Well I'm no pro, but I can tell you about what I've found out from playing:
Kortul (battleship): Can stand on it's own against the militia, but not much use supporting your fleet, leaving you open against your opponent. Not much good for a first.
Skirantra (carrier): Best for an offensive start in my opinion; allows you to clear out militia with relative ease whilst healing and providing a supporting foothold for your fleet against the enemy. kill flak with your skirmishers and let the strike craft work their magic. I consider microphasing to be useless, so I never upgrade this.
Jarrasul (mothership): Best for colonies, for obvious reasons. Has highly offensive abilities; nano-disassembly helps to kill off those priority targets with ease in a militia zone and grants you combat effectiveness against enemy capital ships later on. The gravity bomb is good against fleeing opponents, too (killing ships by denying them phase jump is a strong tactic when you're playing Vasari). All in all, most economic, though I personally find that it lacks survivability when the real fighting begins.
Antorak (Support): Not much use early on unless you are near your enemies' homeworld to begin with. Using subversion on their planets might place you ahead of your target enemy time-wise for a little while, but unless you're hindering their colonization efforts more than you have hindered yourself by having this ship, it's not going to be particularly useful. You may find a way to make it work, but you have to be able to stay on top of your enemy and build your own empire at the same time.
Vulkoras (dreadnought): Not great to start out with as it has no means of support whatsoever, but if you can send it on a crusade through your enemies early empire, you could do enough damage to make it work. Like the Antorak, not a solid game plan unless you really know what you are doing.
Rankulas (support battleship) A bit like the Kortul, though more capable of fleet support. The fact that their nano swarms can phase jump makes them decent short-range scouts, and being fully renewable, they're highly efficient. I especially find that their assault swarms are particularly helpful against structures, as they reduce armor and are powerful against them. the support swarms are OK for healing, but the Skirantra is better. The swarms are also EXP feed for enemy capital ships, unfortunately. Greater swarm isn't particularly good, either.
Also, about the recorded games... They have to be watched IN the game. You can open them in the single player start-up menu.
