[Marty Ward]

I would recommend that you fight tactically until you get the hang of the game. It is the easiest to learn. Try one ship on one ship combat first. Left click on the map to move, left click on your target to fire, right click on a ship to see the components, it is fairly straight forward.
Strategic combat take a lot more thought because you have no control over your units once the combat begins. How well you do in combat depends on your formation, fleet/ship strategy, which ships stay in formation etc. The explanations on how to modify, change, and understand these things are not well explained in the manual.
Definately post questions on the forum. You will get plenty of responses.