"I've never really been good at RTS's, but this one looks amazing. I want to play it, but I keep getting destroyed in a 1v1 fight with an easy bot. 
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We all do at first, just hang in there. First of all what version of the game are you playing, some of the strategies will be different for the several versions/expansions that are out there.
"(TEC) I've been playing the Kol with 2 Sora...? (the carrier ones if that's not what they're called). What should I change this to? It's alright for taking out swarms of carriers as the easy AI is apt to send, but not much else."
In the most recent version of Sins on all three expansions, the Kol battleship is not considered a good capital ship. It takes a lot of antimatter for everything that it does and even then it is not that great. Try swapping it for a Marza dreadnought, despite the text that says its a planet bombardment ship, Radiation Bomb and Missile Barrage are great anti frigate abilities and it is a staple of TEC players. Can't take quite as much punishment as a Kol but it is well worth it.
"What's better- tons of light frigates, or a few high end heavy cruisers? (or what?)"
Depends on what your enemy is throughing at you. Heavy cruisers are good against the widest array of ships, but they have realitively low fire power compared to the equivelent amount of say Long Range Missile (LRM) frigates. They also get torn to shreads by bombers. Like many other strategy games, the best fleet for you to have is one that counters your enemy best. However, I don't think this is why you are having problems.
"Why the heck do I never have enough resources? I upgrade, colonize, etc... Still the enemy comes in with 40,000,000,000 ships when I have 30 (heavy cruisers and the carrier cruisers) or so. (This is at the end of an hour or 2. Usually because I'm struggling to fight off pirates for most of the time)"
Noobs tend to get into a couple of problems here. 1. They don't upgrade planet infustructure. Once you've secured the planet (destroyed the siege frigates) you must upgrade this ASAP so that you don't have negative credit income. After that you can just upgrade it as your population limit hits the max for better credit income. 2. They don't expand fast enough. Colonizing planets is by far the cheapest way to expand your economy in terms of how fast they pay themselves off (with extractors). They also give you more strategic positions, so you should only start investing in other economic methods once you can no longer easily expand (I.e. only your enemies planets are left). 3. They get trade ports to quick. Trade ports are your engine of wealth late game, especially for TEC, but they are somewhat expensive and can kill your economy late game. Getting trade too quickly can hurt your military in the short term and allow your enemy to attack and destroy them before you can start making profit on them. Also, as a rule of thumb you'll want enough planets so that you can form at least a 4 planet "trade chain". 4. They waste a lot of money on bounty. Really a lot of players keep the pirates off all the time (you can set their raids off in the map settings before you start a map) and they seriously hurt players trying to learn the game. There is absolutely no shame in keeping them off until you get the hang of things, and most mutliplayer games actually keep them off.
"How important is micromanaging? (Could never do well at WC3 because I suck at this)"
Somewhat important, and is often the deciding factor for multiplayer, but when it comes straight down to it Sins unit AI is pretty good. Ships will automatically target enemy ships they do the most damage against. Your support cruisers will actually heal your fleet without much if any interaction. Sometimes you'll want to change their engagement range to keep lone ships from charging groups of enemy ships (this is especially common with flak frigates), but it is really pretty good. A couple of the capital ship abilities are the only things you'll really want to always micro manage.
"Should I focus fire? On what?"
Again it depends. Against the AI I usually focus fire on there capital ships as there distruction can often force them to retreat. Otherwise it depends if you can get the kill or not. If it will likely escape, don't bother and just do as much damage as possible.
"What upgrades should I develop first? (obviously the mining ones, but what else?)"
This is really one of the most debated topics in Sins and has been the subject of many forum threads. But in general for the TEC early armor upgrades, repair bays, Long Range Frigates, Hoshiko repair cruisers and Volcanic/Ice planet colonization (provide you are near some) are very important techs.
"What should I put in each gravity well? I run out of room so fast. Usually I end up without a frigate-maker-thing because of this. The first game I played I got owned because he influenced all my worlds away. Ever since I've been paranoid and make a propaganda machine in every one."
You really only need one at planets in the center of your Empire or at border planets that are under thread from enemy culture (you can see it when the phase lanes start changing to your enemies color). Also having a capital ship stationed at a planet under threat will reduce the culture rate and possible even eleminate it completely. Otherwise, on one at least one of your frontline planets have a frigate factory. The rest you can use for labs, trade etc.
"How should I use mines? They seem fairly ineffective, even when they hit."
You couldn't be more wrong. Well, about the even when they hit part. Try to put these at the edge of the gravity well where your enemy might warp in. If they land right in the middle of the minefield, they will probably lose several frigates as well as their shields on the capital ships. Still, because they can be avoided, repair bays with a starbase/fleet is far better defense.
"How much cash should I use on bounty? It seems like no matter what I do I'm the target, so should I even bother?"
The AI can cheat a little by being able to know exactly when the raid is going to start and outbid you with only a couple seconds left. Again, its probably best to play without the pirates first until you can multitask well enough to keep an eye on them. Or just leave them off forever (its what I usually do).
