ES2 art of war, kinda

While war can be entirely avoided throughout the game, certain fighting, with pirates enabled is usually inevitable, so it is handy to have a know how on how to achieve good results even in unfavourable matchups.

Do not hesitate to ask questions in the comments section, the guide can be edited, tips can be added.

Current version the guide is meant for is 1.0.52, this version is still fairly post premature release and there will hopefully be major changes coming up.

Here is a quick rundown to what is new in the game throughout past couple months (as of patch 1.0.70):

• Short lasers no longer suck, they became a really good option for fleets that can outlast 1st phase so basically a meta. (considering short meets medium scenario, they even hit on first turn and kill on second, hurray!)
• Fighters and bombers matter if you use bigger ships, get them, use them, their tech is shared with beams, so it's a nobrainer. It is generally a good idea to have at least one fighter wing up on those support ships, it technically makes them storng dps ships and they can still carry your mods around, hurray!
• The military scavenging law got a boost again, so have that going for killing CPs. Couple laws good thrown around a bit, pacifism is a strong backup peace option.
• Certain OP hero abilities got a slight nerf, but they still matter.

For victory and profit

Don't do war unless it's worth it, for militarist governments this is usually a no brainer, but there are other things that come in mind when making fighting worth your while!
Be careful not to get caught up in a drainy conflict early game if there are multiple opponents, it might slow one of them, but others will get you!

• On CP kill profit
• The Scavenging law enables you to get up to 50 dust and science per CP kill, it does not scale incredibly well, but still provides decent value for repairs and retrofits. 20 CP killed is 1K dust but more importantly 1K science.
• There are mods which can be literally stacked in your favour, when fighting easy opponents such as respawning pirates, equip your support ships with bonuses on CP kill, if you have fleet of 10 support ships each providing you 45 science on kill, kill 1 CP, you get 450 science surplus for the turn. Bear in mind your surplus can only reach double your science production. No need use going beyond that.
• There are also influence per CP and dust per CP mods, but I prefer science, although it only has a T1 version, you need to loot the T2 which you usually won't.
• it is actually easier and potentially cheaper to assimilate through combat means, simply drain manpower with siege mods and attack, easy, cheap, clean, the race will hate you for a while but you have the trait and system
• as vodyani, you can use a heavy-drain fleet to invade systems to make new Arks on the go and reduce enemy system pop through negative food so they can not conscript. (you can't drain riftborn though), this gets a lot more efficient with T2 drain and higher
• Helps you expand onto opponent planets, yey, just make sure not to overdo it, cause there are things like overcolonization, and jingoist paradise only takes you so far. (but certain religious law is unlimited *cough*)
• 

Knowing is half the battoru

Optimizing your ship setup:

• There is no perfect optimal setup, you have to adapt to what your enemy is doing, while he is probably adapting to what you are doing, there is however a safe bet to go with mostly: be bigger, faster, stronger.
• Get strategic mods ASAP if you have the strategics for them, titanium kinetics work well even in endgame, they have the best anti missile efficiency, they are a good thing to go for, unless you have a hero with 80% energy damage and hyperium.
• Having better mods wins you (un)evenly matched fights, having ships with more mods unlocked wins you fights. (one ship with titanium kinetics can take out 3 ships with T1 and with luck even T2 kinetics - learned this the hard way)
• You want the extra manpower from food anyway, so go for those extra mods on small ships
• strategic mods are actually cheaper industry wise, but you do need those strategic resources, you can also buy them from market
• Try upgrading only half your fleet to new concepts, this will make it more versatile and crazy to deal with, you can even play mindgames and show that your latets model has short beams as a bait.
• Support ships are actually OP, do not dismiss them, but you need hyperium to make them work with all the shiny mods.

Did someone order +1 movement, +200 shield -15 manpower/turn and +15 science on CP destroyed? Oh it was me, and I ordered it 10 times...

