The camera can be a bit annoying if you are used to games like Sins of a Solar Empire. The middle mouse button is how you focus on different ships in combat. I use pause whenever I want to stop to fix my camera or think about strategy.

Do you have the complete collection or born of blood? Then start a tutorial game and watch the tutorial videos. Very helpful. The videos are on the net here. Tutorial videos

Research: It just depends how fast you want the tech. Be careful though. Over funding and speeding up projects can cause accidents.

Sandbox: The options are for everyone. If you want to just boost your self or another AI race then you can select the setup options for each faction in the next screen right before game launch.

Random events: The can be tough. Some travel to your colonies and attack. Others just make some planets impossible to colonize until you are strong enough to clear them out. Turn them down until you get used to the game.

Good luck and don't give up. Once you get the basics SotS is very addictive!

Probably one of my favorite space stratiegies in a long list of good ones.  And I cannot wait for SOTS 2!!

First, you will get a lot more help and info on how to play the game on the Kerebos forums....

http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum/index.php

I rarely over fund research.  As mentioned above, overfunding can result in a lab accident where you lose all progress.  If I do overfund in rare cases, I never have the slider more than 20%.  The possibility of an accident goes up substantially if you boost this hard.  Control your research more with the research slider than overfunding.

Initially you want to get your planet resource income up so most will always research Waldo Units, and a couple other techs to boost planet resource production.

Get scouts built immediately ... like 6 ... and send them out.  Don't worry so much about dealing with systems you find space monsters in early on ... they will be hard and expensive to take out while you are still developing.  Focus on colonizing systems with good habitablity ratings .. don't worry so much about size or resource level on these planets ... just get them going.  Hab ratings above 300 will be expensive to get going until you get some techs so grab up planets 200 and below first if you can.  Remember, you want to send multiple colony ships to these worlds and you can send more colony ships to these worlds even after you lay down your colony.  You want to jumpstart them so on a 200 Hab world you want to start the colony with a minimum of 10 Colony ships and then send more until you get the industry up to 50% or higher and the hab rating starts to come down quickly.  Also, if the world has good resources...like 3500+ ... don't be afraid to do some overharvesting in the begining to get things rolling.

After I get my initial production boosting techs and a tech or two for improving colonization and terraforming, I like to get green lasers as quick as I can.  Most of the initial space monsters like Von Nueman, Swarm, and Silicoid Queen are best countered with fast firing and high accuracy weapons.  Note that missle techs are pretty much useless against all the early space encounters.  I also tend to rush for point defense which also does pretty well against these.  Anyway, for quite some time, a 6-7 ship fleet of destroyers with green lasers will defend quite well against Von Nueman who is the most prevelant encounter at your planets. 

When starting, play one on one in a 60 planet game.  There are some world killing powerful monsters but I don't think they show up unless planets is greater than 60 ... you probably have not seen them and I won't spoil the surprise ... you can turn down the other monsters until you get the hang of it.  However, note that most of the space monster encounters are useful once you learn to take them out.  The swarm and silicoid encounters will add to planet resources as you kill them ... the asteroid monitor is nice to control for great defense ..  So turn them down in the early going but recognize you will want them eventually and you will need to learn how to best take them out.

Go to the Kerebos forums!

Thanks Cos.

As far as tactical fighting goes ... how much you want to micro is up to you .... but it does help quite a bit.  Since the control keys in tac mode are unique to this game, you will want to get familiar with them.  You want to be able to quickly pause and cycle through your and enemy ships.  Keeping ships grouped and focus firing at one enemy at a time is the basic strategy, but micromanaging the ships and targeting specific enemy weps and systems is very effective as well ... but you don't have to do that.

Hi!

So let's deal with those menaces.

Alien Derelict
Run away to the left of the planet and click peaceful resolve in the lower left corner. To eliminate it, get back with a fleet of laser-equipped DEs and autoresolve (game will try to strip them off weapons first, before outright destroying). ADs with AM torpedos and other heavy guns need a turn of manual "stripping" (click on the "Fire only at my target" button), before autoresolve will yield large research bonus.    

