[TIPS] Endless Space Miscellaneous Tips

Some random tips:

• Note that in the ship design screen, under "Support Modules" you can scroll down to see additional types of modules.  This is how you add engines, repair modules, colonization modules, etc.  This is most likely to be relevant when you have access to Advanced Containers which gives you an additional 25 tons of space but you need to actually select it as a module (it adds a 40 industry cost to the ship).
• Trade Routes will form automatically, but you must be at peace with the faction.
• Once you have researched Atmospheric Filtration it will give you access to the Empire-wide improvement "Warp Drives".  Your ships can now travel off of the cosmic strings (roads) between systems.  To do so, ctrl-right click the destination.  Note that you can't interrupt the travel, just like normal movement.  Also realize that travel along cosmic strings is still a LOT faster, so only save this for scenarios where you are avoiding a blockade or going along strings would require a much longer path.  Even then, make sure you move as close as possible to the target system using strings before engaging the warp drive.
• You can move around your admirals (heroes in fleets) instantly (though they need to wait eight turns until they can move again).  They can even participate in two battles in a single turn.  Start a battle with the admiral's current fleet, then swap him to another fleet and fight the second battle.
• Split your fleet apart in multiple fleets if there are several annoying little fleets in a system.  This bypasses the "one battle per turn" limit for your fleet.
• Wormholes use all of the remaining fleet's movement, no matter how much is left.
• Creating a new colony ship (missionary, seed ship, whatever) removes one population from your system.  Try to do it on systems that have a maxed out population already.
• Any food that you see in a colony is a surplus.  If your population is maxed out, you might want to consider changing your exploitations.
• Upgrading your colony ships with the first engine you discover adds an incredibly small cost (about +3.5%) in exchange for increasing their movement substantially.
• Pirates can spawn in any non-colonized star system.  You generally don't want uncolonized systems behind your front lines after the early game if you can help it, because the pirates are surprisingly strong and can wreck havoc on your supply lines, unassembled fleets, or even capture colonies.
• For engines, blue arrows indicate movement along cosmic strings ("roads" between star systems) while green movement indicates warp travel (movement off of the strings).  Thus an engine that gave you +6 green and +3 blue movement means that it allows you to move six parsecs further while warping and three further on strings.
• Note that engines in this game often speed up the entire fleet, which can help considerably for a large empire.  It's useful to have a single support ship with an engine upgrade that speeds up your larger combat ships.
• Also, it's useful in general to have a support ship with sensors, engines and a repair module.
• Have open trade routes on planets that aren't used?  Make sure you've explored as many peaceful planets as you can.  There's a cap of one trade route to one planet, so if you have ten open trade routes you need to have explored ten opposing faction planets that you can trade with.