Support ships are great because:
• + fleet movement bonuses stack and help a lot, especially with riftborn. (I herd you have slow fleets, so we put some fleet speed bonus on top of your fleet bonus, suddenly 20 movement np.)
• + fleet shielding stacks aswell, since energy weapons are the meta, you should get some of those in the fleet, combines with personal shield ressistances on ships gives you hell of a buffer
• as mentioned above, on kill CP bonuses stack aswell, get science while you fight, win win
• titanium siege mods are a must for reasonable siege times, if you get to siegeing
• Support ships draw fire from your dps ships, giving you more overall dps, cause your dps ships live longer

Good early game fleet:
• 5 attacker ships, preferably with at least one kinetic for antimissiles, rest long range beams, you can split tank them, or just go kinetic tank if you have the shields on your support ships, but that relies entirely on what your opponent is bringing.
• 5 support ships, bringing whatever mods you need +speed/+shield/+science per CP destroyed/+siege
• I personally prefer to stick to small ships until I have extra mods unlocked (which need T2 stratetics, so it's pretty late or never), but watch out for barrage card
General No-No's
• Missiles look good on paper, but are easily countered, through kinetics and short range tactics.
• Short beams look good on paper, but are easily countered, through simply selecting long range fleet tactics.
• Don't get me wrong, they both can work under certain situations, which do not occur too frequently, so let's say it works everytime, 20% of the time.
Identifying weapon systems on enemy ships:
• is actually really simple, just compare it to your own, guns are so different that it usually is a dead giveaway
• Spot easily countered stuff and adapt your strategy
• Low short range efficiency and kinetics = missiles
• Only short range efficiency and energy = short beams
• Certain pirate ships only use missiles, know this, use this to your advantage.
Don't forget to:
• Check all ships in the enemy fleet carefully, you might be catfished into thinking it's a stupid short fleet, but only the first ship is, rekt.
• That minor faction bonuses from Mavros (-10% ship cost) and Hissho (+20% weapon dmg) are gamebreaking, try to get your hands on those

Hero usage

Ok, let's assume you have a fleet and want to engage, do you have a hero that would help it? Right heroes are OP, bad heroes are sadly irrelevant.

• Heroes with fleet dmg bonuses are great help, look for racial bonuses to specific weapon damage to win you fights - cravers kinetics, sophons/vodyani - energy weapons etc.
• Perfect hero is the vodyani starter, you get guardian bonuses and vodyani bonuses resulting in about 200%+ bonus to energy damage in the endgame, being just flat retard proof, unless retard uses kinetics instead, even then, like 120% dmg bonus only, lol
• If you are at a real risk to having to use your hero outside your system and can not groom a spare one from market for this purpose, you should opt for those dmg bonus skills
• Hero ship dmg bonuses are mostly irrelevant
• Try to only have heroes attached for fighting and otherwise have them on systems, fighting gives ridiculously little xp
• Seeker heroes make fleets extremely mobile with their T1 off-lane movement bonus, use those to rush enemy home systems while they are stuck in front.
• Upgrade hero ships to increase their SWAG, and tank them well, they get a lot of aggro (and have lots of slots to stack avoidance with engines)
• Buy heroes if your starters suck, you can and should do that you know...
• level up heroes quickly through building/buying out big stuff
• Know your enemy's heroes and their potential bonuses, so you understand why are you going to get rekt and how much more you need to tank
• Some heroes have - ship cost bonus on system, look out for those, OP, it's also one of the T3 minor faction specific skills

Burning light is burning bright, your ass, as early as T2 skill can

Actual space fighting

Oh goodie, we are engaging now, all ready?
Oh wait, it's stuck, have to reload the save... ah it only took 2 minutes to resolve, nevermind...patience is a virtue.
If you are in an MP game of more than 2 people, do not watch battles

• You risk it will crash your game and you will have to restart and miss out the whole turn or two and slow everyone down
• You will slow the turn down

For starters:

• if you don't know how space combat works, view couple fights in singleplayer to get a general idea
• Cards are important, but you can adjust your fleet placement in advanced settings, the range groups are fixed, you need to move ships inbetween them for optimal results on demand, if there is a combat timer, you have to move them fast.

