1) Automated Firing:
DON´T TRY THIS!
While there is the "Autofire" button on the combat screen (F8), Autofire is realy only meant for the AI and will screw your gun/firecontrol/point defense settings beyond recognition.
Yes, this means you have to do it on your own - heavy use of the buttons on the middle right of that window (Copy Assign and Copy Target area) is highly recomended and if you are facing a large number of hostile ships all bunched up in one location, then there is the Multibple Targets - "Same Loc" button.
2) Transporting minerals from one system to another can only be done via freighter. You can set a task group of freighters to do a round trip like:
Transit Alpha Centauri Jump Point
Load all minerals from Alpha Centauri-A III
Load all minerals from Alpha Centauri-A IV
transit Sol Jump Point
unload all mineals Earth
refuel Earth.
and then click the "Cycle Moves" button (lower right, F12 screen), so the TG will repeat that journey until you change their orders again.
Adjust the number of freighters accoding to the amount of minerals, your colonies in the other system dig up in the time one round-trip takes to save on fuel.
3) I haven´t used geo survey drones, so I can´t tell you the specifics, but you have to use a geo-survey buoy (i.e. no engine, no fuel, just the sensor and reactor) and fit it as the second stage on a missile.
Also when you place the waypoint you want to shoot the buoy at, it is important to first click on the planet/moon/asteroid, then click on "Last". This will creat a WP that stays with the planet as it orbits around it´s star.
Note: Surveying via drones takes an awful lot of time, given the abysimal survey capacity those things have. In the long run, I find it highly more efficient to have a fleet of small, cheap survey ships for that task, especially, given that geo-survey ships can easily be commercial ships.
