Hell, I'll settle for just knowing how to turn off the stupid 'you take random damage and are prone to losing units to the void for reasons entirely out of your control' ''''feature'''' included for some dumb reason.

The random damage in some maps is due to space debris and solar flares. You have to build the Anti-Radiation Field module in order to unlock the research upgrades to protect your units from the debris and radiation. If you're playing Higaraans, you would know because your starting units will include a Space Station. The Space Station has an anti-rad field that protects ships within a certain radius

Vaygr units are more resistant to debris and space/solar flare damage. They still need special units that have anti-rad modules installed to protect them but overall, they're tougher against the debris and radiation.

Higaraans need ships with anti-rad modules that generate an anti-rad field to protect other units. Civilian space stations have built-in anti-rad fields. Plus you can upgrade them with barracks to house more workers that produce more resources.

For a guide, you have to read the documentation that the modders meticulously wrote into the build tooltips. There's also an INFO button on the taskbar. That brings up other docs and tips on other aspects of the mod.

Another tip... Play as Vaygr first. That way, you don't need to worry about the concept of increasing your rank. Vaygr just need to research/build/destroy enemies to accumulate honor points - which increase your resource output, unlock units/upgrades and move you up the ranks. Moving up the ranks just happens.

Higaraans need to research/build/destroy enemies AND accumulate surplus resources to "buy" into the next rank. If you haven't saved enough resources, you can't "buy up" to the next rank. And after you advance to the next rank, you still need to spend resources to build crew and officer barracks to attract surplus crew and officers to crew your additional ships. And even if you have the surplus crew and officers, you need to get them into the production capable ships. That means building crew transports. If those ships are not fully crewed, they won't operate at full capacity/capability.

That's not half of it... you really have to read and experiment to learn them. Besides, it's fun to discover things.

So start out as Vaygr. Life is simpler for nomads. And they're tougher and less complicated.

When you're up for a challenge and micro-management, play as the tech-dependent Higaraans.