Rules Clarification

[Bonan]

Ok, so I can't find an answer for a couple of questions.
1. When I use Star fleet Academy from my hand and upgrade, say a Ensign to a Lieutenant that is in my hand not on the bridge, do I have to put the new Lieutenant into my discard pile or does it go to my hand in replace of the Ensign? Please show me where I could find this answer in the rule book.
2. Diplomacy, if I have a Warbird and I diplomacy it to a Marauder do they stack? ie. do the states help each other out or does one of the ship's go to my point area? Also when I am using one of these cards do there victory points still count even if they are my flagship?
3. When I loose a battle with another ship and my defense go's below 0, do I loose the new flagship? ie. I have the Marauder and its def is 10, I lose a battle, do I follow standard rules. 1. take a ensign, 2. pick up all cards on bridge, in hand, discard pile and draw pile, shuffle and re deal 5 cards, heal ship and turn is over. Do I go back to my first Starship or does the marauder remove all damage and go back to 10?
4. So on the Action Phase, Do I have to perform all the steps in the phase? ie. can I skip the explore phase and then end my turn? Or do I have to perform all actions in the phase?
Thank you for your time and please forgive me if these questions where already asked.

[Bonan]

Ok, I figured out Number 4. so scratch that one off. Now a new number 4. During a battle, the rules are kinda fuzzy. When I do battle, do I use all my cards that contribute to the battle. ie. the ones from my hand and the ones from the bridge. If I use the ones from the bridge, how do you use them in a war? I see in your video that all the cards on the bridge become part of your star ship, if this is so, why would we go around the table until someone passes? ie. I start a war and I played all my cards and they are on the bridge, so all my opponents all ready know what I have, so why don't I just pass to make the game go faster, and if I pass do I still get to participate in the battle. Or do I pick them up and lay them down one at a time? And now that I used them in the bridge, do I get to use there effects in the war. ie.Tomalak, You may discard 1 character with a cost of 5 or less from 1 opponent's bridge, or because I played it on my bridge it is no longer in use?

[Space Elmo]

1. The words Upgrade and Gain are defined in the glossary on page 24 of the Rulebook. Cards gained always go to your discard area unless an effect says otherwise. Which for basic characters means you should play them to get the XP before upgrading them. If you have a Transporter, you can then pull the new card to you hand, play it, and have even more XP (assuming you upgraded to another basic).
2. They don't stack, there's also no way to switch starships, and your flagship's mission points count.
3. Being destroyed completely heals your current flagship.
4. If all of your cards are already in your Bridge when the battle starts, their stats count, but you really have no choice but to pass. Effects from cards already played cannot be used unless they trigger at a different time from when played from the hand. If you pass, you still participate in the battle, it just means you don't play a card that round (everyone needs to pass in a row before actually calculating battle results). It doesn't really matter that you played all your cards before the war (unless there's a useful effect that you miss out on) as most of the other players effects will affect the hand (ie Trois, Sela, Tractor Beam). My group likes to declare whether order matters or not to speed up battles. If nobody has a card with an effect that messes with others, then everyone just plays everything they want to use and we move on to calculating results.

Read the rulebooks to the star trek deck building games cover-to-cover. Bandai hides important rule info in the glossary and Q&A sections at the back.