A lot of the questions pertain to things that aren't in the public beta version.

1) Trade Ports and Refineries are pretty much automated. With Trade Ports you need to have at least two in seperate gravity wells under your control (or have a trade treaty with another player). Trade ships will then go between your various trade ports and generate income - longer distances yields more money, especially if there's an unbroken chain of them between planets under your control (you'll see this denoted by a solid white line when you're zoomed out and have a trade port selected). Refineries aren't as picky and you don't need lots of them (diminishing returns). They will boost your resource income rates for the asteroids in the gravity well where they refinery is built, but will also send out refinery ships to nearby planets as well.

2) Unfortunately, while we tried to get as much into the manual as possible, many changes took place after it went to print. Long-Range Jumps are only useful in multi-star galaxies, as Bubb9 said. Wormholes do function after you've researched the proper techs. Just order your ships into the center of it and they'll pop-out the other side. Trade/Refinery ships automatically make use of them also.

3) I think that may indicate you have a trade port there, but I'll have to check one of my games to confirm. Or it may indicate an artifact on that planet (which I've had poor luck in finding in my games).

4) Not currently, but it's a feature we plan to add.

5) I don't believe there is, but it's something we could add.

6) Yup, should be. The gravity well should be 33% smaller than a normal planet's gravity well of the same type (i.e., If it's a Terran planet, the gravity well should be 33% smaller than a normal Terran planet - keeping in mind that gravity wells are spherical).

Hope this helps.

Doh! Someone who actually reads the manual... Sorry, like Yarlen said we had to refine some stuff after it went to print and there is also so much stuff to cover that we'd need triple the pages. Hopefully, for the most part the manual + tutorails + tooltips/infocards will cover most players. We'll definately try and improve the infocards in the next build based on feedback like this.

The trade/refinery ships autospawn though the number depends on the race, research, and Advent don't get refinery ships (they have a different mechanic). W/r to tradeports, the distance and connectivity matters. You can hover over the credits tab at the top to see a white line showing your longest direct path (which is different than "longest path ala Settlers of Catan") and how much each planet is bringing in via trade. Nodes that can't be colonized don't count against your path. Its very beneficial to trade with other players because it makes it much easier to get a long and unconnected trade route. You can trade with enemies, your tradeships won't give you vision of their territory and vice versa. Refineries work differently. They have a limited range and will give you bonus metal/crystal based on whatever is within reach of the refinery (I believe its 1 jump in your build). The Advent's refineries/tradeports are actually the same building but can switch modes and their refinery only works in the existing gravity well. Finally, and most importantly, destroying enemy tradeships gives you good $$ and destroying their resource ships gives you good resources. Naturally, it harms the enemy income rates as well. I've survived in huge multiplayer games just by pirating tradeshisp to fund the rebuilding of my glorious empire

Long jumps is the ability to jump to stars. Only applicable when there are other stars. Wormhole technology is for when the map has wormholes. Ignore them both if neither exists in your map. Mass Reduction reduces the mass of your ships allowing them to accelerate and turn faster.

This indicates the presence of an artifact. If you read the infocard (tooltip) it should say that either you have one there, or you detect that an enemy has uncovered something powerful (i.e. the planet is glowing with awesomeness, you should go take it away from whoever is hording all the goodness for themselves)

It's been requested and is planned for a future content update. It is fairly easy to tell them to move slightly in the direct you want and the leader will just rotate in place causing the rest of the formation to wheel. You can tab (and shift tab) through the selection to get the guy you are interested in using as the focal point. Tab and shift tab behavior is remarkably improved in the nit pick polish build we are working on now.

Damn I thought we hotkeyed everything anyone would need (take a look at the massive list in the hotkey options page) but we didn't get that one. We will add it in the next content update. Just incase you didn't know though -> tilde pins/unpins, and ctrl-tilde unpins everything. For sake of ease, most of the hotkeys line up spatially on the keyboard with where they would be positioned on the action grid (e.g. (0,0) is q, (0,1) is W etc) so you just have to memorize the position instead of pneumonics and its triply easy because things of similiar function always hold the same position (even across factions).

It's probably difficult to tell without a frame of reference. I checked and it is working correctly, your ships will reach the edge sooner and arrive closer (well depending on where you jumped from ofcourse). Actually I should bring this advanced topic up which unfortunately also isn't documented. The position you jump from determines where in the next gravity well you arrive (if you've already explored the destination). Leave from the left, arrive on the left, leave from the near edge, arrive on the near edge etc. It's a design decison to solve an early beta problem where people would leave monster defense forces right at the center of the phase lane where they knew enemies would arrive.

We will answer anything you got. Since the game's been in beta for so long I'm sure whatever you have has come up already and there is either a way to do it or a good reason why it hasn't been done

1. Organizing the hotkey list is on the list, as soon as we get someone to volunteer for some serious monkey work

2. No matter what you do, building a tradeport will get you more money but trading between two tradeports on the same planet won't get you any bonuses (distance of 0 and connectivity of 0).

3. I'll look try the porous core with an ice planet and fix it up for the polish build. Thanks for the find.

I hate to derail, but eet - you just reminded me of my favorite poster:

http://www.businessblogconsulting.com/2007/02/blogging-motivational-poster

I actually have an organized list from when we did up the hotkey card for the CE box.  I'll go through the list to make sure nothing was changed since then.

Unless you're talking about coding monkey work... that's a bit beyond me