I've gotten the hang of most of the controls. I like this game but some things are a little confusing though.
1. In my first few games I played on Normal Excessive (I'm a veteran of other stardock games) and wanted to take some time to explore, build different buildings, expand etc. As soon as I would meet another race they would be WAAAAY ahead of me in power. Like almost double with the leader being triple. Granted I didnt have a lot of ships at the time being that my researched focused on other stuff, but even when everyone declared war on me and I started building medium ones, my power still didnt go up much. So I guess my question is, how is power calculated and how can I avoid being everyone's whipping boy?
2. I created a few ships from scratch and I saved them but when I started a new game those ships werent in the "user" tab anymore. Where did they go? Do I have to create new ships every game?
3. What do you do if you start a game and theres only like 4 habitable planets around you? Do you just start over or can you compete without lots of planets? And How?