really dude, you need to learn to read the forum threads that have time and time again answered most all of these questions...

nice

(6am and i just got back and i'm wasted )

PS sorry for repeating questions that have already been made, it's just easier writing a post, i guess

I'm inclined to be a raider. My doubts are about fleet/defense configuration and planet configuration. There are some threads with mixed opinions on that, and the technical info is limited. I didn't find any thread that analyzes it statistically (mainly fleets config).

Another doubt i have concerns farming in early stages of the game, and appliance of resources. Should i just work my mines and work on fleets after mines are completed, or should i also work on technology, or should i work on every aspect (mines,technology,fleets) right early on?

Get your buildings and research going before you get a big fleet going. A small raiding fleet is good to have. But get yourself producing a good amount before you get a bigger fleet.

i say 15 metal 13 crystal and 10 deuterium for a start...
But doen't forget to build a shipyard and some defenses.

I thought building defenses now would be a bad investment since i'm protected as a newbie player (<5000 points) if i'm not mistaken.

Its 10K points. Other people below 10K can still attack you.

Newbie protection does not make it so you can't be attacked but only so that u can not be attacked by players with five times as many points as u... so lets say u have 10 points, people with up to 50 points can attack u or if u had 3000 points than people with up to 150000 points can hit u. Once u break 10000 points people with any amount of points can hit u... that is why u learn to fleetsave.

I've sent a probe to a specific planet and got this:

XXX [X:XXX:X] le 15-10-2009 XX:XX:XX
Metal 2.977.822 Crystal 2.599.400
Deuterium 1.616.329 Energy 13.972

Attack
Probability of the destruction of the fleets intelligence : 0 %

So as usual i see that the planet has no defenses and that the prob of the destruction of my fleets are 0%.

After attacking i got this:

Attack Report [X:XXX:X] (Attacker Lost
(In other terms, attacker lost in the first turn.))

Attacker Loss: XXX.000 Defender Loss:0
winnings Metal:0 Crystal:0 Deuterium:0
Debris Metal:XXX.000 Crystal:XXX.000

So seems that from the initial spy report that he had no defenses, but as i attack i get wiped out and he doesn't even lose one unit of defense. What am i missing? (The planet in question is from an inactive player, btw)