Asteroid Monitor
Run away to the left of the planet and click peaceful resolve in the lower left corner. If AM is level-2, you may not get away. Thereafter research special project to gain control of it. In my low-econ games it usually takes 20-30 turns to finish it. 
 
Alien Wreckage
A nasty one. You need two full DE fleets with Light Emitters to have a chance to clear it, or ~3 kamikazee Rafineries and a fleet of laser-equipped DEs to clear it. For some reason the point defence stops working on drones after about a minute of combat, and only lasers keep firing. In any case expect heavy losses, so this one is usually not worth clearing out. You'll know that the Alien Wreckage is "close" around, when you start getting

Unknown Vessels
Those happen only if you "visit" the planet with a fleet without Deep Scan section, or a fleet of less than 12 command points. So a fleet of 6 DEs or 2 CRs is safe, and also "removes" those cloaked ships. With a fast ship you can also run away. Just turn right and start running. This also "removes" them.

Asteroid Trap
Have 2 cheap CnC DEs in your mining fleet. When you get control of the ships, click "Retreat from battle" (upper left), unpause, then select all ships and click "Retreat to the last line" (upper right).

Colony Trap
Early game colonize with only one DE, then follow with more. When you have CR Biomes, equip them with gauss and laser PD in small slots, and fight manually. But usally it is cheaper and faster to sacrifice one DE colonizer and autoresolve.

Swarm Infestation
The scout is lost. To eliminate space bees, get back with a full fleet of laser-equipped or Light Emitter DEs and autoresolve. Expect moderate losses. If you'll fight manually, you'll have less losses (don't move ships until the drones are cleared), but you'll have problems with the Larva (if it appears), because it's covered with Improved Reflective Coating and has rear-mounted Medium Emitter.
 
Silicoid Queen
More drones plus the Queen. Queen doesn't turn, and fires only from her head, so approach her from the side or rear. It also likes to hide in a shadow of an asteroid. Use the same recipie as for Swarm Infestation, just have more ships. Satellites will also help to deal with drones.

Slavers
If you fight regularly, a rare event. IMO not worth organizing defenses just against them. A full ring of small+medium sattellites plus good warheads will destroy them, but most of the time you'll still lose pop.  
 
Specters
Same as Slavers. Sensitive only to energy weapons, but also to energy-based point defences. Appear only in games with Humans and/or Zuul.

Von Neumann Mothership
Early game: have 2 cheapest possible sacrifical DEs in orbit of each planet. When Mothership comes, send them forth for drones to "eat", and they'll leave.
Mid game: 3 DEs with accurate weapons (PD doesn't work!) to destroy drones. If you destroy also the Mothership, you have a fair chance that planet will be visited by

Von Neumann Berserker
A nasty one. Comes 4 turns after you've destroyed the VN Mothership. You need full rings of small+medium sateliltes + full CR CnC fleet of DEs + Deep Scan ship(s) to deal with it.
OR (cheesy tactic) 8 DEs with Leap Mines and an DE CnC with Deep Scan. If you'll destroy also the Berserker, you'll get a moderate chance to be visited by something significantly nastier. 

BR,  Iztok

Wow, good info.  Thank you so much.  I am really digging this game.

Okay, now I've added your post to my strategy notes, IztokBitenc. So THANK YOU!!

(<mumble>...stupid colony traps....)

Thanks. I read it when you posted, but I forgot to thank you.

I've bought SotS and have now been playing it for a couple of days and I notice that, as per the question about the camera above, in that tactical section of the game, if I left click one of my ships or an object and press F that it focuses upon it. If I press E, then it focuses upon an enemy. Right click hold allows for camera rotation, and the scroll wheel allows for zooming.

I think now that on the strategic level the game is more like Galactic Civilizations than SoaSE.

Is there a way to turn off empire surrenders? its pretty lame to have the last major empire other then yourself just surrender for what seems no particular reason...

i see... that's strange because i didn't really take any planets. It honestly just seemed totally out of the blue.

I got this game when it first came out, paid 49.99 for it and wasnt impressed cuz of the bugs and such.  Well a few days ago i picked up the complete edition for 7.49 and like it much more now.  No bugs, camera works great now, plus combat seems to run smoother than from what i remember.