I'm gobsmacked by the amount of effort that went into this (and the amount of material), but I'm lost on how the process of actually playing the game is supposed to go. Pg 16 of the corebook talks about exploiting resources and setting up factories but trails off after introducing the idea and later references don't clear up much. How are missions decided? What are the steps of going there-and-back-again? Does it require the High Frontier boardgame or can that be worked around?

All of this is probably in the books, but the way my brain works I work a lot better with a bullet list in one place.