Range

• Every card represents three rows of ships at a set range, those ships will engage enemy ships on opposite rows and whatever else they can reach afterwards
• Ships approach each other through combat phases
• Medium range is potentially in short range in 2nd and 3rd phase depending on the opponents choice = you get wrecked by short beams in phase 2 if their fleet survives phase 1
• Long range is in medium range in 2nd phase, and short in 3rd phase.
• Range is defining to your combat strategy, having missiles means you will get countered by short ranged kinetics, having short beams means you will get countered by simply the fleet being set at long range and killing you before that.
• having versatile ships makes you uncounterable, which is why short beams and missiles suck, or only work once, or only work on retards

Crit

• Crits are nice, mostly become relevant once you have big ships you can stack crit increasing mods on, crits ignore defenses
• There is a combat card for increased crit damage (but features short range positions)
• There is a combat card to negate any crits in the fight for both fleets (oh you build crit huh? would be shame if someone...)

Card bonuses

• Are relevant but mostly secondary to the range provided on demand, read, select, make the best of what you have, some can be game breaking at the right moment.
• Since there are races that can basically faceroll any engagement with their heroes, you might have to simply outnumber and wreck them card bonuses being an important bonus too. Good luck with that

Advanced (results) view

• Advanced view enables you to pull advanced shenanigans, you can for instance move all your ships to one lane - for instance you are facing short beam ships, you want to put all the ships into the long lane, so you get 2 phases of free kity fire
• Advanced results enable you to better understand what did you do wrong, or what did opponent do wrong, learn from your and their mistakes, cause they might aswell.

Advanced tactics put into practice (pictures - range, cards, results)

Here we shall have some typical David vs Goliath scenario
Our happily participating volunteers are sophons beam fleet vs not so happily participating vodyani missile ark (made by endless AI).
We shall observe on this following example how

• Missiles are bad
• AI is silly
• Range matters
• Lanes matter
• Cards matter
• Solo Ark stats are mostly just paper

Oh lookie here, that circle looks grim, I mean green, 75% of military power on enemy fleet? Wicked!

First picture shows (in advanced view) how we have potentially weaker fleet of ships fighting against an uber ark (stats are overrated) you can see the ARK is missile based, I am using basic cards, making sure to select short range formation, my fleet is automatically split out into two lanes (which will later prove to be a mistake)

What the second picture shows is what happened after the battle, of course I won, cause (endless) AI uses short range engage on a missile boat (and while she was up all night, she actually did not get lucky), but that's not all we can observe from this picture.

• Notice how I have lost part of the ships in the first lane, even though they were "at short range", this is because the ARK was in a different lane and thus was in a medium/long range to the first lane fleet.
• The report states the ark was dealing damage in spite of being at short range with missiles, what it does not indicate is which ships the damage was dealt to, but you can see that from all the not-short ships being destroyed.
• Honorable mention goes to card bonus which succesfully ate away a large portion (over half actually) of incoming damage, saving the other ships on the lane 1.

But yey we still won, whatever right? Anyway let's see the same scenario, only done a little smarter with a slight change....


This is basically the same situation as in the first picture, precombat arrangements are same, but this time, the first lane of fleets was moved to the second lane, because if there is only one ship, it can only be on one lane, the lane being the middle lane. Let's see how that will make a difference.


Yey, AI did not dissapoint, short range engage with missiles, cause crit4life. What about sophons? Oh, no losses, as you can see, all ships were at short range all the time, ARK simply could not deal damage cause missiles don't work at short range and there were no ships on other lanes it could shoot to. Well rekt.

Of course should the AI have used "power to shields" or some other long range option, it might have ended differently, but since I was always using the short range setup I was guaranteed that - should I survive till 3rd phase, I would probably destroy it in it, while it could not shoot back.

