TEC Strategy?

General strategy that almost always works:
1. Build up planets
2. Build ships
3. Do research
4. Shoot enemy

The specifics may vary depending on your playstyle and what your enemy is doing.

TEC has weak units. Focus should be on the healing ship and the AoE for the long range ships. Eg, the long range for vasari does like 18 dmg, while the TEC long range does only 10 dmg before upgrades, but at level 4 tier the TEC missile guys can do splash dmg and dmg can be researched up to 14.

Let me point out from experience, that biulding an end game fleet while just defending and letting your opponets do whatever they want, will result in a loss.

TEC=crappy ships
TEC=cheap ships
TEC Strategy= build lots of crappy ships

Good strategy concerning TEC? It's pretty simple.

In the game lobby, go and click on the TEC icon. Either click once, twice, or three times. You will either get the "change to Vasari upgrade", the "Change to Advent upgrade", or the "Change to Random Race upgrade", a 66% chance of getting a better race than TEC.   

In all seriousness though, TEC is god awful. They have the worst early game economy and frankly need a huge buff to be on the same page as Advent and Vasari. The fix may be coming in 1.1, but it doesn't look like it is.

You have to out macro and out wit your opponent with TEC. The big advantage of TEC is they have some of the more creative/strategic abilities in the game. The scouts have the bomb ability. The Hoshiko has the demolition bots ability. The +25% damage, soon to be +40% bonus on the Cielo is a great late game tech. No enemy cap is safe.

Although they are the simplest race, TEC takes a very experienced veteran to have a prayer against an Illum spam or an Assailant spam.

I haven't played as the TEC, so I can't say this of full experience. Anyway the hard AI has often defeated me as TEC by quick expansion and building, say, five fleets of about 150 ships (most of them being light frigates, 1 to 3 of them capital ships) attacking from many fronts almost simultaneously.

To quote that, I actually use that sometimes. Attack from multiple planets simultaneously to confuse players so I can take their planets and smash their fleets while in turmoil. Once it's over, I do it again until I win.

It's a very good strategy over LAN and ICO.