[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
Not to egregiously self-bump, but does anyone have early-ship design ideas for a medium tech start on 3 good planets? Or perhaps advice on which of the weapons lines to research or avoid.

Let's see, I just checked what medium tech gives you, and it appears to be just level one in all theoretical techs plus two levels of energy stream weapons and energy pulse weapons in addition to what you get regardless of starting tech settings. I'd say you have two good options for early weapons tech research. Either spend your first turn bonus on Physics 2 and research Phased Energy Weapons to the max, or go straight into Energy Stream Weapons. Personally, I would go with Phased Energy, at least until everyone has phased shields and your research is well into the multiple hundred thousands per turn. Normally, Projectile Weapons would be my first choice for early game, but they eventually become obsolete and you already have a head start on the late game best weapon.

Jtownsend said:
I'm not planning on developing missles, I'm unconvinced on drones (but am willing to be wrong on that)

Neither are worth getting.

Jtownsend said:
and I can't decide what to splurge on in the first turn with a 100k bonus. I could pick up Adv. Military Science and get training facilities, but then I'd be researching all the other early techs without my turn 1 bonus.

Training facilities are good, but if you're going to spend the turn one bonus on that kind of thing, I'd go for one level in each of sensors and combat support instead. OTOH, mines are critical for early defense, and troops can easily compensate for 50% happiness, and you can get level 1 in both with the bonus. There's also Physics 2 for Phased Energy Weapons if you go that route.

Jtownsend said:
I'm also a touch unclear - why bother with ship training facilities if I could train "ghost" stacks with single ships in orbit, then merge these with my frontline fleets? Are there potential perils or drawbacks to this method?

The single-ship "ghost" fleets are useful only for fleet training. Each individual ship still needs to be trained to get ship experience, and fleet and ship experience stack.

Jtownsend said:
As well, in a fairly amateur-level game with 3 starting systems and 8-10 players crammed in a medium galaxy, might it not be a good idea to turtle in my three systems if they are loaded with planets and have relatively defensible warp geography?

If you actually have three separate systems and they have considerably above average planet loads, that could work. I'd still say you should at least try to get a few more systems, though.

Jtownsend said:
I don't really want to waste early fleets getting blown to smithereens when I'm not even sure of basic ship design principles. Meson blasters, or energy stream weapons, or DUC? I can see on the tree that, for example, energy stream weapons have a longer tech tree, but in the meantime are they adequate weapons?

DUC is strictly an early game weapon. Anti-proton Beams tend to lag one-three levels behind DUC in damage, but their cap is much higher and they reach DUC's cap reasonably early. With a medium-tech start, don't bother with DUC's. The other good choice is Phased Energy Weapons. Just five levels in addition to Physics 2, and you have the damage of an APB XII and you ignore non-phased shields. The only downsides are two less range and greater cost, particularly in radioactives.

Jtownsend said:
Also, in trying to simulate a drone-ship vs. direct-fire ship battle with the simulator (we're playing simultaneous turns, obviously) I made a red and blue simulation with a fleet of ships with drone launchers, a fleet of weaponized (rather than suicidal) drones and an opposing fleet of beam-and-PDC vessels. The beam vessels one, but I couldn't get the opposing, putatively drone launching vessels to close along with their drones - whatever orders I gave their fleet, they fled into a corner of the battlefield and waited for certain death.

Now, I don't really want to bother fiddling with drones in my fleet, so I was just as glad to see the drone side lose. But it's hardly a fair test when the drone-launching ships didn't close to add their direct-fire firepower. Is this an oddity of orders, or was I simply putting orders in wrong?

You had the fleet's strategy set to break formation, correct? That's good, but it also means that each ship uses its own strategy. To change ship strategies, go to the ship design screen, click the "Stats/Strategy" button, select the design, and click the arrow beside the default strategy.

Jtownsend said:
My first turn is (presuming no laggards) due tommorow. At the moment I am planning to do standard (non-emergency) builds of the best colony ship I can make with 3x3350 production over two turns.

With that construction rate, you can emergency build the same ship in one turn. If you then turn off emergency build the next turn, you effectively get the ship one turn early and get a free turn of slow build construction that you can use, for example, for police troops or mines. Besides, even in a crowded galaxy, grabbing lots of land and settling it quickly is important, so I'd go ahead and go all out emergency build until borders are firmly established.