Sure thing!
1. There are a couple of different kinds of combat in this game. Firstly, there's ground combat. Secondly, air. Third, naval. Fourth, ranged attacks. Which can be missiles or lasers fired from afar, and they are un-interceptable unlike the other three kinds of combat (but there are other drawbacks). The Peltians are excellent at this fourth kind of combat.
2. Nope, the Acutians, Andors, Thoraxians, Yali, Spire, and Neinzul are the non-playable races. They all have
really different mechanics from the player races, and it would be really hard to try to make a player version of those make sense at all. Plus those guys all bring a sort of interesting balance to the game by existing in it every time.
3. Not a planet cracker per se -- no moon involved, and you can't get off the planet anyhow to get a moon if there was one -- but you can destroy the planet as a sort of scorched-earth victory condition. That likely won't be in the initial beta, but it is absolutely planned for 1.0.
It's actually a very thematically-appropriate option, given some of the story stuff.
Cheers!