[Makinus]

Just a small trick, that while obvious, i did not see much people using it:

When colonizing distant systems, create a fleet with the Colony Ship and a small ship full of supply components and solar panels (an escort or frigate is enough) so the colony ship can have the supplies needed to reach the system...

I normally retrofit my old escort and frigate ships to these "booster ships" when new hull sizes make them obsolete in the line of battle...

Other use for obsolete frigates is to add a repair component to them and make them repair ships that still can be useful in the line of battle.

Another use for obsolete escort and frigates is to add cargo components and use them as troop transports or faster trasnports for units, since they can have more engines than the traditional transports (while the traditional transports are more cost-effective, these "fast transports" can help you to transport badly needed units faster to the front)...

i don´t know if these hints are really usefull against human players, since i mainly play against the AI, but i just wanted to add my 2 cents....