1. known as the Space Ponies achievement, get a point in your achievement file nothing else, is a joke
    oh and congrats on finding it, some have been playing this game for over a year and a half and still not got it

2. no it does not matter, on some huge maps I play I just hit "k" (it turns on autoplace) and place how many I need or can in gravwell (make sure you hit "k" to turn off autoplace for tactical structures, they do require manual placement for best effect)

3. yes on trade ports, the more you place the more you get, as for refineries there is a limit, it is three in a colonizable garvwell (CGW) and four in an Uncolonizable gravwell (UCGW), plus the refineries also effect the gravwells that are next to you, that is how you get the refineries to the UCGWs
   Advent do not have refineries per say, but their tradeports can be changed over to affect resource roids that is not limited by the amount you place (in others words you can put 5 advent tradeports in a gravwell and switch them all to refine and all will effect the resource roids) but they cannot affect UCGWs

Avent has refineries or did you mean trade ports D ?

No one mentioned it, so...

In terms of placing Trade Ports, yes, it does very slightly matter. You'll want to place them as near to the edge of the gravwell as you can, that's in the direction of the trade lane the tradeships will be traveling along.

Why? So that your tradeships will have the shortest turn around possible. While the turn around doesn't affect how much money you will generate at your trade port - it does keep your trade ships in phase-space... where they cannot be destroyed.

When your trade ships are destroyed, you lose credits. No, I'm not joking. You are penalized credits (and possibly resources, I don't remember) every time you lose a trade ship! That is why the TEC have technology to make the trade ships more durable. High turn around = less trade ship vulnerability = less credits lost!

Try to keep some defenses around your trade stations if you can (pirates love to attack them), even just parking some strikecraft next to one can sometimes be sufficient.

I'm not certain if destroying enemy trade ships gives you resources/credits or not... you'll have to ask someone else.

-Itharus

Chances are if the enemy is in the well with the trade port, it's the port and not the trade ships under attack.  I'd rather put it in a defensible location to protect the port.

Well, losing a trade ship doesn't directly cause you to lose credits, but it does reduce the credit income that is coming from the trade port that trade ship originated from (so, over the time it takes to rebuild that trade ship, you're losing out on what that ship could have made).