In the beginning you shouldn't need as good economy as playing TEC.  Just make sure you expand well and set up your economy in the mid game.  Take advantage of the Evacuator's power to sway battles to your advantage.  Once the initial expansion has come to an end set up those defencive lines.

In the early mid game your advantages in economy come from the Resource extraction upgrades and Enforced Labor (The Tech that reduces the cost of buildings and ships.

Later game I only set up trade ports as my resources are normally coming in fast enough already.

You could just look at some replays: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/342141

With your scouts, make sure you capture any neutral extractors you find - they'll give you a big resource advantage that lets you get ahead of other players.

Well, you can still turtle with Vasari, but it's best to save your turtleing for later in the game. Get your cap ship built (I forget the names, so whichever one is your mothership/colonizer) and send it to the asteroid near your planet and then build a few frigates and a colonizer frigate and send the combat ships to another nearby planet that's either ice or (preferably) volcano.

While your fleet and your cap ship are duking it out and you've gotten the asteroid, build two civil structures over your homeworld and research the tech to colonize the ice or volcano planet. After you've gotten these initial three planets, expand slightly quickly, but still a bit carefully, and once you have about two more planets, you should be about safe to turtle for Vasari by then.

Hope that helps

i love Overseers. i really do. i do not however love parking them at a grav well and shooting repair nanites at structures getting hammered by bombers. that seems counter-productive. no, i love my overseers because they make my cap ships immune to focus fire until they're all out of anti-matter. they let you bring your heaviest firepower right into the heart of enemy territory and not get wiped out in a hot minute. 

Transitive, who are you in MP?  I was playing last night and had 12 overseers.  Two of my allies said "WTF?!!?! Overseers?"  I told them, yes, and you'll see why in a second.  Jumped in to a sh*t storm and the enemy started focus firing my caps.  I just mircoed the living daylights out of the overseers and the caps just never died.  Two enemies lost their whole fleet as a result.

Anyway, I am glad to know someone else shares the overseer love.

Finally some overseer love!! The best, just the best.

I remember my first lesson in how good overseers are when i focus fired 30 phase missle platforms with max phase missle upgrades on a single Evacuator and I still couldn't bring the darn thing down.  I decided to learn how to start using them after that.

I know most people recommend a space egg for a beggining ship beause of its many utlity abilities.  However lately, I've been playing AI games as vasari and I frequently find myself wondering if a Skinrantra might be better simply for the healing aspects and using a colony ship early on for colonizing.  The map I've been playing time is definitely an issue but the speedy upgrades arent any where as useful as the Advent's progenitor colonize is.  Also resources are hard for me to come by and saving a single ship helps.  Any thoughts/recommendations on a first cap other than the space egg?

I just played the beginning of a new game with Vasari.  I tolerated being last place in fleet power for a couple minutes and saved up for a second cap ship and built a SKinranta(I built the space egg first anyway because I figured I'd need the nano disassmbler in battles anyway).  I never used it much because I felt its heals weren't as good as the progenitor and unless you're fighting vasari, shield restore is typically better as you don't have to wait for your ship hulls to be damaged.  It was totally what my fleet was lacking and it totally changed my fleet performance.  It gave me extra fighter coverage and the repair field was keeping my front row of skirmishers intact.  Battle where I'd struggle and have my fleet barely win were over with little to no losses. I'm not sure if I'm going to get a kortul or another skinranta as one of them doesn't really have enough anti-matter to really keep up with the repairs during a large battle.  Now my only problem is how I'm going to combat illuminators without going carriers or cruisers... 

This aye neva closezz.  Gimme my cigs yo.

phase detection is great. i always research that one shortly after going to tier 5. usually i'll get the 5th and 6th phase missile upgades first, then get phase detection on my Overseers.

ships jump into and out of wells ALL THE TIME, the phase detection thing is very nearly as good as having a planetary remote sensor on adjacent grav wells to your overseers. really helps get the timing right on when to go in for attacks. makes it easy to wait until the enemy is on the wrong side of the grav well, or even has jumped out of the grav well entirely. 

slow down reinforcements is much much lower priority. i rarely get it. what its supposed to do is help you escape a grav well before the enemy catches up with you. this fits in with the mobile warfare, hit/run style of the Vasari. presumably you might get a small force behind enemy lines and the overseer can detect and hinder enemies coming in to try and flush you out. 

in practice that behind enemy lines stuff hardly ever happens. you're almost always fighting fleet to fleet so delaying reinforcements doesn't do very much. 

Overseers?  Bah.  Die easily to enemy fighters, and require way too much micro and aiming to use effectively.  Just a waste of money and fleet and everything else.

On my first games i havent noticed that overseers are healing 250 damage in one sek. After i learned that i realy love this guys

And another thing:  there is a recycle ability for the vasarie. with that research (dont know the name) enemy structures and caps that are destoreyed gives you creds and ressources. Havent tested it on Multiplayer, but against AI its realy great. if u dont have res, just attack some strucures and fleet to get some. Research this and look at the overview at the and of the game under resources gained from other. Against AI i try to get it as fast as possible...