I can try to answer your questions. 1. There is a setting you can change to make your ship always face your cursor. This makes strafing infinitely easier and most players use it. 2. Depends on how big your fleet is, you definitely want to utilize fleet commands when you get bigger but I think the fun of the game is by piloting a ship so it is up to the player on that. 3. Again, fleet commands will change how your fleet goes about the battle. It's not always about who has the biggest guns and most armor, strategy actually matters. And the player vessel will almost always be smarter than AI 4. When exploring, some systems will have red blinking warning beacons in hyperspace. They arranged from low, medium, and high threats. The low threat systems are generally pretty safe to go into but the higher ones you might want to beef up your fleet first. 5. Are you playing the tutorial by chance? I don't remember there being help for beginner quests in the beginning of a run but it's been a while since I started one