hehe, the cheblon clans. they have cloaking ability. hint when at war, protect the planet you know will be hit, such as a a big production planet, the cheblons will be forced to take on other planets if defended enough. i would also suggest moving research to at least machine gun fort before wars happen and build at least 3 to 4 on each planet.
i suggest you get manipulation tech right away, the quicker you do the more powerful you become and get the destructor ray techs along with cloaking techs later. then mix and match with other techs to get the most versatile fleet imaginable but i suggest many destructor ray ships and manipulation ships, which also leads me to the heavy space base you can arm that thing with the ship manipulation and the enemy has 400 plus ships, let em launch their manipulation bolts at the enemy and take control of them and then many enemy ships will die as a result because they attack their own. its a tried and tested strategy
hw is easy enough, research everything as soon as and build them in equal amounts depending on unit cap.
i like attacking the raider mothership with a scout, lure some fighter and missile corvettes away, then kami it into the mothership, the raider ships dont move after that :P. as an advantage you can capture the useless ships and either use them, retire them or kami them into other ships :D.
anyway, i never played the x series, i might check it out if its good. and alpha centauri is not for me, strategy building games similar to age of empires 2 and 3 are boring in my opinion. anyhow maybe you should go check these walkthroughs if you get stuck and dont know what to do, i wouldn't advise it if you want to find out what to expect.
IG2: humans, You start off with 2 worlds, research everything to begin with and start building 2 - 4 colonization ships and on the planet build a single space port and then goto the planet stats and select high priority for your civilian construction, more civvies you got the more taxes you get. i also suggest you train your spies up, because when it does come to another race, they will use spies on you. when the first mission comes, repel it by right clicking the enemy ship or ships. soon after you either get money from the traders guild, better relations or an alien Antari designed ship.
i recommend you do not expand your borders too quickly, concentrate on research and fleet building, any planet with production of lower then 100% will either go into spies, trade, or research. go into research, manually build a few spy centers and recruit a few, train them and put them on counter intel. i suggest you goto corvette when you can and tracked tank along with range extension to get an edge on your alien neighbors. when researched, pull up your planet stats again select all planet, put the production on military and high proirity, leave it for about 1 or 2 years then put everything the way it was before. once done, expand your borders, and keep doing the same thing over and over.
hope that helps :).
IG2 is starting to get boring. Once again a huge fleet randomly appeared, annihilated my fledgling fleet and occupied Delta colony. Despite puitting all my resources into ship design.
IIRC, in IG2 you could split (explode) your fleet when attacked, to avoid annihilation. You'd just lose a ship or two.