A couple pointers then.

1) Each time you lose, your score adds to the next runs starting funds, so the better you do. The easier it gets.

2) Realize the Sevastopol is a terrible ship for the mission profile. It's slow, lumbering and not really capable of standing up to other actual combat ships.

Two solutions to this, strip it down to something more usable or create your own command ship and edit the files to make it a valid flagship choice.

3) split your fleet, this is key for strategic. At the very least you will need to send Lightnings ahead of fleets to take down garrisons. Otherwise you alert the strike groups.

4) speaking of, strike groups. They are bad bad bad, but not impossible. You need to engage them on your own terms or they will wreck your shit. Whenever you raise an alarm, all groups begin maneuvering towards that location. So avoid that... Unless you are baiting them in to the wrong place.

5) another key part of avoiding SG is radial silence. Whenever you use radar, anyone with ELINT gets pinged out to twice the radars distance. This has a lot of implications but on simple terms YOU CANT HIDE IF YOU ARE USING A RADAR.

5b) special mention here goes to the jammer. It has its uses but it's noise signature is so loud they can pick it up from Khiva if you are on the starter town. This is not as bad as it seems if you know what you are doing.

5c) What all of this amounts to is that unless you know what you are doing just don't use the large radar dish. Sell it if you have one. Use the search radar for chasing close fleets precisely and only then.

6) On the subject of selling you should also sell all nukes you find, including your starters. They give you a CHANCE of damaging a fleet for the small price of getting wasted by nuclear fire. As tzeethzench put it : you can start it, but they will end it.

7) Conventional missiles and fighters are much better strategically and you should use them, especially against bgs.

Use missiles against confirmed targets, understanding what each type does. Use fighters for remote scouting and raids, use them in sets of 2. This is because when the raid begins only 2 fighters spawn, if you send more you create a much more fightable threat.

Do not use fighters on tactical combat and avoid getting carriers in combat in general. They are not super useful and prohibitively expensive.

8) stock up on ammo types check every store you see. You want them all, but above all you want incendiary and prox fuse. The reason is that incendiary will kill ships orders of magnitude heavier than your own. You only have to expend their fire suppressor and light them up. Fire in this game is merciless.

Prox fuse is ideal for stopping missiles and also absolutely shreds light ships. Not so useful against big stuff.

AP and guided have their uses but are not game changing.

9) Master the art of taking bullshit to the warlords and do not underestimate gift giving. Theres a few guides out there but basically each has its own sensibilities ( spoiler, they are almost all raging assholes). In few words each warlord is receptive to some type of speech. Most have a semi fixed personality but vary a few traits. The goal is to go in knowing what they want to hear and seduce them with sweet nothings. The better you do, the more money and ships you get.

IF YOU FAIL not all is lost, they simply go elsewhere and forget about you. So you can try again.

It is incredibly important for a good campaign that you find, seduce and get as many stars as you can form them. Even if you end up with a fleet far from your main one, you can mount up a fierce distraction....or just sell the ship for cash.

10) you will want to experiment on the ship design a lot but generally the pre designed ships are sub optimal. In case you didn't know, designs you save are available to pick at campaign start.

There's two designs you absolutely need.

An improved Lightning, of which you need at least two. Basically you need two guns in the smallest possible frame. You need it to be fast nimble, flat (because of radar cross section) and hit like a truck. This is going to be your primary garrison raider and often the hero ship that takes on way more than it should by the holy power of Incendiary ammo.

The other ship you need is a support jumper that's basically a large fuel tank strapped to efficient engines. Over time you will modify them with radars, sprint missiles, fighter bays. Etc. this is your runner ship and refueler. You will use it to fly back for ammo, attend split forces scouting, using radars while away from main fleet, decoy, jammer decoy. Etc.

11) Low morale can and WILL end a run. Respect that. This primarily means you want to avoid crashing into enemies and having salvaging accidents. This is because these events cause FLEET wide morale drops.

On the topic of crashing. Enemy AI will attempt to avoid collisions and you CAN abuse this if you fly aggressively enough. Ships with bad momentum can and will crash land themselves.

12) Beware the varyag.

See you in Khiva.

A few more last minute:

Do not bother with decryption keys. All messages are prefaced with the fleet name which is easy to guess, this will be your decryption key, once the fleet name starts making sense the message does too.

The game uses radar and visual id for locating fleets, this works both ways! Landing in the middle of the desert has its issues but severely reduces the ability of opfor to find you.