Okay, I have a couple questions now that I'm trying to learn this game in earnest.
How important are governors, admirals, and other named characters? Do I need them or do they just give bonuses?
What materials do I need for shipbuilding, or is it different from ship to ship/game to game?
How do I build more research labs?
You don't absolutely need officers, other than scientists for research, but their principal use is for their bonuses.
Duranium is the base material you will need for building ships with Neutronium being needed for the armour. Other materials are dependant on what components you place in your ship designs. You can see exactly what materials you will need on the right of the component summary tab on the class design window.
Build more research labs from the industry tab of the colony managment window. Click on Research Lab in the list then click create.
This game is one of the buggiest games I've ever seen on Earth, you can't even play on a laptop because the windows are bigger than the screen.
That is not a bug, simply the way it was designed. Steve originally wrote Aurora entirely for his own use and he was using a multi monitor setup with very large screens. Aurora was released "as is", and over the years there have been quite a few efforts made to make things better for those on lower resolutions(and see flying dices signature for more details on how to deal with running on a laptop) but most laptops remain at far to small a resolution to be supported without a great deal of rewriting of code that provides no real benefit to Steve. Aurora remains very much Steves sandbox that he allows others to play in.