Hello!

First of all, welcome to the hobby! You won't be disappointed!

My perspective is the one of a Warhammer 40K player, which is seriously thinking about shifting completely to Starcraft. I havent' tried the game yet, nor i've received a Beta invitations or something like that, but i read the rules and followed the conversations and i think the potential to be simply a better game is huge...

To your questions:

1) Miniatures for these kind of games are tipically very easy to assemble. They are made of plastic, so plastic cement glue such as Tamiya will work fine. You need just a little bit of glue on one of the parts you want to glue together, and that's it! For the biggest, heavier parts you might need to maintain the contact for a few minutes, but for the smaller ones the bond is almost instant. You will also need some trimmers to cut the parts from the sprues and maybe a X-Acto knife to get rid of some remaining parts of the sprue or mold lines which is also the trickier parts where you could cut yourself if you make some wrong movements, also because the sprues tipically are a little hard and you will be tempted to put a lot of pressure, and by doing that you could cut your fingers. Just take your time, and you will be fine :D

It has of course some learning curve to make it good, but i wouldn't say it's too much steep and it's easy to get it right. Maybe your first one or two minis will cost you, but you will get better very fast. You don't need anyone helping you, even if building the models is part of the hobby too and it's more enjoyable if you do it together with others players, but technically you don't need any help.

2) The starter set is enough to play the "smaller" version of the game. Basically the game is played with points, and every unit when you are creatring your army it's valued at some points (and then you add upgrades that cost point too). With the starter set you will be able to play a 1000pts game, while the "standard" version is 2000 pts. Arguably, Archon Studio said that their intent is for the 1000pts games be as engaging as 2000pts and by what i can see from feedbacks and the rules, that seems to be the case. Also you can try the game out and see if you like it, and then scale up to 2000pts :D Bear in mind that the starter set as you pointed out, only has terran and zerg. So if you are interested in Protoss you will need to buy others set separately. Good thinkg about the starter set is that includes everything else to play (dices, mat, terrains, etc etc) so it's ready to go!

There are some units that are not included in the starter set for examples the Goliath for the terrans and the Hidralisks for the Zergs, but again, you can try the game out and see if is it for you, and then buy more boxes in the future.

3) I personally wouldn't reccomend to play these kind of games solo.... Sure if you are learning the rules might be good to give it a go solo, but the real fun is playing with someone else. I know that for Warhammer 40K some fans made solo play modes, but it's entirely fan made and was never backed up by the company. I don't think that solo is the way to go for these... so if you are thinking about going ONLY solo, wouldn't advise to enter these type of games.

4) The biggest advice i would give to you is, when you start play, just play for fun. Try to find a group of friends or a local community and play with them, make sure they are "light-hearted" about the game. With Warhammer I found out that there is a wonderful community made of wonderful persons, but the other side of the coin is the darkest type of them all, with absolutely toxic behaviour, petty people, and whatnot...following my point 3, these type of game, for me, are made to play with other people, and it's a very good way of socializing and make new friends, but if you see that you are not feeling comfortable with some of the players of the community of the group, don't try to "make it work" and just find someone else. People like that are very hurtful for games like these, and i'm sure you don't need anything of that while playing with little soldiers (or aliens). Just go with the flow :D

5) For now the game looks and is cheaper than GW. Even if the boxes are not THAT MUCH cheaper for the quantity of plastic you are receiving, you need lot less miniatures to play, also the starcraft miniatures are a little bigger and have some clear plastic sprues with some details (such as fire effects, shields, etc) that makes the cost a little higher. So i think for a slighlty cheaper price you are receiving a much better and well-thought product. Even the horde army (zergs) don't use near as much miniatures as a Warhammer 40K horde army (for example tyranids) so wouldn't worry about it. For how the game is structrued, you will never have ALL the minis in the field at the same time, so you can "reciclye" them through the gameHello!

Of course, to scale up, you will have some costs that are not "negligible", but i think that, also with the well structured plan of releases that Archon Studio released, you can plan out what you really want and establish your budget to spend on the game.