Space Empires

Josh and I had a straightforward two-player game of GMT's Space Empires, using the Merchant Pipeline optional rule. The game went twelve turns, and while Josh hadn't crushed my empire by that point, it was obvious that he was going to win: he had cut my supply lines, had almost double my production, and more than double my shipyard capacity.
Lessons learned and topics for further thought:

• In going back over the economic sheets afterward, I found that he poured more of his early game production into colonies and terraforming, while I put more into tech (ship size) and supply pipeline. 
• He thinks that colonies are a better early buy than  pipeline factors; I think it depends on your planet layout, since you may be able to colonize your outer planets sooner by pushing colony ships along the pipelines, and it may help your miner shift faster as well.
• Josh said that I needed to establish a forward arsenal, with a set of shipyards and a base. I had been thinking that MSP meant I could keep my shipyards back at home and quickly transfer squadrons forward; however, a dinky little scout can cut your MSP and that can mess up your transfer plans.
• I need to work out whether the extra attacks from having more battlecruisers is better than the extra quality of battleships. Josh thinks it's Scounts, Cruisers, Battleships, and Dreadnoughts; he doesn't think Destroyers and Battlecruisers are efficient. (This is assuming the Basic Game).

One nice point is that I remembered the rules pretty well despite it having been several months since last I played--I had to look up Nebula effects but that's something you can do when you need it. The only thing that I needed to remember and didn't was the build capacity limits for shipyards It's really, really nice to have a game that doesn't require studying the rules again every time you break it out.

Looking forward to the next game.