New to the game and Overwhelmed. Any hints?

[Suicide Junkie]

Race creation:
Spend points to improve your maintenance reduction trait! It is very valuable, since this modifier SUBTRACTS directly from the 25% base maintenance rate.
A maintenance reduction of 20% will result in you paying 25-20 = 5% maintenance, and thus being able to support 5 times as many ships as the next guy.
Points in agression and defense will help your combat results, and may be what you need.

You can take points out of organics production, ground combat, and repair rate to pay for extra bonuses. In order to over come these deficiencies, you can trade the AIs for organics, send lots more troops if you ever do have a chance to invade, and either build an extra repair station or wait longer for repairs.
If your ships are all getting killed in combat, or surviving undamaged, you don't need to worry about repair rate much.

Weapons:
Missiles can keep you out of the enemy's weapons range in the very early game; use them on your first ships, but don't bother researching more than one or two levels in the tech.

Once Point Defense shows up, you will need direct fire weapons.
Projectile weapons are a good, inexpensive starting weapon tech, and they'll Last you a few years. They should give you enough time to research APB, of PPB as below.

In the unmodded game, bigger ships are better in every case except for crew subVersion.
Research ship construction to frigate on your first turn.

Defense:
Researching armor can provide a quick jolt of defense strength, but the tech levels end much too soon to be worthwhile for absorbing damage.
If you are being attacked by races with PPBs, armor may be your only hope, since Phased shields are pretty high in the tech tree.

Physics -> Shields will be very useful against most weapons, providing twice the strength per KT of size. They also rechage between every combat, no repairs required.