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Originally Posted by The Fifth Horseman
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Thanks. Don't think i'll read that though, will probably be too much technical mumbo jumbo.
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Hey, why not? 
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Okay then, here goes.
Firstly, the icons i was wondering about are, from left to right:
Ore (looks like a railcar with stuff in it, if you look at it closely)
Energy (yellow lightning bolt)
Life Support (a thermometer infront of a blue thing)
Humans (mans face)
Robots (Robot figure)
On the colony screens there is a second row of icons representing:
Habitats
Factories
Power Plants
Laboratories
As colonies are the focus of the early stages of the game i'll cover them first. I haven't actually got past this stage yet but there is foreshadowing of a battle stage later on.
As your advisors will tell you, you should build a Habitat, then a factory and power plant.
Habitats are really cheap and allow you to house humans which are required to run other buildings, they also produce Life Support resources. I usually send 5 ore, 5 energy, 5 LS and 15 robots when i'm supplying the colony for the habitat.
Once the Hab is built you can then build stuff that requires human crew like the factory. You need to send more resources down from the Calypso for factories too. You should be able to fit all that are needed in one more transport load, 4 ore, 7 energy, 5 life support and 4 humans (leaves room for 10 more of something)
Then you can build the power plant.
Besides construction costs, buildings have maintenance costs which you can see when you hover the cursor over the building after it has finished building (there is a lag for building time). As well as available resources listed in white next to each icon are gain/lose numbers in green and red, respectively.
Your colonies advisor will tell you you can specialise colonies to produce something specific and then transport it around by setting a vehicle on 'pipeline'. Which makes this a good time to discuss vehicles.
You start with access to 4 'vehicles', some sort of atmosphere capable system vessel and the Calypso itself. I haven't moved the Calypso yet but it seems to take a lot longer to get places but can reach the outer system, which the vehicles can't do at basic tech levels but might be necessary later. You'll need it for the stock pile in the beginning though.
Vehicles can perform a number of missions which need to be selected before you can add cargo in some instances. Transport allows you to move resources to and from colonies and Calypso. Pick the destination and load up the cargo, left click for add, right click to remove, then click Launch and wait.
To explore a planet select 'explore' and the destination and then launch. The vehicle will go into orbit of the destination where you can send it into the mercator zone and pick a target square to explore. It's best to wait till you have a specific zone to explore unless you are after some spare resources (you can find ore and power, as well as some research items on the planet surface).
Icons on the Mercator screen represent scanners for ore and energy and, after a tech upgrade, suitable colony sites. These scanners chew through a vehicles energy so be careful spamming them. There is also an icon to build colonies. Being able to build a colony with a basic system vehicle is pretty cool.
On the actual 3d exploring screen you have a toggle between 3d and top down (for bombing i guess), something which activates a scanner of some kind, a bomb dropping icon (seems to be a nuke) and something which toggles between a radar and cargo mini window on the right. Arrows and 'leave' buttons should be obvious.
Prode is another important order for the vehicles. Choose destination and check to see you've got enough energy for a round trip before launching or you might have to wait for the planets to realign, literally, before you can get your vehicle back...
Pipeline allows you to set a vehicle on a loop, takings a set cargo to one place and bringing something else back. I'm not sure if there is any downtime between arriving and leaving again. I think Pipelines will become pretty important later in the game but you can get by without them at the beginning.
Before going on to Techs i'll say this. I think you should build extra vehicles as you build more colonies. One for each col and a couple of spares seems like a good number.
Ok, so of the basics of the game only techs are left.
There are seven different technology fields which are researched individually in research labs by right clicking on them. Below each icon is a value which represents the stored up knowledge in that field and above each icon will be a number representing how much of each tech type is required to invent the technology decribed.
Cycle through techs witth the arrows or by clicking the picture and click invent on what you want if you have enough of each required research type. Techs take some time to finish and will either roll out immediately or allow upgrades to buildings or new building types.
I think that is enough to clear up the confusion a new player will have when they first start up the game so i'll finish up soon. Right after a little parting advice:
You don't have to remember averything your advisers tell you, these will all be shown in your PDA. Right click on most screens for the menu which takes you to it.
I put a bunch of labs on the Calypso and a bunch of factories on the first colony, you can then transport things around with your vehicles.
Also, when building a colony, it doesn't matter where you put new buildings but putting them in groups of the same sort will make it easier to see what each is producing. The buildings which are already on a planet when you build a colony don't seem to do anything either so don't worry about them.
Ok, i'm done.
Enjoy.