There isn't actually a faction-by-faction guide that I'm aware of.  There are unit-by-unit guides and lots of generic (ie, faction independent) guides, but nothing that specifically addresses each faction.

Advent is very much a synergy-based faction, all about combining the strengths of a large number of different ships to create a very powerful overall army.  Take any one specific ship out of the equation and a disproportionate amount of their overall combat strength is reduced.

TEC are very much a faction of attrition; they have the cheapest frigates, the cheapest health and armour ugprades, and the cheapest healing support cruiser.  They also have good economic upgrades and the best heavy cruiser.  Very straightforward faction.

Vasari have expensive units that pack disappointingly little punch for their high cost.  However, they have the best auxiliary abilities in the game, such as the ability to set up "short cut" phase lanes that only they can use, phase missiles that bypass enemy shields (lethal against capital ships), mobile starbases, and scouts that can capture neutral extractors.

 

It can flip systems if your enemy does nothing about it.  That's a big if.  Very rarely happens in multiplayer.  Culture is usually used more defensively.

 

Diplomacy has not been released yet; only pre-orders are available.  So unless you're a dedicated Sins fan there's no reason to jump in yet (although pre-orders will get to participate in the beta).  Entrenchment is definitely worthwhile, especially if you want to play online (most people play entrenchment online, so it's hard to find a vanilla game).  Most of the entrenchment stuff only comes into play mid-game, but starbases really add a lot of utility and strategies that didn't exist before.

Ya, if you want to mod. Get Entrenchment.

I wouldn't be so fast to discount the value that effective micro-ing can bring, but the battle AI is good enough that there are diminishing returns on such an effort.  The AI has its flaws - everything from where a fleet would jump in, to which ship you want to cast certain special abilities on, to staying out of range of some powerful starbase are things I often like to manage on my own.  Thankfully, the game allows you to handle each of these quite nicely.  You can auto manage each ability by toggling that option on or off.  You can move the fleet as a swarm (or not), assign ships to smaller fleets (or not), choose the order of targets to attack (or not), etc., etc..  I would look at yourself as an admiral of a fleet instead of needing to be a captain of each ship.

What you definitely don't need to do is assign a task to each individual ship while paused, then unpause the game.  When you're dealing with a fleet of 50 or so ships, that would be a little daunting and not even remotely useful toward enjoying the game.

 

As said before, the unit AI is hardly perfect, but it is like a super computer compared to Starcraft and most other games. Units do for the most part attack units they are strong against, seiges do immediately start bombing enemy planets, support cruisers automatically repair damaged ships (not always the ones you want them to, but about 70% time they get it right). I do notice the unit AI tends to take the distance of the enemy units into account, so a light frigate will attack an LRM if it in firing range instead of a carrier on the other side of a planet, but usually this is what you'd want it to do anyways. The only thing you might have to watch out for is units that are good against several different unit times, so if you bring light frigates to take out carriers, you might find they are attacking flak if you don't direct them otherwise. I know that unit type is more important than damage taken in determining targets, so if you want to finish a ship off it is best to focus fire.

 

And as to focus fire, you almost always focus fire on the capital ships. Their abilities really can change the course of a battle, and they can level up and become stronger as they destroy your ships. Against the AI destroying their capital ships is usually all you need to get them to retreat even if their remaining frigates are far stronger than your fleet with capital ships, and in general this is what human players do to (except they retreat their cap ships before they get destroyed).

 

On mods, the Sci-fi movies/TV show mods maybe the coolest ones, but their are alot of other mods to consider as well. The Mad Scientists mod adds some new unit types and a ton of new research that makes how you spend your R&D resources far more important. The Dynamic Battle system mod fundementally changes the way fleets behave and will force you to command your forces in an entirely different way. Some mods have become what I call "Framework mods", these are usually graphics, sound, or new planet mods that are often incorporated into mods that add new gameplay elements, and can enhance the value of the mod they're in just as much as say the Star Wars ships.

 

Anyways, I'm glad you've joined us in playing this truly wonderful game.

 

Not to smack DS, (since I am part of the dev team) but it is kinda like MS

 

I wasn't trying to recommend (and certainly wasn't listing) any mods in particular, those aren't even the main mods I play. I just tried to give examples of mods that are not of popular Sci-fi movies/series (yet I help out with the Star Wars Requiem mod) that are still worth the time. Distant Stars is certainly one of them, but as ice said, DS and MS are pretty similiar mods. Really I recommend any prospective mod players try all of the mods as they possibly can.

Distant stars, MS (mad scientist)... and so forth... are mods... they generally have rediculously long threads in the modding section of the forums, and their features are far too numerous to try and name here. (search feature ftw)

 

I would, however, suggest, from personal expearance, that you should play the normal game (sins+entrenchment) for a while untill you get good with the game (alot of the mods tend to slightly turn up the difficulty level) and you understand all the game mechanics... infact, I would even say, hold off on the mods till you ALMOST get bored with sins... and then its like a whole new game again! (because, honestly... once you start dling mods... its hard to force yourself back to the now "boring" version. (unless your doing multiplayer, when its practicly required).

(and once again... after going to multiplayer... it gets really hard to go back to fighting the ai, cause the human opponets are so much tougher than the toughest ai)

right now... i just cant play normal sins because the new patch change log has me so excited, normal sins seems just pathetic compared to the new patch... and so i am stuck play mods (and i am actually helping play test a mod in progress as well)... and so forth.

You can no logner take control of enemy planets via culture, they simply are uncolonized. It used to be so u can take over in BETA, but it was deemed too powerful!

YES

very much so, especially for us modders, rare is the mod that works with vanilia (the original) anymore

definitely worth the cost of $30 (you only pay $10)