You are all right and have provided some great advice/feedback.I'm not sure if this is good or not, but I'm sure with experience I can get better at it, but it takes me 20 minutes to colonize 4 planets, have them cleared out of enemy units, 1 capital ship, and 10 frigates.By the way, unless you missed it in the original post. This is a strategy just for the beginning phase of the game. I'm not talking about disregarding scouting all together. I'm just talking about the first 10 to 20 minutes of the game.I am still fine tuning my "beginning phase" strategy. I'm still not using scout ships though, and am not scouting the nearby planets. I have changed what I build and in what sequence though.I build a capital ship factory first, then the metal/crystal mines. (This allows me to get the capital ship out asap).With the frigate factory, I use up all my fleet points by first building a colonizer, then all fighter frigates and another colonizer as the last ship.I then have a capital ship and 8 or 9 fighter frigates ready to invade a random planet at 4 minutes and something. I send in the colonizer ship after the planet is cleared out of enemy. I'm replenshing my fleet while it is fighting always keeping my available crew at zero. After the first planet is cleared out, I immediately attack a second planet system and I use the second colonizer ship I built earlier to populate it.This is all experimental for sure, and it's probably not much different from most other players.While a more "standard" build, the above STILL doesn't explain WHY you're skipping scouts. You're skipping scouts we understand that, but there really is no reason to, given what you've described.It all comes down to one issue: cost/benefit of a single scout at the start. Just two examples of why even the above build is MUCH better with 1 scout (which will, AT MOST, set you back about 30 seconds).1) If that first jump is into a dead system, you've lost AT LEAST several minutes, right there.2) You're literally wasting time waiting for 1 cap and 8 to 9 fighters, because you don't know what's on the other side. If your scout identifies an asteroid, no NEED to wait for all frigates to build. Jump the cap only, followed by the colonizer.So with scouts, your strategy is IMPROVED. Your essentially taking a handicap under the guise that a scout prohibits your strategy, which IS NOT the case.

After testing this about 6 times last night, capturing the two adjacent systems is almost always a bad idea. For example, if you have:D-V-TH-A-TD=Desert V=Volcano TH=Terran Homeworld A=Asteroid T=Terransurrounding you, then you would likely be better served colonizing the desert planet before the volcano. The "buffer" volcano problem may not actually be much help in your defense depending on the actual location of enemies and pirates. Moreover, it will cost so much to settle that you will likely be ill able to defend it anyway.Scouting around to know the lay of the land will generally always pay for itself.Tea

The only situation where this will not work is if a pirate base is next to me

Why not get the cap ship yard up and running and grab a free colonizer cap ship?

Now, on the downside, if you run into another player early and they have brought a bonifide battleship it puts you at a disadvantage.

After playing more of the game, I'm even more convinced that scouting in the INITIAL PHASES of the game is completely irrelevant. Instead, my goal is to capture all the immediate surrounding planets as quickly as possible.

The first ships I build are colonizers. The number of colonizers I build depends on how many surrounding planets are around my base planet. They need time to build up antimatter, so build these ships first.

Besides, after the six frigates I am researching Capital Ship crews and building a hoard of capital ships.