About the starting ships, that was my bad, I have updated the game recently and forgot to change the game's description. You should start with only 2 ships.
About the controls, click and hold, then drag the mouse. This will cause a rectangle to appear. All of your ships who are in this rectangle will get selected. Attacking asteroids or enemy ships can be done by pressing click on them while having ships selected. In order to farm resources from asteroids, you have to use Miner Ships(such as the 2 ships you spawned with). Ships attacking you can be destroyed with Fighter Ships(or other ships unlockable in the Research Facility). Ships can be spawned with a Factory(such as the structure that spawned along with the Miner Ships). Opening Factories or Research Facilities can be done by simply clicking on them. This will bring up a menu similar to the build menu. Once you are done, you can press E to close the menu.