Dirty tricks

All is fair in love and war... especially if you are a questionable character, know bugs? use them, enemy surely will, or agree on not using them (like not picking horatio, muhehe)

• In terms of racing who manages to click things first, host wins, host more games, but have a good PC and bandwith, or die,
• Defenders have it better, repair your ships after every combat and watch the enemy army wither one by one, of course, you gotta click quickly, you gotta be the host or lucky.
• Dusty races can easily change their fleet setup on a whim, play mindgames, show silly fleet makeup, then bring something else
• If you need it to win, be a berk tryhard, set up peace only to prep up invasion, why not, but be ready for consequences
• You can retreat after unsuccesful invasion and then invade again, same turn, really, just need to bring new manpower in, rinse and repeat to drain conscription pop fast, give them rekt delivery ASAP

On the ground

• Usually the ground battle is guerilla vs conscription, guerilla offers most efficiency to attacker, conscription offers most defenses to defender
• If possible engage once you have sieged away all extra manpower, that way you can usually win systems in one turn, otherwise conscription and decent army profile should hold even with low manpower, unless you have endgame techs for extra dmg etc.
• Tanks are rather early tech and you should go with 100% tank profile ASAP., infantry is useless without special traits and aircraft is fairly endgame, by that time, you will still stick to tanks, cause you will have them upgraded the most.
• You can drop off your manpower and go somewhere else, for instance go grab a refill or go mess up another system, no more sitting around like in ES1, you can make it annoying by having your opponent need to click through 10 combats a turn and if their defense infrastructure is not solid, you are hitting hard.

Manpower

• Is generated from food income at a % which can be adjusted by random events, the alaways available law and system upgrades (Patriot pills, Exotic rations) and also faction specific technologies like horatio food upgrade (once you have food to industry conversion, you can scrap the extra conversion to increase your production yield), specific minor factions also generate manpower
• To quickly generate manpower one can use "not so infinite" upgrade Chain gang (N-way fusion tech) to instantly (next turn) turn one pop unit (or essence in case of vodyani) into 300 manpower, this essentialy means that with spare pop you can get 300 * number of systems manpower next tern whenever the need arises
  Upgrade however blocks construction queue and it's use it thus inefficient and should be avoided by having a decent manpower stock available at times of need.

• Empire manpower is an invsible stock where manpower goes to and comes from, capacity of this stock can be affected by faction traits, faction quest rewards and military technology tier
• Fleet/System manpower depletes said empire stock to fill available capacity - this means upgrading systems, producing fleets can deplete empire manpower rather quickly, fleets refill manpower at a % rate when orbiting systems (even the enemy systems, actual rate and numbers unknown, but there are bonuses to it)
• Manpower is then used to invade or defend systems in ground battles by converting available values into units as dictated through your empire troop diversification.
• You can adjust your % army values at any time prior to the actual pre-fight conversion. However if the battle has already began, only new units (from conscription for instance) will be converted.
• Remember that adjusting the troop layout costs manpower, adjust prior to producing fleets, so you actually can adjust.
• Manpower pgrades matter (but don't upgrade troops, upgrade and get armor), Techs matter
• Systems under siege do not produce manpower, you can however bring manpower by ships and they will join the battle next turn from the orbit

Influence overtaking

• easily countered through war (can't covert someone you are at war with)
• fairly infrequent in MP, but not impossible
• watch out for the trees, their influence is in the vines
• dunno if they fixed it, but probably still does not work for vodyani, and I am not sure it even should

Politics and laws

The state of your affairs may make or break you combat capabilities through laws, I suggest you check each government law carefully in game to get a better understanding.
Remember that republic can have 25 to 100% stronger laws at the same price.

The laws have tiers which limit how many election cycles does the party have to survive (political experience and also party support) in order to have access to said law (at least that's how I understand it, it's probably different but hey, manual does not really say much about it)

• Laws either superpower your fleet effectivity or make them easier to produce thus their efficiency.
• You can change laws every turn at no cost (probably a bug)
• Laws applied just before you press fight still apply even if engaged before.

Obvious subject of interest are the military laws

• T1 = -15% cheaper ships
• T2 = +25 dust and science per CP kill
• T4 = +50% dmg on ships and troops

T4 law is an obvious gamebreaker, but can be difficult to reach and maintain
T2 is very strong early game, with republic its +50

Also interesting are science laws

• T1 = + 2/3 movement on ships
• T4 = + 30% dmg on ships

And no less interesting are the industry laws

• T2 = +15% indy per strat deposit +1 strat deposit value
• T3 = + 30% ship hp
• T4 = + 4? indy/pop

Technically if you are in democracy, it should be possible to reach and maintain even both of these laws at once, unfortunately you can not affect the elections that way and it is probably more efficient to run one law with republic at increased effect.

