The meta changes with every patch so any detailed guide will be rapidly out of date.
The general truisms are:
1. Missiles early to mid game, until you have coilguns (plus lasers).
2. Point defense is a MUST throughout the game.
3. Coilguns or anything that can keep the alien beam weapons occupied firing defensively instead of offensively is a MUST or your ships will be torn apart.
4. All strategies are viable, (ignore hate, jupiter rush, turtle) but each has upsides and downsides.
Ignoring hate and going balls to the wall is the most fun, but if you screw up you have to save scum or recovery is extremely hard. Never impossible. Once you get on top though its all good.
Jupiter rush requires an extremely tight build order, lots of luck with the tech tree, and near perfect conditions. Its a hit or miss strategy.
Turtle is safest, but can be most boring. You have to time your break out just right (not so early that you get swatted down, and not so late that the aliens have snowballed). All while juggling the hate meter. The breakout battles against the teched up alien fleet can be extremely challenging. After that its a 20 year slog to clean up the solar system even though the aliens have no feasible way to challenge you anymore.
As for countering the alien invasion.... its safer to fight them on the ground as they disembark, but an extended ground campaign will also generate a fair amount of hate. Not everyone will find the ground campaign fun, as the micro required can be intense. And you will end up really hating the Servants.
However, it does keep you occupied while you tech up.
Richard Baxton held off four waves of mind worms. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character. People need heroes. They don't need to know he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy.
