My fleet run into my first NPR and my MFC is set to salvos of 3 for missiles.  My small ship only carries 80 AMM but has fast lunchers.  So I run out of missiles in 3-4 salvos.

Clicking on MFC from my PD and then 1 Missile or area defense never changes the point defense mode from 3.  Same with choosing MFC and then clicking 1 missile and all the buttons on the right sidebar

Its drag and drop.

To change required rank for an existing formation: Ground Forces window --> Order of Battle tab --> select formation in the tree window at left --> "Change Rank" button at bottom of window, second from right in that row (this one is maybe not as obvious to find).

I had spent some time not finding that in the past,to the point of jsut deleting the formations and instant building them with the new rank

The ranks assigned by the system are vary rarely convenient for the ranks of your available officers. You can change the rank of the commander of a formation on the Formation builder screen, but have to do that before you build the formation

Nah, keep rolling with it. I intentionally play resource-starved starts so there is an actual reason to expand. Making conscious decisions where to spend your Gallicite and whether to expand Neutronium or Corundium mining and designing around your constraints is a lot of fun.

Also remember that it's not a competetive game where you need to worry about relative advantages or disadvantages.

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You can use SpaceMaster Mode in the System Information Window and then click on each major body to reroll the minerals. Or you can manually throw some minerals around. I usually do that if Sol is very sparse since I always play Conventional starts so immediately expanding out of Sol for minerals is not really possible. The downside of this is that you lose little bit of the magic of discovery, so if you have not invested a lot of time in setting up your civilization so far, then you could also just start a new game.