Influence costs

• Are high. but actually pretty buggy, you can enable law, benefit entire turn from it, and if it's expensive enough, it will autocancel by the end of turn, so...IT'S FREE (example: have 200 inf, law is -180 inf) next turn law was disabled, I have 250 inf, I had the bonus entire last turn.
• Tough to compensate for with unhappy pop
• Get Interspecies HR unique upgrade early

ES2 How do you do: Lumeris

Sup, since I have been playing a lot of ES2 since it's (slightly premature) release I want to share my vast yet very subjective (read possibly incorrect, random blah blah blah) wisdom, of how to achieve greatness in the game.

My personal favourites as of late are the Lumeris. So we shall start it off with them. Guess I should explain why, the answer is simple, Lumeris kinda suck, and that's the point, when you rock the game, there is no excuse like "OMG [insert any other race name here] op race".
But they have good lore background and suite my style the most, and are mostly easy to manage.

Dust, powerful stuff

General stuff

Let's look at what we are talking about at their wiki page.

Yup, so basically they are a bunch of spacefishy fellows behaving like the Venetians of space.

Their racial bonus is not amazing but still strong, they also have a strong faction quest rewards and ok-ish faction specific techs to make up for it.

As for the planet broker affinity, it is not that great, in the early game, it feels really good and strong while you can just go shopping around the galaxy, but the outposts get quite expensive quite quickly (first is just 223, second up 340ish but 10th is 2K for instance). It frees up your construction queue and industry to do other things, but lategame it can tie your hands with planets being worth 4,5K, 20K and more, but you should never get there on smaller maps.
The ability to sell your planets/outposts comes in handy for diplomatic means, but it is not going to be used overly frequently unless you feel like being a nice person, it can help you combat the growing price of new planets and overcolonization on rare occasions, and get you out of trouble by simply dropping said outpost/colony for other player to leave you alone (and then to tryhard by wardecing again and killing you without said system).
As far as racial bonuses go, you have the blockade breakers, which will provide little help, by enabling you to trade at reduced efficiency even past blockades, this can come in handy in crowded galaxy in which you were forced to have indirect trade routes through other empire's planets. This bonus is far from defining your gameplay and almost irrelevant in most playthroughs, but faction wise makes sense, so you can sell off middle planets and not break your trade route setup.

They start off as a republic (best gov, if you ask me) on an Atoll planet with gnashast pop pacifist/military government (enabling you to go for lower fleet costs, if dire need arises).
Pacifism sux if your opponents are assholes, and it's efficiency scales of the number of players in the game, but as a republican, you can score stronger bonuses than other peaceful races currenly picked with ridiculous frequency (like unfallen).
Starting hero is a lumeris (duh)/seeker, Lumeris talents are not really that worthwhile with the later top tiers not being bad for planet management, but not providing much value in combat (unlike some OP races that get T2 +80% fleet energy damage (sophons, vodyani...), look out for those heroes on market, since they are currently gamebreaking). You'll have to settle for +40% dmg from seeker line, but even that is subpar, but at least early available and can turn fights in your favour if you get into them (you should not, but will have to).
Yet with the current state of the game at 1.0.52 (space combat xp sux) will have you keep him as governor for 90% of the time, so do not worry much about it.
His starting skill +10 dust per anomaly on system (fairly useless) truly encourages you to use him as a third scout ship for the first couple turns, until his first skills make a difference. (as opposed to someone getting +15 influence flat, like vodyani, not op at all...)
Dust inflation wrecks you partially, if you play with max AI count, they will flood the market and destroy your ability to buyout stuff quick (yup, inflation can be like 2.5 on turn 15), so ups and downs, but players do not have that increased income, so you should be fine.
From now on, "guide" assumes you kinda know what's up, if you don't, read wiki, pray, and ask silly questions in comments to your heart's desire.

