Ok, this is what I've seen playing the game


Firstly this is a Strategic Match 3 game, so you need to match at least 3 symbols.
The Strategic part of this is you have 3 matches per turn and 10 turns per Mission to accomplish the mission.

You have four Components:
2 Offensive Slots and 2 Defensive Slots

Your offensive slots hold two weapons
There are two typees of weapons I've encountered:
Low Damage Shotgun/Splash type weapons (the Average damage is higher, but, individually the dmage is weak)
Higher Damage Direct Damage weapo0ns (the Average damage is lower, but, the individual damage is higher)

These become important once Shields become involved. (You'll want to use the the Higher Damage weapons)

Your defensive syetems consist of:
Drives and Shields

Drives make you Walk. Walking introduces a miss percentage based on Walking points.
Shields raises a defensive shield. Shields absorb a fixed amount of damage based on Shield points.

I have been advised that there is a third type: a rare Shield replacement Armour that absorbs damage

These have up to three 'points' per system (Increasing your benefits) for each point invested.
You loose 1 point of these per turn.


Now the next step is Resources -- there are 5 Basic Resorces
(and 2 special Matches)
Ammunition (Purple) -- to Fire your weapons
Energy(Orange) -- to Walk and Rasie Shields
Cooliong(Blue) -- to Fire weapons, walk, and raise shields
Repair(Green) -- Repairs your systems
Salvage (Yellow) -- Money to repair or upgrade.
Salvage is rare enough that collecting it during missions is a plus


The "Specials" sre:
Overdrive (White) - These Boost systems allowing you to do more and better actions
Link (Grery) -- these Span groups of resources allowing you to make make longer matches and collect two dissimilar resources.

The Strategic part is that you can only do so msny things, with limited resources

Missions:
So far I've gotten the following Missions:
Destroy -- Sraightforward, destroy your oppent
Scavenge -- Destroy oppent, spare system - DO NOT use a splash damage weapon type weapon -- you WILL fail the mission
Disable -- this is a Destroy mission which specifically REQUIRES you to disable a subsystem
Colect -- Match X boxes
Survive -- Stay Alive for X

Upgrades:
By destroying opponents, you collect Blueprints -- using Scrap, you can manufacture better equipment.

Leveling:
By making matches and doing Missions you earn XP. XP leads to leveling up.

When you level up you get General, System, Mech Upgdes.
General -- you get 4 of these, and they are global passive buffs
System -- you have 1 per system, and they enhance the system
Mech -- you get 4 of these, but are they are activatible abilities with a cooldown.

Dying:
Ok, so you'll die ALOT...
By dying you earn Global XP -- and unlock Global Perks

You get two options upon death Continue or Restart:
Continue -- you keep going... useing the same perks and units
Restart -- you're restarting from the beginning, but, adding your perks.