[douglas]

Jtownsend said:
Good to know. I've gotten MS2 and will have mil science when the current turn is processed.

I assume "MS2" is Military Science 2, and you just forgot to put "advanced" in front of "mil science". The difference is quite important. Anyway, Advanced Military Science is a very cheap tech field and very powerful. Research it at least to level 4, for the best training facilities and the cheapest to research and build cloak-detection sensors. When you get the training centers, build them on the planets with the most moons that you have. Multiple training facilities in the same sector but on different planets stack, making planets with two moons the best training sites available in stock. Assuming you don't have none breathers, make one place concentrate on ship training and another on fleet training. The main planet should have both, but domed moons only have room for one.

Jtownsend said:
Is there a significent next step in ship construction I should worry about beyond light cruisers? I know people like them, but I don't know what the next "good level" is, if any.

Going strictly for combat utility, light cruisers can last you a good long while. Cruisers are necessary for mobile space yard ships, but aren't really a big step up for fighting power. The next major step in ship construction is level 7 with battleships, which are large enough to get the heavy mount.

Jtownsend said:
The fact that I might be in a peaceful situation for a while makes me wonder if economic choices might be best. I'll have to read up on whatever monoliths are

Monoliths are all-in-one resource extractors. In the long term, they produce much more total resources than standard resource extractors, but they cost a great deal more, both in resources and time, to set up. I wouldn't recommend them until later in the game, but if you really want them, research Stellar Manipulation. I highly recommend getting Space Yards 3 first, however. Also, they're only really useful on planets with multiple high resource values.

Jtownsend said:
, and I'm thinking of getting the atmosphere changing facility I, if it is adequate, since I'm unlikely to capture breathers.

Don't. Atmosphere converters take a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time to research, and another LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time to give any benefit. You need Planet Utilization level 7 for the level 1 facility, and that takes 30 turns after construction to do its thing. They're just not worth it unless you have a huge amount of research or it's very late in the game.

Edit: Also, who ever said you have to capture other breathers? Try to arrange trade deals with your neighbors who have different breathers than you. You can each just load a transport with some population and then trade the transports.

Jtownsend said:
Other 'economic' techs developments would be good to know about.

Computers. Computers is the single most important economic tech in the game. It gives you facilities that give across-the-board 10%/level (max 30%) bonuses to all resource production, research, and intelligence on each planet you build them on. Levels 4-6 give the same thing, except it affects everything in the whole system, and one system facility stacks with one planet facility on each planet for a combined 69% bonus (no, that's not a typo, they multiply together like so: 1.3*1.3=1.69). Besides that, minerals extraction levels 2 and 3 are good. Beyond that, it just gives you minerals-only versions of the computer facilities that take a great deal of research to get any better than the computer facilities.

Jtownsend said:
I'm browsing the complete tech tree pdf for the stock game, but it's a bit confusing since one only gets the tech names. I've been busy with work and I'm starting to experience the almost amusing sensation of having outplayed my research - that is, I've done very well and gotten very comfortable with my opening game, taken nicely from the book and you folks' kind advice, but I'm suddenly looking at each turn and going, "Oh crud, now what?"

EDIT: Now that I check again, I see that the planetary change techs start with climate control rather than atmosphere changing; I'd confused the two. Drat.

You still haven't even come close to maxxing out most of the techs you've started researching. Keep going in ECM and CS all the way to level 3, get adv. mil. science 4, finish off PPB, get good PDC, finish off armor 6, get at least computers 3 (the higher levels may be too expensive for now), and you should consider getting the other colonization techs sometime. After that, space yards is a good choice (get levels 2 and 3 back-to-back; no need to upgrade all your space yard facilities twice), and you might consider larger ships. Once you've done all that, then you can come back here and ask what you should research next.

Edit: Oh yeah, another nice thing to get is Stellar Harnessing. The first three levels give solar collectors which generate supplies, useful for long-range ships and fleets, and 4-6 give solar sails for bonus movement.