Start with the cap ship factory and then go with the extractors.  every second that the cap can be out in a map this small is worth while. take the asteroid that is adjacent to you, you can take it with just the akkan, but make sure to kill that siege frigate first.

also, it is easier to have his fleet come to you for the big battle as long as you have 3-4 overlapping repair bays on your planet, so keep the fight, or at least your ships' side of the fight inside those purple circles

So would you suggest claiming what I can, protecting what I can then let them launch the first major offensive against me?  Providing I survive should I then give chase and finish them off?  That usually work?

This is an incredibly easy win for you.  I suck when compared with most people who play online, but I can win this easily with the AI set to unfair.

The first thing you should build is your capship factory.  Queue up your first capship as soon as you start building it.

My first advice is not to build the akkan on this map.  Akkan is good for colonizing.  Thing is, this is not a big enough map to justify the colonizing cap.  You can just send a colony frig up to the connecting asteroid and take that, and that will be all you need. 

BUILD THE SOVA.  Get missle platforms on it as your first choice.  After that, alternate between heavy strikecraft and missle platforms. 

ALTERNATE CONFIG: Get embargo.  Send sova to enemy homeworld, start embargoing.

Other than that, just start spamming the frigate of your choice and hit his home planet in a rush.  You might want to drop 2 mil labs and tech to lrm, and just lrm spam him to death.  Otherwise, just go cobalt spam.

If you play vasari, the win is quite easy.  Drop 2 mil labs, tech starbase, then drop a starbase on his homeworld.

I'm solidly mediocre at Sins (I never have enough time to play either...) but thought I'd drop in a small hint on the Sova. When you're clearing out neutrals, set it to Hold Position (in your tactics.) If your Sova is holding, the neutrals will come to it, and you can sit there and drop missile batteries to your hearts content.

I don't have numbers to back it up, but my impression is the Sova is about the most effecient TEC cap for clearing out neuatrals because of those missile batteries.

So I ended up winning using everyone's advice...

Akkan vs. Sova - I built an Akkan since I already had that built before I saw the Sova advice.  I did end up building a Sova in late game though.  I can see how having a Sova first would make sense.  A Sova could have cleared away the neutrals around my nearby asteroid just as easy (easier really) and I'd then have a colony frigate come in to claim it.  That would leave me a stronger offensive capital ship at the start.

Claiming Terroritory - There were two ice planets begging to be colonized on this map and I did research the appropiate tech to do so.  However, I never ended up making it that far.  With an early pirate raid (my fault, I had enough money to bribe them onto my opponent but didn't) followed by my opponents first attack, I had to become more military minded right away.  Even if I did get around to claiming them the benefits of owning more planets really wouldn't have helped much.  My resource flow was already sufficient and there isn't enough time for lots of research or fleet building on a small map like this.

Repair Bays - Fighting within range of my repair structures is just beautiful.  Really makes early game battles at my planet so much easier.

Being a Wuss - So they attacked me and I destroyed their fleet and nearly destroyed their capital ship until it jumped away.  So I took my fleet and followed.  I finished off the capital ship and destroyed the remenants of their fleet around their planet.  I ended up pretty beat up and was still contending with their defense structures when another enemy frigate was built.  I figured it was time to retreat, get repairs and come back to finish the job.

I didn't really understand how long a capital ship can survive and felt a panic when the game told me my capital ships shields were down.  In hindsight I had plenty of time to stay and finish off the defensive structures.  But I didn't stay and next time I went back a large portion of the fleet had been rebuilt and there was a new capital ship awaiting me.  By this point I had researched some better frigates and started the battle anew with a rally point set on the enemy planet.  I also had built a Sova and won the battle decisively after awhile.

By leaving early I left all their extractors intact and their planet undamaged.  So their fleet was nearly destroyed completely, but they had their strong resource flow intact so rebuilding was a cakewalk for them.  A rather obvious, but when you are in the trenches of battle it can be hard to see straight

This is a very small system, and you're in a 1 on 1 situation.  Translation: bloodbath.  No negotiations, no long-term economic investments, just a relentless battle.  You need to be going all military from the word "go" and attacking aggressively.  If you hit hard enough and soon enough, you can keep the offensive going and you don't need to invest in defenses.  Keeping up the pressure is critical.

Now, I wouldn't go with the Akkan on this map.  As mentioned, it's a bloodbath, and your best defense is a good offense.  The Akkan is literally one of the most defensive and passive capital ships in the game.  Exceptional on larger maps, very poor choice on a map like this.  The best approach here is a carrier-class capital ship:  the Sova.  The Sova offers you the best firepower of any capital ship, between its missile batteries and its bombers and fighters.  Alternately you can use the embargo ability to siphon off the enemy's income and fuel yourself. 

Economy-wise, send three cobalts to capture the asteroid adjacent to your homeworld and that's really all you need to do.  Those ice planets look tempting, but you need to build two civic labs to access them.  If you pumped all that cash into military instead, you'd probably win on the spot.

Military-wise, you should build two military labs at the start.  The two technologies that concern you are repair bays and javelis LRM.  The javelis packs some of the highest damage for its cost of any unit in the game, and bringing it out early in a battle like this can be enough on its own to win the game, especially combined with a strong capital ship like the Sova.  The repair bay is important for a simple reason: if your Sova gets damaged you can send it back for repairs and within a minute it can be back in the fight at full health.  As well, if you ever get pushed on the defensive they give you some breathing space to push the enemy back without having to build expensive turrets or hangers.

