sometimes, entrenching for a time (even without the Entrenchment xpack) is helpful

use repair bays (even though they suck for Vasari) to help keep ships alive and build/research up

you can easily out build/research Hard AI

Well I know its more for the slots than the cash, but ehh..  I do it most of the time and it helps with getting labs up faster..

At any rate, the AI is pretty stupid.  It won't go for capitals like you would.  If all else fails, get more planets than it does so that when the line between you and it forms, you have the numerical advantage.  I can generally get two-three times as many planets as a hard AI before we even meet.  After the line forms, barricade it and create a second fleet to capture the enclosed worlds.

As Darvin said, don't underestimate repair platforms...  They are very helpful indeed...

The problem with splitting your aquisition team is that the capital will be able to take the worlds you send it at, but it will miss out on the experience given for killing off the pirates guarding the world.

I can't think of the map off hand, but one thing you could do is rush through each world and only killing the pirates in the world and neglecting to colonize the planet at all; taking a planet means that you have to spend resources to upgrade it that you could instead be increasing your fleet size.  I would say definitely get the asteroid next to the homeworld since they are cheap to get, but move your fleet through to the world that is the "choke point" and colonize there.

By being able to block your opponent off into only going through 1 or 2 planets, you can leave your forces there as well as put up a lot of defense there, and stressing using repair bays; they can make a fleet of half the size almost as strong if not stronger due to the healing.  Once you feel you have a large enough fleet at that planet, take the capital ship and go back over those other planets and take them and also upgrade them.  This leaves your fleet short the capital, but the colonize bonus is just too great to use a colony frig, and you will most likely have level 2 or even level 3 colonize due to killing the pirates off.

Edit: ok looked at the map.  best way to go about it is keep them limited to the planets they gain.  have a scout stay in the grav well with the sun so you can see them coming at you from there, then colonize the asteroid and the ice planets, then just methodically move across the chain between you and them.  my guess is they will send some LF, LRF, siege frigates, and a carrier cap through the sun grav well within the first 15 minutes at your homeworld, so you can either keep scouting the small 3 planet string between you and their homeworld to see what they have there, or be ready to fight in your homeworld.  have at least 3 repair bays, all over lapping so they heal each other.  scouting is important, so if you see that they have more fighters or bombers from carriers, get a few flak frigs to help with that.

I don't think it is all that hard once you have the repair bays and make the fight come to you.  make sure your fleet fights in the range of the repair bays.  also, if you let them get the desert planet in the middle, they have the upper hand on you, so be ready to fight hard to stay alive.  remember getting the technology upgrades for damage are the least important for such a small map, so focus on adding to your fleet size or an armor upgrade.

Anything else, just ask.

You generally don't want to split your forces, but a properly supported Orky (don't play as TEC/Advent much so I don't know if this works so well for them) can fend off a moderately sized fleet.  Even without any actual ships, the combination of the regenerative maw, insane health, and the deflector shield, you will take a heck of a lot of damage before you go down.  In fact, between Mitigation and the Deflector Shield, you are only taking about 10% of incoming DPS.  That means that if you have your health up to the third level and your weapons up to the second so you have PM's (and you have the weapons banks reserachable) you can easily fend off fleets from the AI.

What I do is after I draw the line in the sand between the AI and myself, I create a second fleet that goes and captures the rest of my worlds (this one happens to be led by a Kortul btw).  It goes through and takes a migrator with it so that if it comes to an asteroid field, I can set up an economic SB to bolster my trade and tax income.  The result is that I own 2/3 of the map while the AI only has 1/3.  This neutralizes its income bonus.  As I finish taking worlds, I begin to put up phase gates to link my worlds and once I finish, I take my Korul's fleet to the front and send it to flank the AI's main force while my Egg's fleet slams against the brick wall of the AI's heavily entrenched worlds.  It yields severe losses, but then I retreat and it doesn't dare attempt an attack against my defenses.  All the while, my Kortul is slowly shrinking the enemy flank until the AI has splits its forces to attempt to deal with the problem at which I wipe the floor with both of its fleets.  After losing its ships, the AI is unable to recover and I win.

That is true..  And one more advantage you have over the AI is not only you can think, but you have unlimited time to do so..  Its called, "Pause|Break."  That wonderful little button can give you all the time in the world to plan your course of action without missing a beat.  So, if you are ever debating which way to go, just pause the game and think.  Its not MP, so there is no rush.  Now, I rarely pause the game for anything other than a screenshot, but if I really can't decide between two paths that look very similar, I won't hesitate to pause the game

Well, something I came up with tonight was another thing you can do to somewhat neutralize your AI ally's stupidity.

In my case tonight, my normal eco AI ally had dominated the map due to my blocking off and using every last resource defending against two unfair aggressors (and they had more planets than me).  Unfortunately, my ally hadn't researched much at all and as such was only receiving a fraction of what he could have...  

My response?  Save the game, quit, and then start playing as my ally.  It didn't take long as I suddenly had a few million of each resource to research the entire tree (I was also playing DS which speeds up research times).  Then as that was occuring, I put Argonevs on the border worlds to take a little heat off my fleets.  I also used the level 6 marza it had lying around to guard one of the worlds.  I then sped the game up to 8x and waited for research to finish.  Once it did, I had gave my normal self a few tens of thousands of credits/crystal/metal and switched back to Vasari.

Call it cheap if you like, but if I was playing with a real human being, I would have easily done better against two Unfair AI's I just happened to spawn beside.  I haven't actually launched an attack yet, so to even the odds a bit I'll likely go in and help the unfairs so that its not a complete slaughter...

Nonetheless, doing this certainly does show you how incredibly stupid the AI is.

Uh, were you paying attention to what I said?  I was talking about something that could kill a turret once your capital ship left, so no, you won't have an Akkan there.

That said, TEC turrets with range upgrade and an Akkan are positively deadly.  Half a dozen of them are pretty much like having a starbase.  I remember once I had to build a starbase just to get auxiliary government, but I never bothered upgrading it; my turrets were doing the job just fine.  If only every faction's turrets had this kind of potential if well used...

No I wasnt. I aplogise. I only saw the quotes of what you said.

I would also like to say that for a good chunk of the game, the AI only spams Cobalts.  Cobalts!  They are such easy pickings for your Assailants.  So, obviously build Assailants right off the bat, and then get a few sentinels ready for when he pulls out LRM's.

It takes me ~10 minutes, and I'm no where near pro at all.  You should have the cap facility up right away, then due to it being a small map, 2 scouts scouting, and a third scout watching the sun; then build the fleet up.  2 civ labs on homeworld, take the roid, then tech ice planets, take both ice.  Don't worry about allowing the shields to heal on the cap, and also make sure that the capital ship goes into the planet first to make everything agro it; the only things that might switch agro are the LRF and hc, so when some ship in your fleet has agro from the pirates, warp it to the privious planet to keep it from dying.

You could try doing a sova rush because the map is so freakin small as well to make some extra money.

Use nano disassemblers to kill siege frigates, then colonize the planet.  Build a turret (and a repair bay if your cap is damaged) and use it to kill the remaining militia.  Make sure you kill any long range frigates before you send your capital ship away.

Personally, in the situation, I would go with one of each lab on my HW and stick the second civic on the asteroid.  By the time stuff is dead, I will have it researched.