-Start of the game
If you don't know what you're doing, I suggest choosing a Role: Helper instead from the menu. It's a spectator mode but you get to control other people's stuff. You'll get stuff to do for sure, so don't worry if you think it'll be boring. If you want your own faction, however, pick a single system and a bonus ship line to start the game out with. I suggest taking one of these ships: Plane, Bombard, Neinzul Combat Carrier, Bulletproof, Sniper.
-System view
You can scroll through the system view by holding a middle mouse button and dragging the mouse. Click and drag the left mouse button to select objects and use the right mouse button to move the ones that can. You can also move your view through wormholes by holding ctrl + left clicking them. Simple, right?
-Galaxy view
You can switch between viewing systems and the galaxy map by pressing TAB. In the galaxy map, you can switch to viewing certain systems by clicking on them with LMB. You can also assign move orders to ships by right-clicking a desired system.
-AI Progress
This game's premise is that you're fighting a lost cause war against two AI's. They've captured everything, they're tied up on the other end of the bunch of galaxies they've got and they don't care that you exist. They're too busy for that. But once they DO decide to crush the humans, the players lose. AI Progress is a representation of how much the AI's care about the players. It's raised once you destroy AI Command Stations in order to capture systems, Warp Gates to prevent waves, a variety of other structures. It's also raised if the players fail to protect certain key structures - and with time, though very slowly. It's not an RTS where you can destroy every Command Station and win - the players have to decide what to take. Otherwise, a fully upgraded AI will not hesitate to present an almost unwinnable scenario.
-Metal and Energy
To build most structures in the game, players need Metal. It's mined infinitely and constantly from your planets. The rate of mining is slow, however, so be careful about not overspending it. Energy is required by certain ships and structures for their upkeep. Unlike Metal, it's a more or less constant number instead of something you mine - and it's not spent on construction, but for keeping things running. Every ship and structure takes some amount of energy to maintain - if you ever run into the negatives, things like your forcefields and turrets stop working. Try to steer clear of that!
-Science
To get most of this game's useful things, you have to research them with science. Every planet provides up to 3000 science that you can mine using buildable Science Labs. There's stuff like better ships, starships, turrets, etc etc. To get more science, you have to capture more planets, and by capturing more planets you raise AI Progress more each time. There are also other ways to obtain it, but they present their own difficulties.
-Waves
The AI will send players waves full of enemy ships from time to time. There's usually a lot of them, so defending against them usually requires the players to funnel them all into one heavily-fortified planet. A wave can't be sent to a planet if a system has all warp gates on all adjacent planets destroyed, so clearing warp gates is nice. There is also a command station that prevents Waves from spawning to that planet. You can check the enemy ship strength of an upcoming wave at the top of the screen at the Wave counter. The Attack counter is for checking an enemy ship strength that are already in your systems.
-Threat
Usually, AI ships sleep at their locations in the AI systems. However, if you wake them up by attacking or otherwise provoking them, they join something called a Threat fleet. This fleet roams around your systems and looks for an opportunity to strike - usually when you're the most occupied or you least expect it. You can see it on the galaxy map with Detected Threat filter. There are more ways for ships to join Threat Fleet, but the safest way to deal with it is to eliminate it when you see that they're a problem. Threat counter is for checking Threat fleet strength. If you hover over it, you can also see where most of it is.
-Winning the game
To win the game, players have to destroy both AI Home Command Stations. They're really far into the galaxy and tough to get to, so let's expand carefully. Once all Human Home Command Stations are destroyed, players lose the game. Let's avoid this.
I'll start hosting the game in two hours, at 1 PM GMT.
https://time.is/GMT . Hopefully that'll give people enough time to get their bearings and, you know, join. For the meantime, take it easy! Maybe play a tutorial or something. Cheers y'all!