Things Not Clear in the Manual

1) Research logistics technologies (they along with new hulls and life support are the pink ones in the tech tree).

2) Correct, more constructors.

3) Only one fleet/ship/starbase (however your units are grouped) fights at a time; the "strongest" one in a tile fights first. A military space station will make all nearby ships of yours stronger if you have built attack or defense assistance modules on it. Regular weapon and defense modules on a starbase only come into play when the starbase itself is attacked and enters combat directly.

4) More labs increase your research capacity--you also need to actually set spending to utilize that capacity. Labs can be anywhere but it's a good idea to try and make at least one planet devoted entirely to research so you can get the most out of your tech capital (which doubles research on the planet you build it on). You can also build many nearby economic starbases with production-assist modules to further amplify the research there. Some players have taken this to an art-form and reached some truly extreme research levels on single planets.

5) The Dread Lords themselves shouldn't ever be talking to you. If you play as say, the Torians, though, you may find the Drengins commenting about your races' past history together, story-wise. Make sure you're not confusing DLs with Drengins or Korath.

6) You can't make offers to races seeking to surrender. The other races may have had better relations with the surrendering one, or maybe they had some other reason for surrendering to them.

7) No, you get only their planets. Everything else is lost, though in DA their ships may be split up between remaining races or become pirates.

8) Some techs may provide ability bonuses, in which case you'd still want to get them. Otherwise, particularly as far as weapons and defenses go, there's no harm in skipping ahead when possible.

9) IIRC if the button says Skip it means you still have ships left that have not moved, so ending your turn now will make them skip moving.

10) If you have any specific questions feel free to ask.

11) No.

12) Build ships faster by having more factories on your shipbuilding worlds, and by raising military spending in the finance screen. You can also pay a fee to have a ship completed in one turn if you can afford it.

1-Research the Logistics tech

2-(answered)

3-What you see is what you get: the only ships in the fight are the ones on the combat viewer. If the starbase is on the viewer, then the starbase is fighting. However, if the starbase has abilities other than weapons - such as the weapons assist modules - those will affect the ships in its radius, allowing it to indirectly assist in the combat even when it isn't actually fighting.

4-Mostly yes for the first, yes and no for the second.
--Technically, labs don't actually represent research production, but rather the capacity for turning funding into beakers. That said, the more labs on a planet, the more beakers you can fund the production of.
--For the most part, a lab is a lab is a lab, regardless of where they are. However, the Technological Capital and Research Coordinators make it a very VERY good idea to try to specialize planets for technology. One world with nine labs and a tech capital will give more beakers than three worlds that each have 3 labs, and one of which has the tech capital.

5-*shrugs* Could be. I haven't run into this yet.

6-Not that I'm aware of, unfortunately. That's why you should try to conquer in bursts, so as to pick up as many planets as possible on the turn that you push an enemy over the edge and into surrendering to somebody.

7-You get their planets, and sometimes a ship or two (depending on alignment). I don't think you get their research, though it's been too long since anybody surrendered to me for me to remember definitively

8-Generally, "the tech to the right" is better than the ones to the left. As for skipping, it depends on the tech line. Many techs give you inherent bonuses for researching them, making it worthwhile to research them even if you've traded your way past them. A couple bigger examples of this are various colonization techs, the miniaturization techs, and pretty much any "yellow" tech. If you aren't losing any bonuses or prereqs though, there's rarely much reason - if any - to go back.

9-Can't help here since I haven't noticed this happen before.

10-Governors are just a way to cut down on micromanagement. You don't have to use them, but if you want to do something on an empire-wide basis - like telling ALL your shipyards to stop building Frigates and switch to making your shiny new battleships - the governor will let you do that all at once, instead of going to every single shipyard individually and telling it to change its build orders.

11-Not that I'm aware of.

12-The easiest way is to equip more/better engines. Stick an extra couple engines on a ship, and it'll move faster. Researching better engines gives two advantages: first, it provides faster and smaller engines to put on your ships, and second, the first tech of an engine "type" (i.e. Warp Drive I) will give all your ships a +1 bonus to speed. There's a couple other ways (i.e. there's a trade good that gives your ships +1 speed), but putting more, faster engines on ships is the primary way to speed up your ships.


Now, to see if somebody came and answered everything while I was typing...

Edit: Wow, and by almost 10 minutes, too. Geez I type slow

Edit 2: I also see I mixed up "build ships faster" with "build faster ships"...

12b. You can build starports on other planets, which will enable you to build ships on that planet.

One easy to overlook aspect of the game when you're new is the finance screen (F4) - you usually want to set your production capacity to 100% and adjust the sliders periodically depending on what's most important to you. Ie, if you want to build ships faster you might set military spending higher, and would want 100% capacity. Note that you typically need a solid economy to keep your capacity at 100% (without deficit spending) as the game progresses (while it's not that critical to worry about a small amount of loss early when burning your initial bc).

The manual IS vague about some things. When I refer to it for DA info it usually barely mentions new features. I could see people new to the game being overwhelmed. I also utterly despise PDFs - they are so freakin' clunky, especially when they equate to an 80 page image, but that's a different issue.

12) In addition to what Kryo said, you can increase the rate at which a ship is built on a planet by shifting its focus to military production (this will cause social and research production to go down). The military production is denoted by the shields in the top left corner of the planet display; click on the circle tab just below the shields to shift focus. Also if the planet is not producing any social improvements then social production shifts to military production.

Hmm, tried to edit my post and it said I wasn't logged in, but I'm logged in. Odd. So rather than edit, guess I'll add....

If you click the "Databanks" you can find some good resources that explain and illustrate some stuff better than the manual. The strategy forum also has some good readings - look for "tips for new people" and similar types of threads.

You can't edit after someone else has replied. The edit link should simply be gone, though you may still get that error if someone replied after you loaded the page (so you still have the edit link despite not being able to use it).

Great Responses.

Here's another. I have re-checked some of my planets and notice that some just aren't building. ETA will say "never." I have the population, the money, and the approval ratings, it's just that nothing is being built though they are set to.

??

Are you focused on the correct area, ie: if you are building planet upgrades/facilities, are you focused on social? Does your planet have enough factories? Is your spending properly allocated in the domestic screen? You may have everything set, but if you're spending percentage is too low you will never complete anything.