A couple of questions

[Berkut]

OK, I am about to embark on my first PBW game of SEIV. I expect I will be ruthlessly crushed, but as long as I learn a few things first, that will be fine.

I played Stars! for quite a while and got pretty good at it, able to hold my own in Advanced games, so I am not new to the genre.

Anyway:

1. I read a decent number of the strategy guides, such as they are. Are there any that deal specifically with race design? In Stars! race design was crucial to success, is that the case in SE? Does it usually make sense to play with the numbers?

2. Is there a combined and organized newbie FAQ anywhere? I have seen a few attempts, but many of them seem very dated, or not well organized. Lots of stuff about what to do in the first 50 turns, but very little about #1 above, economic management, etc.

3. What are teh keys to econ development? In Stars!, if you didn't manage your population properly, you were screwed compared to those who understood the 25/33% pop breakpoints and how to use them. Is there anything similar to that in SE?

4. Is there some good reason I don't understand that the developers thought it would be a good idea to release a "gold" Version that would be incompatable with the SE IV vanilla Version, but not label it as a true successor; i.e. SE V? I am very annoyed that I bought and payed for SE IV only to find out that I didn't actually purchase the latest Version of the game, and there is no upgrade path.

Berkut