Techological advances upgrades ships?

In GC1, you don't design your ships. This means that attack, defense, hitpoint and speed are just numbers. So they are automatically adjusted when your empire get new bonus (generally by discovering/getting new tech) that affect these values.

The answer to your first question is basically yes.

However, there is something to keep in mind. Since the improvements are usually measured in percentages, better ships experience a larger net effect.
For example: lets say you have ship A with 10 hit points and ship B with 100. You gain a tech giving you +10% to hit points. Ship A will have 1 extra hit point, but ship B will gain 10.

The lesson here? Don't throw away your old ships, but switch to building more capable ones when they become available. For Military projects (those are all of the different spacecraft), if you switch from type of ship to another one, all the production points automatically carry over to the new one.

Note however, the same doesn't apply to Social projects (planetary improvements). If you switch projects, the production points aren't lost, but they don't carry over either, so the original project remains partially done and you start from scratch with the new one. Thus, the rule of thumb with Social projects is to finish one before picking another.

Ahh thanks for the very good tips.

I am playing my second game now, blasting away minor civ after minor civ, while getting goodie-shoes-status on my gui.

I haven't swithced project yet, lucky me.

I will try to be aggressive and spew out stations since I control massive amoints ov sectors culturally and noone really opposes me.

Next step will be to crank up th IQ on the AI. Then I will learn humility.