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1) Don't underestimate the usefulness of a cloaking device. This device can help you in multiple ways, as enemies seem to be completely oblivious of you when you have it on (unless you attack/board).

• Explore without ever getting interupted by enemies. Be careful that you first leave behind your own fleet, as they will not use cloaking devices, and will get into fights.
  
• You often come across enemies while flying. If you are cloaked, you can fly next to these enemies to check them out first. Maybe they would be good targets for boarding?
  
• When you attack a group of enemies with you and your fleet, if you're cloaked, the enemies will first seek out your teammates. This means that you have time to find a good target to board, as well as avoiding the alphastrike.

2) Boarding is completely overhauled when compared to SG2. You cannot buy soldiers anywhere. Instead your ship has some soldiers in it, and they have a certain level of morale. This is all packed together into a number called 'endurance'. Endurance can be increased with perks and research, and it is very much worth doing so. When boarding an enemy, middle mouse click on them to 'grapple', and then start boarding. The bottom-left part of the UI changes into a boarding mini-game that has your marines walking through the ship and fighting in different places. Instead of taking over the ship, you can also try to disable the shields, or get some loot. At some point they will also find a medbay (green plus sign) where they will recover endurance. Once you are at the end, you can try to capture the command bridge, and if you are succesful, you can do several different things with the ship. The most common ones are:

• Sell it for money
  
• Sell it for materials (very handy if you need materials for e.g. research)
  
• Spend some money to repair it and send it to your garage for you to fly (can be useful if it's e.g. a higher tiered ship than what you're currently flying).
  
• Spend some materials to repair and and add it to your fleets (can be very useful, and much cheaper than building your own ships)

As you can see, investing in skills and perks to improve your boarding is very worthwhile, as it gives you lots of resources and ships. After boarding, your marines will have lost some endurance, which they will recover over time. Make sure to check on their status before boarding (esc->ship->troopers).

In the video I show an example of how I normally do my boarding at ~4.36.

3) When your fleet is following you, they can get damaged in battle. However, they don't seem to really repair this damage, and there is no option to repair them while docked. To actually repair them, send them away from you (one hex seems to be enough, maybe less works as well), and rendevous with them afterwards. They'll be fully healed.

4) When you want to trade in your current ship, make sure to unmount your guns first. Otherwise they'll be sold for very little money, and they can be really expensive to buy new. By unmounting them you can re-use them on your next ship.

5) You can increase/change the amount of turrets on your ship by clicking on any one weapon and then 'configure turret'. Extra turrets cost 85K regardless of type, and when you reduce the amount you get 85K back, so don't be afraid of experimenting with this. One reason you might want to have less than maximum is to optimize your battery use, but to be honest, I normally increase everything to the maximum amount at the moment.