Thanks for the help and the patience in dealing with the utter noob, heh. Now for some more questions. What do you consider to be a 'fair' startup of pop and tech points?
Whatever you get in the beginning, the bad guys will get too. (Unless you tweak yourself after game-start using Spacemaster functions.) So, a wide range of settings are potentially 'fair'.
More accurately, whatever you have
at the instant an NPR is created is what the program uses to set the 'level' of the NPR.
I just use the default 500m people and 0/whatever Aurora gives me for a conventional/TN start.
And how do I assign tech points manually?
Assuming you've done a TN start, go to the F2 'Population & Production' screen, 'Research' tab, and hit Ctrl-S to turn on Spacemaster mode. A small box will appear next to tech cost labelled 'Starting RP'. Select a tech you want and use the 'Instant' button to add it to your empire's knowledge. The amount of research points remaining will decrease by the cost of the tech. Repeat until you are out of 'Starting RP'.
Wwhat's an efficient and quick terraform setup? How much infrastructure? How many colonists?
Terraforming is separate from infrastructure & colonists, and is more efficiently performed by ships with terraforming modules than by Terraforming Installations on a colony.
Infrastructure per colonist of course varies by colony cost, so the only useful answer is 'enough infrastructure to support all your current colonists, plus any more that will arrive soon, plus the amount of natural growth' - which turns out to be a multi-variate exponential equation, which still needs to account for how much infrastructure and population your civilian sector is moving to the colony for you, which means it's almost always not worth doing the math.
In general, throw some infrastructure and then some (about 90% of what your infrastructure can support, as shown on the 'Summary' tab of the F2 'Population and Production' screen for that colony) population down to get things started, then if you get a message saying 'unrest due to overcrowding' ship more infrastructure. Ninety-nine percent of the time the amounts will be determined by how much of each your Cargo/Colony ships available have room for.
Alright next question. I have the hang of ship building, mining, etc. What kind of sensors will I need to detect jump points in my system
Gravitational Survey Sensors
and what is needed to go through these points to go to a new system?
A Jump Engine, or build a jump gate (which requires a ship with a Jump Gate Construction Module
And I plan on having this ship be a jump point detector AND a diplomatic ship just in case I happen to run into an unexpected neighbor. I don't see any diplomatic ship designs or sensor ships on the forums so far. Thanks in advance.
Nothing, although you won't be able to initiate diplomatic relations with another race unless you identify a ship/PDC/population as belonging to that race, which requires an Active, Thermal, or EM sensor contact (and in the case or Thermal or EM, a fair amount of time to pin down the race ID).
So to BE a diplomatic ship requires no special equipment. To be a GOOD diplomatic ship you want powerful, long range sensors (which means big ones).