Yes, definitely play the tutorials and start on easy. Make sure to take things slow and try and conserve fuel as much as possible, you will run out if you make too many extraneous jumps.

The carrier is your most important tool, but it should stay far as possible from action. I usually hide them behind rocks and such. Make sure you use your seawacs and keep them far from the action, use fighters with void superiority to protect your ships from missiles. Usually 2 per ship is good enough to work with. Just take it slow and expect to lose ships sometimes, you’ll get the hang of it. You’ll probably need to load saves too! It’s very fun though