Found what I think is a neutral next to me. They have several starbases built already and I believe they have went the fighter route.
Not much more growth as I am barely breaking even on minerals. I recently got the next level for mineral extraction so I have started to update my facilities.
I also designed a missile frigate (Striker), Level 3. It has 2 L2 Capital Ship missiles, L2 armor and L2 Ion Engines. I also upgraded my primary attack ship class, Avenger, with the new tech.
To get some combat in, I upgraded my attack fleet, beta , to 4 Avenger II's and 2 Striker I's. I sent them in against the neutrals and attacked a planet, it had a starbase in orbit and a sat layer. The sat layer ran right away.
The starbase had over 2k of armor, so I was a bit concerned about my ammo supplies. The base also had a missile launcher and several DU's. I came away victorious though without losing a ship. I had 1 striker at 91% damage and an Avenger around 60% damaged.
Support ships are key to an invasion. I will most likely hold the fleet until some supply freighters can join up. I also want to deploy a mobile repair ship, but I don't have the tech.
It looks like their primary planet has 2 starbases, one model I have seen, another I haven't. They use Ice planets, so no invasions I guess, just going to have to pound them from orbit. My unreliable intel says they have ~23 fighters which may cause me to deploy a Point Defense class earlier than I would have liked.
Having fun though