Don't listen to Ryat, he's our forum troll. But we love him anyway.

1. It is applied only to new ships. As you have noticed, otherwise it would be OP

2. They're off on default because they're pretty lame

3. Don't play MP yet. Beat harder AIs first.

4. Kol is best starting cap ever.

And this is why I like Mecha's trolling...he's most dangerous, because he mixes lies within the truth...

Well, Sins is one of the few RTS games where you technically don't have too, your ships will automatically try to fight ships they're best against and use their abilities. That said, depending on your units you do have to micromanage them to get the most out of them, and it is very much necessary against other humans and harder AIs.

While I'm hardly the best player out there, counters are actually something you need to pay attention too before the battle, or while building replacement units near the battle site. The key is to scout the enemy's fleet so you know what he has and build counter units accordingly. Once in battle by default your ships will auto attack the ships they counter, and most of the time you'll want to focus fire on specific important enemy ships, usually capitalships with dangerous abilities.

Tactics on the other hand I'd say is what matters in battle. Prioritizing which units to try and take out first, which special abilities to use when, all while trying to stop your opponent's efforts to do the same thing are key. Lets say your opponent has a level 6 Marza dreadnaught in the battle. You know he must have Missile Barrage, a powerful ultimate that can do enough damage to destroy most frigates. Its your job to see that he has one and do one or two things. One is to know this ability can be "Interrupted" by a disruptive attack like Ion Bolt form the Akkan battlecruiser, and to simply wait until the special missile particle effects go off and immediately use ion bolt to stop the Marza in its tracks, canceling 90% of the damage. If you don't have such an ability, you have to rely on the fact that the Marza cannot move while its using the ability, so you need to move all your ships out of its range when it starts using it and hope they can get out of range fast enough.

For the record, all stat boosting techs are applied to all ships instantly, and I always play with capital victory but may also add flag ship or research victory. Allied Victory is a must have if you are planning on a team game, otherwise if you don't have locked teams you'll have to fight your former friends until 1 player is left standing. The only Victory and Occupied victories I usually ignore.

You could just build Novaliths and kill his planets. The AI is pretty stupid when it comes to building Auxiliary government on its starbases.