The galaxy is made up of tiles. Each tiles in the galaxy represents a solar system. In the solar systems there are different tile types.

Use your fleets to explore. Grey tiles are previously explored tiles where you may see the tile type and resources but no ships, buildings, or any other information. Black tiles are unexplored areas. Tiles with no shade are visible tiles where you may see the full information of the tile.

Any member of your faction that explores an area will share the information with you.

Autopilot: Autopilot maps out a path for your ship to take and takes the path as far as it can with the amount of turns that you have.  It will disable upon running into or being attacked by any enemy fleets. They follow the shortest route possible and may run into hazards like stars,wormholes,blackholes and etc.

The autopilot will only use simple pathing. If it's first path will not work it will leave it to you to find an alternate path.

Approaching within one tile of an enemy fleet or defense will cause your ship to stop movement if attacked. You may only move out of the enemies influence area or attack while you are under fire, you cannot move further into any space that is one tile from an enemy fleet or defense. Exceptions to this rule are fleets that are camouflaged with a fleet from that faction or cloaked.