Having a hard time with this one! One thing that's challenging for me is that it's very hard to figure out what's going on.
Right now, if a UAV is destroyed, we get very little information about what happened. If we at least got the location of the UAV that was destroyed that would be great, but would love to get more info on what actually destroyed it. Like I know I'm outside reach of an air strip, but it would be great to know 100% that my mental model matches what the game is doing.
Sometimes my habitats seemed to be killed by ships that were within one range, even when I had surrounded my habitat with UAVs and mines. If that's true, then I'm completely puzzled about how that's possible and what to do about that.
I gave up trying to defend my Heavy Lift Ships, since it seemed like no matter how I positioned UAVs and mines, there was no way to protect them from being destroyed (and this was after I made sure I was 7 hexes away from airstrips). So now I just move them along the top of the map.
Something that could help is making the process for moving thing faster. So far, I'm moving all my ships together and it takes 12 clicks just to move 4 ships to one hex. Would love it if there was a shortcut to move all, or if the ship was autoselected when tapping the hex at least.
So I'd say here's my situation:
1. I don't know the cause of my habitats/ships dying.
2. So I don't get good information about what I'm doing wrong or how I can change up to do better next time.
3. Meaning I have to do a lot of random experiments to see try and find a strategy that doesn't obviously suck.
4. It's slow to take actions, so this whole process takes a lot of time, and I end up playing "lets see what happens if" games where I, for instance, just leave the Cable Layer's and Heavy Lift Ships alone while I see if the UAVs can find any enemy ships.
Hope this is helpful!