Entropy_King: Having spent some time on MOO 1, I keep coming across the same problem. As you build up your 'empire', you run into money problems (i.e. 'Deficit'), so you start randomly loosing ships etc, so you have have to turn everything over to building credits, and/or scrapping ships of your choice.
Problem is not helped by having to create civilian transports to get your colony up to speed, only transferring 1, (yes ONE)
citizen at a time....
No matter how well I'm seemingly doing, pretty much every other race is planets ahead of me colonisation-wise.
Then you may be attacked by another race with an enormous fleet. You wonder how they manage to support such a fleet?? So I'm feeling the dice are loaded against me....! Is it just me or do other players have any advice to sort-of even things up?
Then today I decided to try MOO 2, and MOO 3 onl;y to find they use dosbox with clunky 8 bit graphics etc. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. They are definily crying out to be re-mastered too!! I won't be them until that happens.

StarChan: My general afvice about MOO 1 is to start bullying your opponents as soon as you can and then ask them for systems etc. In MOO 1, they are ridiculously easily intimidated. (Low- to mid-difficulty setting.)

Entropy_King: Thanks very much. This is the sort of help I'm looking for! :-)