Not true! I haven't donated and I had ranged vehicles when I came out or protection. If you build your constructions correctly, you can come out of protection as a ready-made conquer machine.

I also came out with damage or ranged vechs I believe I had damage and ranged upgrade done in a few ticks.

Unfortunetely I had 2-3 squads of ranged tanks kill me 20-30 damage vechs as I lost protection.

Once I finally got free I found conquering fairly simple with defense the main issue.

A hint is that oil gives you more energy than it use to so a converter may be worth scanning for easy conquers early *shrug*

At least I got the converter and saved up for energy buildings later(as I was resource broke starting off, specially after losing my army)

Yup. Go straight for ranged infantry. Don't build any resource buildings or a vehicle factory.

To make a full squad of vehicles cost the same as making a full squad of infantry
Also as long as you have vehicle armour units with your vehicle range you should be able to deal with any infantry.

Outposts have always been my main source of income and they are especially overpowering in the early stages. Every world has thousands and thousands of outposts all over the map and 70-80% of them are undefended - I would say an even higher percentage at the start. If you can capture 10 outposts every day (not that hard with spam 1 man squads) you gain an extra 3000 metal, 2000 oil and 50 workers every 24 hours from razing them. At the start of an era it's entirely possible to do 20 per day, which is the same as using the large boost for metal, oil and workers every day, and you don't even have to pay for it.

Comparing that with a conquer, conquering an inactive player you lose no troops but they get deleted after about 100 ticks and you get 5-10 metal per tick on average. So a total of about 1000 metal over 3-4 days and a few workers. Still worthwhile for 0 loss of troops. With an active player, you often have to fight lose troops and get the same gain as an inactive because they rebel after 100 ticks, unless you want to spend time and resource crushing the rebellion, but with the gain per tick it usually doesn't pay. So the active players who are happy to build under conquer are most worthwhile, but it's pot luck which ones they are.

So as a source of income, conquers have always been secondary to outposts for me. I go for as many as I can without losing troops, but consider it a bonus if they last for more than 100 ticks, and save the fighting for war/protecting allies or those with crystals.

Im currently ranked 9th on Earth1 after 2000 ticks, and I have 0 conquers (lost all of the 70+ I had in the first 500 ticks) and 34 crystals. My score and power is almost all worker pop and army - At the moment I have 1279 worker population, and I find them to be more valuable than anything on BD

For early conquering, if you play right you can come out with rng vehs.
But honestly, rng inf should be enough.
If you play you cards well under prot, then you can come out with dmg anks, which is what i'm currently doing as it is 200 ticks in.
I might get the rng workshop bought, but chances are i won't make enough to be worth while yet.

I suppose it's different styles for different players, I always go out of protection on tick 1, and did my usual on F5 after the reset. I had damage heavy units by tick 120, and ranged done by 250 along with level 5 Gold mine Farm and level 4 lumber mill (and at least lv 3 on everything else). The fact that there were 3 mass boosts in the first few 100 ticks helped a lot but mainly it was from outpost capture and razing and gradually rising income from conquers, no boosting from me for those upgrades.