacity as possible and not much fuel range- ideally 100M, no more than 300M (use a basic fuel cell if necessary). Increased capacity directly translates to more tourism income, so don't skimp on civilian ship and passenger transport technology. That'll also improve Migration, which means more prosperous colonies.

NOTE: If you quickly acquire a new colony, especially as the Teekans, don't send migrants to it. Your capital needs to grow, and you'll lose tourism.
Don't accept migrants at any colony unless they are young and your capital is full.

Shipbuilding
Civilians will build freighters proportional to the number of colonies and mining bases, roughly at a 5 to 1 ratio. Passenger ships are proportional to colonies and resorts, about 3 to 1 for resorts but unknown for colonies. Mining ships~ (unknown proportion- if you have ideas or observations, please comment). Simply by expanding, your empire will regularly receive funds for shipbuilding. Expanding so fast that your civilians can't keep up with the expenses is possible. In that event, you should reduce taxes to allow your civilians to expand more quickly. You're getting the credits either way, and higher taxes means more corruption, so there's no benefit to restricting civilian growth because of taxes.

You'll likely find that Private Cash is a lot- for example, 10 years' worth of Private Cashflow. That's your cue to redesign your mining bases. Upgrade your active design with your most expensive weapons or the next most if you recently did this. This will consume and return resources appropriately from the nebulous stock of your empire while allowing the bases to continue operating while piling Private Cash through shipbuilding. This can only be done periodically but is a relatively easy way to get millions.

You will be paid a lot to build private assets, whatever you do. And if you're greedy enough...

Doing this with private ships should be done with extra consideration. While upgrading, they won't deliver resources or passengers and might wait a while in the queue to retrofit. Unlike retrofitting mining stations, the resources will be taken from your spaceport colonies.

From Drey Prescot:
"One suggestion, when upgrading private economy ship ship designs, do them one class at a time, particularly if you have more than one type of freighter. This will prevent long waits for many of them trying to upgrade at the same time at a few (or one/HW) locations. Also not at the same time as a lot of warship upgrades."

Trade
Your empire doesn't need to be the biggest or the wealthiest. Have the fat cats give you their extra wealth in exchange for resources you don't need. By building many mining bases, even on locations you don't need, your empire will build many more freighters. And when you don't need the resources, they'll still want to ship out from full mining bases. When that happens, they'll look to your neighbors. Whether or not they need your extra resources, they'll be obliged to buy them anyway.

With trade bonuses from the government, the leader, and the Commerce Center, a monopoly on rare resources will make you very rich. Buy any mining bases in your territory. With anyone you can afford to make a little angry, especially trade partners, break any NAP you have with them to forcibly capture their rare resource mining bases- including luxuries. Best done over worlds that won't be colonized. Their freighters will have no choice but to come to your stations, buying at extremely marked-up prices.

And, if your government is the shrewd Mercantile Guild, you can make as many mining ships as the civilian economy can afford. If you net mining rights with a neighbor, you will make an absolute killing with resource trading. Normally, you'll only get up to a few hundred mining ships. As a Mercantile Guild, you can get thousands, spreading throughout the galaxy, selling to everyone who doesn't shoot them.

The trade agreements supposedly ease trade tariffs, suggesting you'd get more money with a limited trade agreement. However, from testing, trade agreements do not affect how much you earn from trade. If you have any observations or ideas about this, please comment on it.

You Need Polymer and Aculon Immediately
Even if you downgrade every design (I recommend you do), you'll still be hurting. You won't have time to find resources- your civilians will eat up what you have. So queuing the first mining bases becomes critical. Steel will still be your first need, followed by Polymer, then Carbonite, Silicon, and Aculon. Get a Worker Warship or three immediately; you'll want to start mining as soon as you find the resources. You don't have to wait for a full cargo hold; bring them back when they have enough for a couple of stations.

Explore, Hard and Fast
Normally, you should have at least 15 explorers when you start expanding. However, you need to find the ideal mining locations fast when you start at higher techs- assuming other empires are too. And if they're of superior technology, they can find them faster and grab them with greater reach. Don't let them have it. Compensate for the technological difference with numbers.

Don't Tax your Civilians
Rapid industrial expansion is critical. They can't afford all the mining bases and freighters like they would in a normal game and need every credit you can spare them. Remember the bit about shipbuilding? You're getting all their money anyway. Your Growth gets a boost, and Corruption drops. It's a win-win to drop taxes to zero.

No Vacations until the Quota is Met
Even though you'll have the technology for resorts, your Private economy won't be able to afford tourism for a while. Building it would be pointless until they're ready to start being taxed.

Like in warfare, I recommend playing a galaxy that challenges your economic prowess. In addition to raising the difficulty level, the following will make it more of a challenge.

Turn off tech trading. It is far too easy to become a tech giant through trading tech. If you keep it on, only use credits to buy tech. I promise the game will be too easy if you abuse this feature.

Don't make pirates distant. Keep both Colony Prevalence and Independent Colonies at least at Normal - the AI doesn't handle less very well. Some suggest limiting pirates and creatures, but I rarely see the AI struggle with them to a crippling degree. Note that certain *minor* pirate factions spawn by event triggers regardless of galaxy settings.

Generally, give the AI Excellent starting systems while you get Normal or less. Increase their tech by 1-3 tiers. Give them all Path/Way of the Ancients/Darkness- the other governments have been re-balanced.

Starting expansion is a wild card. Those extra colonies will take some time to start having positive value; sometimes they're good, and sometimes bad. Better for larger galaxies, especially with higher colony prevalence.

If you're feeling frisky, raise colony prevalence and independents higher, and crank down the colonization range limit to 100. Using the range limit diminishes your ability to exploit an explosive reputation that allows you to claim independants en masse beyond the AI's skills and has the added benefit of allowing more empires to have time to grow to rival you. The AI will perform comparatively better, being allowed to claim a slice of the pie without the threat of a distant power (namely you) taking it out from under their noses. I say again: Range Limit restricts you more than it does them.

If you're starting at pre-warp, having Research Speed: Very Slow will make a much more difficult game with the AI starting with Warp Bubble or better- your empire will be completely dwarfed by the time you emerge from your system. Step down the AI's advantage by 1 or 2 steps in tech and starting systems, and don't give them the funding boost or boost Research Speed. Even then, starting at pre-warp while they don't is a big handicap.

At the start of the game, use the editor to add a 0 to their starting state and private bank.

Manually setting up empires, you can control how hostile the galaxy will be to a much better degree than the Galaxy Aggression setting. Playing Humans against a galaxy of 12 Boskara empires is as hard as starting pre-warp with everyone else at tier 2- you'll be hard-pressed to get any trade, which is a big deal. And once they're done claiming independants, your blood will be the hottest commodity on the market. Being Human with a balance of races for other empires is easy mode. Reduce the number of auto-generated empires by 1/2 and add race/government combinations that don't regard yours well. For example, a Teekan Democracy won't care for your Ackdarian Military Dictatorship.

When you find yourself the big dog in the galaxy, and victory is assured, set your empire to full automatic and use the editor to take control of one of the underdogs. Then you will face the toughest enemy. Player empires are the strongest of all.

With some combination of these, you should find the AI will have some empires that will push you to cheese the game. Despite that, try to avoid extensive tech stealing and making everyone a friendly trade partner. After all, you're a Space Orc, not a Space Corp.
No offense to the Ikkuro and their subsidiaries.