Just finished through my first game all the way.  Wasn't bad.  I'm going to keep practicing against Easy Fortifier's so I can get the hang of the one race that I want to use (whatever race that is).  I used TEC, I'm probably going to use Vasari next

Typically you should build both scouts and light frigates.  Scouts are great against siege frigates and long range frigates, but little else.  Having light frigates will allow you to more quickly kill the light frigates and flak frigates in the militia. 

This all depends on the kind of capital ship you're fighting.  There are some capital ships I wouldn't even consider fighting without significant numerical advantage or lots of LRF.

Depends on the enemy.  In general, LRM is a great choice early on because they kill capital ships very easily.  Use the black market as necessary to get the crystal you need.  If you're getting hammered by higher level unit types, you don't have the luxury of avoiding it.

Ha!  About 20-30 minutes and I have I think 6-7 colonized places.  I lost one because my capship couldn't handle the problems there on its own but it's okay, it's a 1v1 on a large map lol

I've been reading this thread since you posted. It is nice to see you are making progress.

I'm not a pro either, but here is one of my recent experiences in a 2v2 (quick start disabled) online today. I managed to colonize 6 planets on my way to the 7th (no trade yet), while building 15 kodiaks, 3 carriers and destroying 1 orkulus in my grav well and one second health orkulus (w 9 kodiaks and 3 carriers, lost none) in my opponents grav well in <40 minutes. Now that being said my partner had 4 planets was pressed lost 2, took back the third and spammed scout (20+) and LRM(28+) with just those three planets and beat back a disciple/Illum rush including a pirate raid. They gave up at this point.

I'm not recommending spamming kodiaks (although it was fun), but it doesn't always pay to aggressivley expand if you are needing fleet especially if your opponenet is just a few jumps away.

I guess my point is try not to get locked into a single script, have a a general plan of attack/colonize based on your scouting and be willing to adjust based on what your apponent does or exploit if they don't react correctly.

On a side note. It might be useful to use the close encounters map to learn how to effectively build up fleet with a small number of planets while being spammed constantly by the AI. This is also a good map to learn how to use the different capital ship abilitities as they are more critical to winning on this map. For example, try a carrier cap/LF rush on the AI. Eventually you will get good enough to beat an unfair AI on this map.

Good luck and have fun.

Okay, I need help with Advent early game.  I sent out TEN fighters (i forget the name...the ones you get at the start) to take a terran planet and they couldn't kill ONE Krosov.  It's frustrating.  It's taking me so much longer to colonize with Advent than with anyone else, but I know they have a good end game, so I'm trying.  Any tips?

Yeah, there were several LRMs.  That may have been the problem.  I'll keep practicing cuz I do like them I decided.

So scouts can take out LRMs?  So bring in a combo of scouts and seekers?

Oh, lol.  Silly me.  I'll try that then.

Also, move your weaker fleet out once they take out their target. For example, move the scouts out of the planet after they take out the siege and lrm. No reason to lose them unnecessarily (especially on a heavily guarded terran) so they are available for the next planet. About to lose a LF (50% health or so), retreat it out to the previous planet you just built a repair bay on slide it around the repair bay and back to the planet. This is easier to do if you don't stack ships in the empire tree, which is probably a good idea anyway when it comes to microing abilities.

Learn to use alt+[select unit type], this will select all units of the same type such as all scouts in the gravity well.

Learn to use shift+click to stack multiple commands.  For example after alt+[select scouts], shift+click to attack the siege frigate, then shift+click to attack LRM1, 2, etc, then shift+click to move the scouts out of the grav well. This can be performed zoomed into the grav well clicking on targets or through the empire tree for attacking. This is useful too with your colonizer. Drop the colonizer cap in a grav well, shift+click to attack the siege frigates and then shift+click the colonize ability and select the planet while still holding the shift key. Now you can go perform an other task on a different front while your colonizer finishes it's tasks. Once you hear the planet was colonized skip back and finish the job. Shift is also useful for coordinated movements, such as the example to retreat a damaged ship around a repair bay, or to go around a starbase. Just issue multiple shift+click move commands. If done correctly you will see the red/green lines indicating the multiple stacked commands when hovering the mouse of the unit.