To be honest, the game needs some good tutorials. When i was a new player, i passed through some steps.
It was intuitive to me to try to deploy less ships than possible to save more supplies, but it took some time to learn the difference between kinetic and HE dmg (yes, it is written, but you need to feel it in practice). And i still dont concider EMP as a weapon
Also, it was little hard to pilot ship, shoot things, manage flux and command fleet at the same time. So, now i m using shift for aiming and always set all weapons except missiles on the autofire. It helps.
Also the salvage message... It is a little bit confusing when it says there is a big risk and little reward. You freely can salvage 3 times and leave then. On my first run i salvaged only once. Also it was a good surprise to learn that you can salvage after looting research station and get additional valuable blueprints.