1. Range is how far your ships can go from a starbase or planet you own. Your influence doesn't affect Range for its a seperate ability. You can increase this through reasearch or adding more range modules in the ship-editor.

2. Common problem is overpopulation. Its generally recommended to not go higher than 18 billion people per planet, with 21 being the absolute cap. No matter how many entertaining things you have, eventually you'll think it sucks living in an overcrowded apartment.

3. You can keep Trade goods for their bonuses, or share them with other civilizations. They can sometimes give you a good deal from the other civilizations, but I would hold on to them.

4. Yes they do, but the farther away they are from the planet the less the bonus will be, so pick your closest planet if possible. Or redirect where it makes the most sense.

5. It costs money in manufacturing points (those shields) to build the ship, so how much you've put into manfuacturing will determine how quickly the ship will be built. The more shields, the faster it will be bulit, but the more money it will cost. Same thing for buildings, except they rely on Social points which are shown as Hammers.

For the last one, make sure you updated the game. If afterwards, you still get the crashes read and follow these instructions listed here:
WWW Link

I wasn't doing too bad, it was just my economy crash that screwed me, and that was because I was hosting at least 25bn people on every planet. Cut that down by 10bn and everyone was happy.

Does seem very weird to me though, maybe I'm missing something, but what's the point in all the population growth and boosting technology when you hit the wall so early down the tech tree?

Thats the wall we all hit at first. There is a logic to it though. Any game has to have its "box" and boundaries, cant write software to cope with all eventualities up to and including the Holy Grail. If population growth in the game was not curbed at a certain level, the resultant available finance would make the rest of the game pointless as you could by pass all the other checks and balances the game uses to create the "Empire Building" bubble, just by unrealistic cash spending.

Its not a bad way of limiting it and protecting game balance, after all we are not exactly full of the joys of Spring today on Earth and we "only" have 7Bn, geez, imagine the mess we could make with 25Bn sitting here

At its core the game's economic model says "you cant do anything unless you have generated the means to pay for it" (sounds like Dad in the days of our youth ). Therefore once you take that on board and look at ways of generating wealth, it falls into place. Its part of the whole purpose of a Strategy Game, thinking about available choices and how those choices impacts on cause and effect of one's actions. If that gets watered down to simplistic actions, just might as well go buy a shoot-em-up.

If you are still having economic issues with the game, post what they are. Its a common problem, and can put people off the game, but once the remedies are known and mindsets changed, the game flys.

Regards
Zy

Then raise your taxes because you are throwing money on the fire. There are two waypoints in the approval part of the game - ignoring for now the penalties of the lower scales of approval - 75% (which gives a 25% population growth bonus) and 100% which gives double population growth). There is not a sliding scale between the two, its one or the other.

Its usually only relevant in the early game, as 100% approval rapidly becomes the norm once you get going.

Regards
Zy