Guess I must be an idjit but...

[Jubala]

pathfinder, try building about 5 base space yards on emergency the first thing you do and as soon as they are build have them build colony ships on emergency and start colonize everything in sight while you research bigger hulls and guns. Don't bother building warships until you meet some AI's. And as soon as your 5 base space yards (or more if you wish) are ready either start building colonyships on your homeworld or take it off emergency and build satellites or weapon platforms. As soon as the base space yards have been in emergency for 1.0 years mothball them then instantly unmothball them. Won't work in the next patch but it does for now. The first you build on the first planet you colonize is a mineral storage or two to store the excess minerals you are hopefully generating. I sometimes build a colonyship first thing so I can build that mineral storage (or several) at once. Depends on wether I started with high resources or not.