I just assumed I had them since they're an option in the systems design menu. I'll see if I can actually build them now.

I would kill for a weapons specialist about now.

What do I do with a xenology team? I have one, but I need to remember where I found ruins.

Just drop them off at the colony where the ruins are, and they will eventually determine what's there. Once they have, you'll need to drop off a Construction Brigade (or several), and they will begin to recover installations. If you go to the Display 2 tab on the left of the System Map screen, there's a section called "Known Ruins."

If you have Absorption Shields available, praise the RNGods and build them - you need to uncover 2 separate techs from ruins, which takes a lot of luck or a lot of installations to sift through.

Shields are an optional tech... like Cloaking, Turrets, Gauss (railgun PD requires pretty much no research), ECM and a second anti-ship beam line. Can be good if they fit your needs, and investing into one or two won't hold you back too much because of the way research costs scale. I wouldn't go for all of them, and I'd wait until I have the basics covered to the point where the next tech seems painfully expensive.

How you should split shields and armour is up to debate. Minimal shielding is fine (just to protect the paintjob from the occasional leaker, or avoid shock damage in case of single big hits), so is all shields and minimal armour on larger ships that invest a lot into protection (can take moderate damage almost indefinitely). I don't particularly like an even split, seems unfocused.

Active sensors are useless after jumping due to Jump Blindness, and you can't use passive sensors to shoot down targets (like missiles). However, CWIS and shields work after jumping so I would recommend some of those (like one or two at least) on most ships)

That's the case with asteroid miners, terraformers, sodium harvesters, and orbital habitats, Basically the database won't update properly unless the ship goes to the body which will then trigger the production calculation.

Quote from: 83athom on July 20, 2016, 10:18:49 PM

Don't forget to add a colony on them or the minerals will just delete themselves.

Um, what? I guess it's a good thing I haven't surveyed any of them yet.

Your asteroid mining ship needs to be orbiting a colony (not just the rock itself), or the minerals produced will evaporate forever. Speaking of which, I vaguely remember this bug may have been fixed?, but for a long while it was necessary with these (and similar types of ships, like sorium harvesters) to make sure every ship Moved to the destination before it did anything like merging with a Task Group already there.

Don't forget to add a colony on them or the minerals will just delete themselves.

you can also put auto mines on asteroids. 

I learned to love building a whole classes (generally I call them corvettes) using commercial engines as they are dirty cheap to make and are useful for filling out your fleets.  It sounds like you have a good grasp of the game - so good job!