OGame advice

I still can't make up my mind whether or not I like OGame. I pop over to it once a day to queue up new building constructions and research - it only eats up 10 minutes of my day that way, which is just fine, but I'm certainly not finding it exciting, nor am I really making much progress in the game. I feel like I've hit a plateau where the remaining meaningful advances are beyond what my planets can produce in 24 hours. So, instead, I just keep building more Gauss Cannons. Meh.

Today, some random new player contacted me, asking for handouts and advice. I'm still not really at the point of having excess (well, except Deuterium, on one planet) so I couldn't really spare any resources for him (well, I suppose "chose not to" is more accurate on the Deuterium, but the game has weird rules prohibiting charity and I didn't want to run afoul of them), but I did pass on some advice that I'd figured out, mostly in the forms of "here's what I'd do differently if I started over".

1. Start raiding Inactive players as soon as possible. To do so, you'll need Espionage probes, Small Cargo, and a Light Fighter or two. Inactive Players are the ones that have "I" or "i" next to their name in galaxy view. Lower case means inactive for a week, upper case means inactive for a month. Send an espionage probe first to locate planets with no current defenses. In the early stages of the game, quite a bit of your resource needs can be met by raiding defenseless abandoned players - you probably won't want to pick fights with active players till you've built up a bit.
2. Ignore the missile silo. It's a ton of expense, and not needed till much later when you're well established. I've built missile silos on all my planets, but never once needed one. It feels like a big waste of resources and fields, in hindsight.
3. The game's "fluff text" makes Deuterium seem like it's a big deal and really important, but honestly you don't need it hardly at all till later in the game. While I frequently lack the Crystal I need for a building or research, it's really rare that I'm out of Deuterium. In general, I keep my Metal and Crystal mines around double the level of my Deuterium Synthesizer, and it's only lately that that's been any issue at all. Crystal seems to be the biggest limitation to growth (at least at the point I'm at - that may change at the very top ranks of play)
4. It's gonna be a while before you need the Storage buildings. I built one early on, and it was weeks later before I needed it. So for now, save yourself the resources and hassle.
5. When you start spreading out to additional colonies, they won't need Research Labs. I built a couple of levels of Research Lab on my 2nd and 3rd planet, and now regret it. I actually dismantled the lab on one of them, which costs a little resources and time, but freed up more space for developing other buildings. Better to just build one big lab and ferry resources from the other planets over to fuel it. (At least that's better till you get the Intergalactic Research Network unlocked, which I haven't yet.)
6. Each planet has a particular number of available Fields, and each level of a building uses one up. If you colonize a crummy planet, it won't be able to develop very far. In the long run, you generally don't want to colonize planets with less than 150 fields. There's a terraformer that builds extra fields, but it takes a lot of resources and research to unlock it - I still haven't.
7. Aside from that, I'm afraid there's not much point (or benefit) in specializing your planets. It's much more effective to make sure every planet has metal, crystal, and deuterium mines. They'll all need Shipyards and Robotics Factories, too.
8. If you haven't checked out the OGame wiki, you should. It's got tons of info.

Not sure how amazingly wonderful any of that advice was, but I figure it's worth my saving here in case someone else asks. I suppose I could go put it on the OGame wiki... but I'm too lazy at the moment.