Listen, this game is an RPG where you are thrown into a completely new galaxy / universe and the whole point is that it's all new, so I'm not blabbing about key plot points or how do accomplish anything worthwhile because quite frankly that is a major part of the game.

What I will tell you in as few words as possible, is what to pay attention to, and key game things that may not be obvious.

I was OK with some of this - it's like a scavenger hunt, but the difficulty and the nuance can swing wildly to what I thought were notoriously hard.

I thought there were side quests and main quests and I was wrong. Everything is a main quest, but some things you run across may not be entirely solveable until late in the game.

So it's really hard - do you try to solve it now, or just keep plugging away and hope that you'll make progress as you travel and discover new areas?

I don't have a good answer for you other than to tell you that EVERYTHING is a main quest eventually.

Clicking the middle mouse button is the same as toggling on the two buttons in the lower left corner. It's much easier to use the middle mouse button.

Once you click the zoom, you can use the mouse wheel to zoom in / out to a certain extent that is centered on your ship.

Take notes on everything that is not resolved.

Right mouse click on the map will bring up a notepad that will put a note. It will place this note whether you put any characters in the typing area or not, so to delete a note, you need to click on it and delete it.

A lot of creativity went into the missions your crew gets to experience whenever they are surveying an anomaly.

This game is also intended to be replayed so choices you make while surveying will have consequences.

Many times you will wish you could return (man I should have went for more gold! - but would have I lost more crew?? Decisions Decisions!) but most of the time, once you are done with surveying, you can't return.

So if you are surveying and you get a message that the team experienced white-out conditions, or a narrow canyon that was unstable, you can't research anything and come back. It is forever gone.

IMPORTANT

Planets that are surveyed will have a crosshatch pattern on them. There is no need to revisit, except for one planet as part of the Sunken Ship quest - look it up if you don't solve it on your own.

Planets that have more action on them will always have an exclamation point (!) indicating there is more activity you can do on the planet. Except for that stupid Sunken Ship quest.

The sunken ship quest will not show that it's re-surveyable until you are literally on top of it.

Besides the Chikits - they are a forever enemy, and the Ulooquo who are a permanent friend, the rest of the races you encounter can be more cannon fodder or they can be neutral and you can trade with them.

The problem with these neutral races is they can be a real PITA and for whatever reason, they tend to congregate around your ship or planets that you want to survey, or they'll just mosey on into a battle you're having and not help.

But then there is the problem - they can get hit by an errant shot and become instant enemies.

No worries, just quit shooting at them, exit the system, and things will calm down and they'll be neutral again.

And some Neutrals will turn on you if you choose unwisely. That's all I'm going to say about THAT.

IMPORTANT:

ALWAYS open up dialogue with neutrals and friends. They may have something new for you to choose in the dialogue options!

By and large, the way you open up new technology to research is by killing other ships and grabbing the pieces that break off in battle. Encounter an enemy with tech that you want? Kill them and hope for pieces that give you tech breakthroughs!

You also find new tech on some planets, but the key stuff will be the things that drop from ships.

You need many pieces and they are not all guaranteed to drop every battle, so you just got to keep plugging away.

The reason they continually respawn is to keep giving you materials and let's face it battles are mostly fun.

So enemy ships will respawn on the map no where near the wormholes or gates. They'll just "appear". It's kind of immersion breaking for me - I wish they would only respawn when I re-enter a system, but oh well. More material.

This also can bring the question - is trading worth it to keep a race neutral or do you want more battles and more material? Decisions, Decisions!

Use the note tool to tag these areas on the map because you can come back again & again to get more material.

This is one tech that is frustratingly hard to acquire if you are trying to be nice. To me it wasn't obvious and it wasn't until late in the game when I got them - and only because I looked up how to get them. By then it made everything trivially easy.

Then when I got shields I didn't realize I had to activate them! I thought they were always "on"

The F key is the default key to turn shields on / off.

You are going to find a very small number of these and it will be obvious when you do, but the one thing that is not obvious is that you can move them.

Just nudge your ship up against them and apply a bit of throttle. They don't move quickly - there are big after all, but you can reposition them.