The game doesn't explain anything to you, you have to find out via trial and error. This is made more complicated by apparently random outcomes, cryptic responses at best and the fact that stuff that works only works again about half of the time. This continues until you die for no discernible reason. Then you can start the whole process again.
The tragic thing is that I can see all the good ideas that went into the game but the implementation is horribly broken. The game is completely unbalanced. You have a 30 planet empire and come upon an AI civilization with 2 planets? Prepare to be steamrolled, on easy difficulty no less. I assume the AI is cheating it's way to victory. The UI is klunky and features that are designed to be helpful end up hurting you: you either have to trust the AI governor for your planets, which will happily stop all production and growth on the planet (Because who would want any of that, right?) or your stuck with micromanaging an ever increasing empire. Wherever you look in Polaris Sector, you find good ideas, that have been butchered in the implementation.
