I'm enjoying the game so far, but I feel terribly overwhelmed. I've listened to all the tutorials and they make sense, but I'm still just going around, finding planets, colonizing them, and then just building a crapload of buildings on them, without really knowing what they do.

For instance, I understand what a farm does, it allows you to have more people (shouldn't that be 4 billion people, rather than 4 million?). But what does a factory do? Is that production local to your planet? Or is that production throughout your empire? Same for research? I assume that's throughout the whole empire? What does an embassy actually do? Makes other races feel more comfortable, well great, what good is that? What's the effect? Should I only build that on planets with actual contact, or on others too?

What happens when you research improved areas, do the buildings on a planet automatically upgrade? Or do you need to do so manually?

It also seems to take a LONG time before you finally get some ships built. I understand the initial turns are typically just waiting for stuff, but waiting 28 weeks for a scout seems rather excessive? I can buy one, which I've been doing, but still.
Similarly for planetary upgrades, a farm takes 30 weeks, a factory 30+ etc... Am I doing something wrong, or are the first few years just clicking "end turn" 50 times in a row?

Also, what's a good balance to build on planets? Should you immediately just chock a planet full of stuff, or go slow, and keep space open for other buildings later?

Why does my flagship not have any weapons on it? Is that because I haven't researched any yet? If so, how do I later add weapons?

It's a fun game, but ... wow. Either I've really started sucking at turnbased strategy, or this game is far more complex than some of the others I was used to

Creston