A few more points that haven't been mentioned:
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first you need to build a ship that has "satellite layer" component on it. You get this free at the start of the game. Also make sure you build some cargo pods on your satellite layer ship.
The Satellite Layer component itself has a small amount of cargo capacity, but you usually want to add Cargo Bays, too.
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Not very clear about combat. if you have ion cannons they seem to fire straight at whatever you target. I had a mk I capital missile and think I fired it, very difficult to tell, I think it was reponsible for a purple splat on my ship, I never seemed to get a purple splat on my target so don't know if it ever hit, or was the purple splat their missiles hitting me??
There are a couple different classes of weapon; you can see which is which when you're designing a ship (F3) with the Weapons Report button. When a weapon hits a ship, there will be an explosion sound effect and a visual that varies by weapon. If you see a brief flicker of a circle-ish thing around the target, you hit Shields.
Each race has its own ship and missile graphics; some races are much harder to see than others.
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What does the set patrol button do, will they patrol, go back and resupply and then come back again??
I don't think I've ever actually used this in SE IV, but I think it will shuttle back and forth between its current position and the destination you set. It won't go back for supplies on its own unless you have the Resupply Minister [ (F11) Empire Staus/Ministers ] turned on.
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Presumably if you were building a big fleet you could put a big freighter with lots of supply in the fleet and then the fleet could Last much longer??
Yes, but note that Cargo Bays and Supply Storage are two different things; you probably don't want to build your supply tender on a Transport hull.
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maybe Shrapnel could give us an indication based on where they have shipped copies of the game..?
A long time ago, the Shrapnel home page had a Top Ten list of countries by games sold (though I think that was for all products). USA was first, of course; ISTR that 2-4 were the Netherlands, Germany, and Great Britain, but I may have the order wrong.