First Foray

Greetings!
I figured this would be the best place to say my hello's to everyone. Surprisingly, this is my first post on these forums.

I'm very interested in the mission-editing and modding side to the community, and I'm brushing up on how to get involved as I type.
However, I feel that the first missions of my crew are worth sharing.

I have an iPad and 2 PC's, and I was the one in our group to purchase the game for the PC, so I tried this out on those 3 devices myself... Playing all positions is really hard, and I started on the Trial of Deneb 1 mission. Needless to say, Communications was left behind and as a consequence I didn't realise that the yellow blip that kept disappearing part-way through my tries at the level was the Space Station I was supposed to save.

The weekend rolled around, and my two friends Sean and Nick came over with an iPad each and Nick brought his laptop.
We tried to switch Captains around, but it almost always came to me giving the orders due to my solo experiences giving me more insight into the game. That, and I like being Captain.

So we tried the Trial of Deneb 1 together; I was on Engineering and Science, Nick was on Helm and Communications, Sean was on Weapons. We had the Light Cruiser and were getting beaten badly by a large group of (Kralien?) enemy ships and decided to make a run for it.
*Full power to Maneuverability and Impulse*
*Switch to 0 Maneuverability and Full Warp*
... No warp; Damage!

So the Helmsman decides to put us in reverse to back away from our opponents in order to give Weapons a better chance (Forward Firing Arc for Lasers).
So I figure "We don't need rear shields, then. More power for us!"
So Sean figures that we may as well use what weapons we have left: 2 mines.

We're going backwards with no rear shields and all we have is Mines. And not one of us decide to communicate what we're doing to each other.
And Sean fires the Mine.

We are next greeted by our statistics for the mission.

It appears Mines only fire from the rear. And we can set them off.

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Next mission, we go for one of the Invasion missions. This time we pay attention to the Communications panel, and discover that we can get upgrades and Ammo from completing these side-missions. So, we dock with DS1 after a minor Skirmish to refuel, and are informed of our need to move to DS3 to pass on a package from the Transport we rendezvoused with earlier.
We chose the Jump, rather than Warp, drive this time around to spice things up.

So we're docked at DS1 and the order goes out to Jump to DS3. Not too far. As Science and Engineering, I give the heading and distance, and I remove power from everything except Jump engines and put full coolant in there; I give the order to Jump!

We hear the whir of the engines hum to life; the sound escalates and the frequency quickens to a heart-beat of raw power, and as the countdown nears its' end we anticipate our first Jump to Infinity and Beyond! ...

And then the cooldown hum of the engines sounded as the "wa-wa-waah" to our misguided attempt. The screens did not blacken. We did not Jump.
So it seems to Jump you need to disengage from the Station you're docked at. I think it took us about 2 minutes to compose ourselves enough to restore engine power, disengage and try again.

We have some hit-and-miss events after this, like Jumping into a Minefield to try and swerve a Transport away from it (Damnit, Communication is Important!), and Jumping into a fleet of enemy ships when Science (... Who was totally not me) only mentioned "Oh, hey, enemy ship there."

I hope you enjoyed these tales. More, I'm sure, will be forthcoming.