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Hi guys just wondering if I can get some tips on how to play the imperial, I've played a couple of games and seem to get smashed by nebulons.

I'm quite defensive in nature in the way I play the imperial, are they more of an aggressive faction?

Imps are quite aggressive...just look at the number of black dice they can field.
Rebel ships are more maneuverable; playing defense against them just lets them snipe at you while staying out of your monster front arcs.
Next game try moving slow with your VSDs, but always keep your nose pointed towards the target. Move in on the target and try to time a Concentrate Fire dial on a maximum shooting round...turn 4 is usually a safe bet for Concentrate.
Also, turns 1 and 2 are setup turns. I usually do Navigate and repair just to hold the tokens should I need to bump my speed or fix a shield that got burned down.
Also the FAQ lets you use specific tokens and matching dials.
A VSD with 4 Engineering can use a dial for 4 repair points and add a repair token for 2 more. That's 6 points...enough to either restore a shield or remove 2 damage (like those annoying crits that don't let you regen defense tokens or shields).
If your playing Empire, Attack, If your Rebels, snipe and move.

Cool, I'll try that next game, what do you suggest in terms of Support for the vsd, I have the gladiator and the fighter pack.

Demolisher is an amazing, amazing, AMAZING (did I say amazing?) ship, because it breaks a game mechanic. EVERY other ship in the game has do all their shooting before they move, and so you can really take advantage of staying out of arcs, staying at range, etc.

Demolisher allows you to shoot out your front arc with a couple red dice to either drop some shields or force your opponent to use some defense tokens early on. Then you move in close, turning a broadside at them, and let loose with your 3 black and 1 red into whatever arc you targeted before. Or, if you like Expanded launchers, try to shoot the side first then come about to shoot out the front, as you like.

Both require the Demolisher to get in very close, so make sure you're using your evade token early on as much as possible to avoid damage, because it will be no good to you at close range.

Your VSD, in my experience, works best as a VSD 2, not 1. A 1 with expanded launchers looks really scary, but it's easy to avoid those black dice. Since rebels have a lot of ships with blue dice, they need to get close to do an appreciable amount of damage and trigger a lot of their special abilities. They'll be avoiding your front arc like the plague, and if they're good at maneuvering it's not hard to do. Because of that, I like to take Enhanced Armament to make my right and left sides have equal amounts of red as my front usually has. If they're playing the range game, now I'm just as good on the side as the front and their maneuvering is moot.

I'm a fan of gunnery team, as well. It's nice sometimes when you DO get a couple ships in your front arc to be able to let them both have it, or if they're ever trying to stay in a formation and remain in 1 arc to reduce the amount of shots you get.

Basically, the demolisher runs in and smashes face, while the slower VSD needs to maximize its chances to fire.

As for fighters, there's a lot of permutations. I'm a fan of the aces, and so I take soontir fel, mauler mithel, howlrunner and a tie advanced (I usually don't have the points for vader). They do a surprisingly good job of staying alive, and dishing out a lot of damage. Consider Admiral Chiradneaux to keep Mithel flying and doing his damage.