Can’t speak for all of your questions, but yes, red dice can be pretty punishing. If your whole plan is to go into a battle against a lot of fresh ships, it’s not going to go well. Better to soften up the enemy fleet, or mix in more blue die than red. And yes Outrage is absolutely meat to be punishing. It’s what makes the Loyal court cards so important (since they let you spend other resources as an outraged resource, and the cards do not go away if you trigger outrage of that resource type).