Is there a way to change the right unit display bar to show both my units and enemy units? When I send a scout I see my scout and enemy units/buildings on the right units display, but not when I send my army. Do you need scout intel to see this? If not, what is scout intel for? I often find myself searching all over the place for the structures I want to destroy. Also, what is the 0 at the top of the bar? I don't think I've seen this number change.
I was also wondering if there is a way to see both my ships and enemy ships on all planets in the galaxy view. For example in the screenshot I can see that 45 enemy ships are on my top left planet, but I can't see the enemy troops present at the AI home world in the bottom right. http://oi62.tinypic.com/xpc5sy.jpg
You need something that provides scout intelligence in order to see the list of enemy units. Command stations, scouts, scout starships, champions, youngling commandos, and eye bots, and perhaps some other ship types, provide scout intelligence. Alternatively, during game setup, there are some options for fog-of-war. Complete visibility essentially gives you a scout on every planet, and comes closest to what you're asking for.
On the wiki it says that I can destroy a planet surrounding warp gates to prevent waves. Is it still accurate?
Yes and no. Destroying warp gates allows you to funnel waves to where you would like them to go, as long as you still have at least one warp gate adjacent to a system you control. If you have only one warp gate adjacent to your territory, and that warp gate is adjacent to only one world, all normal waves will be funneled through that one world, and none of your other systems will be directly exposed to standard AI wave attacks. However, if you destroy all warp gates adjacent to your territory, then the computer gets to make use of cross-planet attack waves rather than the standard attack waves. Cross-planet attack waves will spawn at some warp gate in AI space, and move through the galaxy map until it hits a planet under your control. In this situation, you cannot directly affect where in your space the wave lands, but you can place defenses on AI or neutral worlds to weaken the wave before it hits.
Is there a way to see the damage percent increase on ships? Do Flagships affect all units in range? If I put a markI flagship and a mark2 I'm guessing it uses the bigger number?
When you hover over a unit whose attack is being boosted, you will see in the tool tip, next to the unit name, the words Attack Boosted, and then a number. This is the multiplier applied to the attack score of that unit. Subtract 1 and multiply by 100 and you have the percentage increase in that unit's attack score. Flagships and other attack boosters affect all ships within range up to a certain limit, but that limit is not a fixed number of vessels. Rather, it's a fixed 'size' of vessels, with size being a hidden attribute that makes some ships harder to boost than others.
Also note that some ships can only have their attack score boosted by so much, and others cannot be boosted at all.
Is there a way to be alerted when AI troops appear on my planets? An auto pause could be useful. I've lost planets 4-5 times without even realizing I was under attack. >.<
In the lower left corner of the screen when viewing a system, you'll find a set of buttons. One of the is labelled Controls. Click it, go to the planet-specific tab, and find the option that says "Alert when enemies present." That option defaults to 0 (i.e. no alerts, ever). Set it to some number of enemies that you feel is worth being warned about, and whenever at least that many enemy ships are present on that planet, you will be notified by an alert in the message log. You'll need to do this for each planet you want alerts for.