ok some more noob questions:
is there a way to automate picking up and delivering minerals to where you want with ships, other than shipping mass drivers around?
ditto mass drivers themselves and auto-mines.
all these little orders are getting rather tedious, I did find the pickup and deliver default orders for automated mines, however these don't seem to work, my cargo ships have enough space for exactly one mine each currently, with these orders set they will load an auto-mine, then sit there complaining that they can no longer load auto-mines without the deliver order getting triggered.
mass drivers are a pain too if you've got a ship or task group which can take more than one, since you have to specify it to only load one, also I'm scared I'm going to accidentally take the last one of my homeworld.
is there a way to encourage more scientists? I've got four now, and though I've not yet hit the limit on research labs I've had one die on me and one that came in had bonuses in an area I'm not yet interested in.
is there a way to reduce the amount of accidents my administrators/scientists/offices seem to keep having?
how long before I really need to start worrying about arming myself? I've finally got jump tech and am exploring immediate neighboring systems, but I've not yet got any warships, or missiles.