First couple turns

Turn 1:

• Attach hero to scout(s) and investigate all anoms (this generates XP, you want xp fast)
• Enable Super Tax Act law (galaxy is not dusty enough, and you need dust to expand)
• (Situational) Create separate fleet from scout ship (deattaches hero as a solo ship), refit his ship for extra probes, and upgrade/add engine if you want to. (this does cost dust though, but that should not be a problem)
• Set queue for home to

• available planet with good stuff like luxury on it
• if, there are many starlanes and the galaxy is huge, upgrade your caravel with preffered weapon, but mainly a T2 engine and put it in queue)
• Cerebral reality, if nothing else really works for you

Turn 1+

• Look around, search for suitable planets, you want luxuries, nice anoms, fertile stuff, again, heavily situational, sometimes there is gotta be something better around, and sometimes beggars can't be choosers.
• If there is no planet type you would desperately want to rush tech for, and you have titanium/hyperium in within couple turns, start the related tech (xenolinguistics preffered) and then go on to market and buyout techs.
  This will provide you with the dust you need to go shopping for planets, of course this only works if you can score a luxury/strategic deposits, if you can't, there is no need to rush the market.
  And buyouts can speed up your game and reward you for scoring some competitive multiplayer objectives (for instance if you get 75 antimatter for having 4 systems, you can sell it for 5K at the market and dominate early game.
• Turn 1 outpost can work, but it better it be worth it.
• Try not to have two outposts up as your food output is not likely to cover it and it will result in losing pop on main planet, you can fix this by rushing the planetary landscaping, but even then you are better off not doing it too early
• Get the +indy improvement from the research to speed your further production up.
• Choose the most probable quest path, Lancelum (5 planets) is usually a safe bet and doable early.

Turn 5 (fast):

• Once the hero is (investingating anomalies does wonders for early xp) level 2 - 3+ and you don't need him around to scout anymore I suggest giving him +40 science and putting him home (that's turn 5 minimum because of the assingment duration), cause your science output sux, cause you are lumeris, and that's the way of the balanced gameplay.
• Gid gud, by now you should
• see stuff
• know which planet types to focus on in research
• spot potential threats and neighbours, minor factions, and bribe them if you want and can afford to
• know what to do with your life and this galaxy, adapt!
• have your first system upgrade resource selected from those available, if you wanna be hardcore you go with supersbuds, but they suck, inflation is going to shit on you end game no matter what you do, jadonyx is nice for production, transvine is great if you intend to expand like crazy..

Turn 20ish :

• Assimilate factions already! Good traits win games, hissho tait op, mavros trait op... "balance"
• Think about the T2 and T3 strategics, will they be relevant to you, do you own deposits?
• Getting rushed? Well kill them, you have early advantage and they are stupid not to know.
• Getting rekt by OP race anyway? Well, try for peace, give up some planets, you can make a comeback, I guess, be friendly, give up your ego and turn into full support role, might even win eco by accident anyway.
• Nothing happening? Good, keep making friends.

Turn 60 (fast):

• Things went well, you expanded, you have like 4 trading companies and more coming up, you make about 15K dust a turn have couple peaceful coplayers boosting each other, possible one nemesis you keep throwing ships at.
• counter enemy stuff, play it smart, don't be a space-retard, and watch out for mixed model fleets to confuse you
• every turn at this high income totally wrecks the inflation and your ability to buyout stuff, be prepared, your money till now is worthless, cause... "balance". But so is everyone else's, oh wait no one else buyouts so hard, haha, screw you.
• You should get enough influence to maintain fair trade law and have the main quest for indy conversion unlocked, if you enable both you should reach about 30K dust per turn, dump dust into whatever you need, upgrade the trading companies with rest, dump extra luxuries as they come, you can only have 999 after all, my precious now also becomes relevant, cause your income is high enough to scale well with the percentage, even more than super tax act.
• Use shift + click on a luxury to sell it all
• With increasing inflation, luxuries will become your main source of dust, cause they scale aswell, check victory page to see how much dust you need, but don't tell anyone it's GG in two turns, it might not even show, remember market sales do not count for your eco victory, you need to generate the dust yourself (if you have 600K dust, but you are supposed to make 300K, dump said dust into trading companies, to reach it faster)
• Alliances increase the target values of  specific victory types, does not always show in the UI, if you need to win and fulfilled your requirements, just drop alliance and win.