Once you've suppressed the enemy a little, target the frigate factory.  If you can stop them from producing new units, you've got the game won.  Just keep your own units coming and victory is pretty well assured.

Replay the game.  And, as Kyle Reese said to Sarah Connor in The Terminator, "Do what I say!  Do exactly what I say!  Don't make a move unless I say!  Don't make a sound unless I say!  Do you understand?  DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!?!"

1) TURN OFF PIRATES, because they won't help you get better at playing the game (they really won't) - in fact they will hinder your development as a player.  Unless you just plan to play single player free for all type games, turn them off.

2) Here is your build order as TEC (start right away, should take 10 seconds to queue everything up): colonizer frig, capship factory -> sova, extractors, 2 military labs.

3) Send colony frig ALONE to the roid next to your planet.  Go right in, capture the roid, then attack the siege frigate with your colony frig.  Meanwhile, build a defensive turret directly in front of the siege frigate, as close to the roid as you can.  Then upgrade the riod's population, and queue up all extractors.  If you did this right, the turret will kill the siege frig and the cobalt.

4) As soon as it rolls off the assembly line, send the sova straight in to enemy homeworld, and start bombing his planet.  Have the missle platforms set to autocast.  If he has a carrier there, set sova to build fighters.  If he is building lrm (or illums or assailants), set to fighters.  Otherwise you might consider bombers.

5) Research lrm.

6) Set factory rally point to enemy planet.

7) Keep mashing "build lrm" button.  Fleet up as necessary to keep building lrms.

These instructions are all that is necessary to win in short order.  Note that there is no dilly-dallying or wasting of time with any of this.  The game starts and you build your factory and extractors and labs, queue up the colony frig and capship factory, and queue up the research right away.  As soon as the frig pops out, send it to the roid.  As soon as the capship pops out, send it to the enemy homeworld, building strikecraft and selecting missle platforms as it is moving.  Lrm should be queued up as soon as any funds are ready, and a continuous stream should be pouring towards the enemy hoemworld in short order.

You should win the game quickly.

After that, try a vasari game.

Do basic things the same (2 mil labs, extractors, capship, colony frig, blah blah).  But this time research starbase right away.  As soon as the research is done and funds are ready, send a colony frig to the enemy homeworld and drop a starbase (you might have to build an extra colony frig and have it on hand if the other one you sent to the roid can't make it back in time).

Send your capship to his homeworld too, of course.  You have a choice here.  2 recommendations to try are the skirantra carrier (keep it next to the starbase you send to his homeworld, and use "repair cloud" to repair it), or the desolator (get siege plaforms, attack his planet).

That should be all you need to win.  You might need to upgrade the starbase (hit points, attack) if he is putting up resistance.  You might need to build either skirmishers, or assailants to send as well.  But I doubt it - the starbase alone should give you the win.

You do need to cover for the starbase construction time if you do that, so I recommend skirantra with some skirmishers (skirmishers are tougher than assailants, but deal considerably less damage). Vulkoras is great for bombarding the planet, but it lacks in direct combat and support.

The solo colony-frigate colonization exploit that Agent of Kharma mentions is perfectly viable and a great minimalist approach, though sending three or four light frigates will also work.

On so little map ( only 7 planet ), i will build the cap factory, the Marza and directly go for destroy the home planet of the ennemy ( upgrade the Marza with "raze planet" )...

Marza Dreadnoughts can sterilize even the most fortified planets in seconds, whereas a group of five capital ships could potentially take minutes to do the same level of damage.

A map like these is more a "find and hit first" that anything other... during the cap ship factory construction and the Marza construction, simply build a few scout... once the Marza is build, your scout will have already find the homeworld and the possible ennemy fleet...

Marza are weak against fighter/bomber but again, it is a fast game and i doubt that the ennemy will have build a bunch of defense hangar around his home planet...

" A well-played Marza is by far the TEC's most capable capital ship duelist, and the advantages of using it for your initial expansion phase (this getting it several levels relatively unchallenged) even on quite large maps are hard to exaggerate. Combining in part the TEC's immense durability with a hard-hitting striking power, a single Marza is almost invincible to any ship without a sizeable supporting fleet--at least, in the early game. Plus, the Marza will take less damage from the initial expansions, and thus be ready to move on more quickly, than any other TEC capital ship."

That's more true in 1.17 than it is in the current version.  A Marza that finds itself up against a carrier capital ship will get minced.  If you pick Marza and your enemy picks a Sova, Halcyon, or Skirantra, you're in deep trouble.  I don't pick Marza first anymore as a result.

It might work against the AI, since it picks its first capital ship randomly, but I find it's safer with the Sova.

Also 1.17 specific; the Marza has definitely fallen out of favour and the Akkan is now the king of the TEC fast colonization blitz.  While still a tough tank and great at clearing planets, the economic edge of the colony cap is too much to ignore now.  Good Akkan players can colonize way faster than the best Marza players.

Marza has fallen from grace in 1.18 and onward.  These days, early strike craft are the norm, and the Marza has no fighters of its own, leaving it way too vulnerable to carrier-capital ships, and the vastly improved Akkan offers way better quick-colonization capacity.  With this, the Marza's only shining point left is raze planet and high damage output.  Powerful as that is, it's not enough to redeem it and it's now regarded as a second capital ship pick, not first.