Hi Fleetmaster! Welcome to Epicomms....
The starter box is an excellent first buy- you'll have all you need to play, and a good selection of ships to play around with for a while.
Once you have the box, and have read through it a few times you'll start to get a good feel of how the game plays, and how the various weapon types work.
A good idea is not to glue the weapon pallets onto the ships before these first few games- soon you'll know how which weapons you prefer, and can arm your ships accordingly.
You can also decide which fleet style you prefer- Chaos is generally fast and can throw out lots of ordance, while the Imps have more armour, torpedoes, but are a little slower.
I'm sure you'll get many more posts (probably more helpful than this one, hehe
) from the other BFG players here.. but always remember- get stuck in, and have fun.. 
) The dice rolls for weapon batteries need to beat the oppponents armour value in order to score a hit.