Turn 70+ (fast):

• Either won or getting rekt, make more dust, win sooner.

Turn 80+ (fast)

• Economy victory is off, check settings next time, time to make big fleets and win through combat

General advice:

• Since you will search lot of anoms, you should get science party coming up, try and have it, dirty hands act is strong for your early game and helps you compete on wonders
• If you feel like it, go for the competitive wonders, noobs mostly don't care enough for them, cause they are still busy making colony ships and stuff, it depends a lot on the situation, but riftborn can probably do it faster than you, cause... "balance".
• Yet might not have both mats, since the loot from anoms is random, only one to guarantee enough mats are riftborn if they get hyperium tech really early. Since lumeris get extra scout(s) you can score more strategics than they have through exploration.
• If there are pirates (or minor factions), and there should be, be battle ready, but do it smart
• not overly early, but soon enough, get a fleet of 2 brigs + 2 junks, dont forget engines on junks, but max out science on kill mods on them, then camp minor faction systems/hunt pirate fleets to supplement your science income (high minor factions difficulty will get your overwhemled eventually, get bigger fleet by then)
• Try to get strongest mods you can, titanium weapons DO matter, but if you get lucky, non-strategic high tier weapons will give you an advantage aswell, try to fight with the on CP kill dust and science law up, it rocks
• Pacifism has +15% fidsi bonus for you per peace, make friends, save up influence for peace, get more influence from said peace, repeat.
• Faction quest is good for you (+3/4 luxury deposit value on empire, 75% indy to dust conversion), try and pursue it within limits.
• Trading company income is your potential faction intended endgame, pursue the trading, spend extra dust in upgrades to companies, sell un-needed luxuries, turn on market pop ups for price watch, you should always get 2nd trading company up first, that's 1K dust for nothing.
• Remember, having luxuries beats inflation, high level companies reward tons of luxuries even though you lvl them for dust income, get appropriate techs when able and try to increase your system trade value (through said techs), build companies/subsidiaries on relevant luxury resources.
• selling stuff on market does not count toward your economic victory, but enables you to level up your companies to generate more dust.
• Try to maintain pacifism as much as possible to have fair trade bill available for endgame eco needs
• Avoid unnecesary fighting unless you know you can win and profit, in larger games it slows down both of you, usually it's better to be at peace, but explain that to balanced cravers.
• Maximize your dust/turn income, be rich, reinvest, get an advantage from being able to buyout a battleready fleet on demand
• Get tanks ASAP or as soon as needed depending on your manpower levels throughout the game and upgrade them. Noobs usually hang around with infantry, so you counter them, unless they have minor traits for op infantry, then well, you still counter them.

Lumeris main questline

Quests for lumeris consist on mostly reasonable requirements which relate to planet control and senate manipulation, active laws, etc... the important point of choice is whether to go for eco or indy branch, I suggest you evaluate your capabilities of completing either, indy law reward is nice to have, but either eco or indy senate is tough to maintain mostly (and not really intended to be maintained by design)

• Lancelum (5 planets) is usually a safe bet, don't really choose anything else
• Branch eco vs indy (save up dust for elections, do lobbying for chosen party, gg) but check ahead if you can complete the followups:
• Eco continues with task to have 3 minor/major faction systems under control - could be trouble, or even impossible
• Indy continues with task to have 3 HUGE planets (usually desert/ash/lava), again, could be trouble
• These two eventually reward you with bonus luxury deposit value of +3, up to you whether it is worth it, it should be
• Final part is choice from unique upgrades in which you can only reasonably choose the 75% indy to dust conversion (which you can research on your own later) other's are mostly shit, uselss and again, shit.

It is also worth mentioning again that lumeris don't get any relevant racial bonus to trading so with minor adjustments this should work for any peaceful eco strategy, other races might even do it better.