Do I send ground survey teams to everything with just an M or only to M and a numeric value
Anything with a numeric value, even without an M.
Thanks Steve 
I have installed my harvesting station at Saturn and he’s doing his thing set as a tanker
do I need to change the setting in misc to ‘refuel own tankers’ to enable my upcoming tanker fleet to be able to take the fuel away?
and do I need the tankers to also be ‘tankers’ and have a refuelling system on board?
Assuming you mean the setting on the Ship Design Display tab (not misc) for the ship, no you do not. That setting just tells the tanker to give fuel to other ships in the same fleet. It does not affect other fleets refueling from this fleet.
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Well, yes and no.
Your harvester design needs to be a tanker and have a refuelling system to allow other ships to get fuel from it.
As long as that is the case, other ships don’t need to be a tanker or have a refuelling system to get fuel from the harvester. But they will in order to transfer fuel to another ship or to a colony.
Yes - these will be tankers taking the fuel from Saturn to earth
You can also mark colony as a military only colony on the inner most Moon of the gas giants. Throw down a Refueling Station Installation on the Moon (and some STOs to protect it and hopefully the fleet at the gas giant too). And you can dump the fuel there to keep it safe and then shuttle what you need back to Earth on another tanker.
If I research a faster fuel transfer rate whilst I have sorium stations in orbit do they upgrade automatically or do I have to bring them back to refit them
Fuel transfer tech is tied to a default module series – designs require a manual upgrade and overhaul to get the new rate.
In order for it to apply to your fuel harvesting stations, you will need to tow them in for overhauls. One potential issue with stations is that since you can produce them with industry you could potentially have stations too large for your shipyards to conduct a refit. You’ll also need to retool a shipyard to the station design with the improved fuel transfer module.
Personally, I don’t bother. It’s extremely rare that the fuel transfer rates on harvester stations will matter; who cares if it takes five days or seven for a tanker to fill up from one? The most I’ll do is rotate them so that newer and better stations are sent to critical/core harvesting locations and the older ones are towed out to the frontier where the lower capacity/harvesting rate is less significant and the risk of losing stations to hostile ships is higher.
edited to remove misinformation, thanks Steve!
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The easy way with the stations is to build a fuel tank station. Just a fuel tank station with a transfer also on it and marked as a tanker, 10m or 20m litres will still be small in size if you want to refit the transfer rate on it. Put that in the fuel harvesting fleet, mark all the harvesters to auto refuel fleets own tankers.
That way the harvesters will be transferring all their fuel at even starter tech transfer 24/7 to the much smaller fuel tank that can be refit if needed.
I tend to have mine at 10m litres with harvesters producing 1m each a year. And build the harvesters in batches of 10. That way I know I have a year to empty before the harvesters even start to fill up. When I add another 10 harvesters I just have to drop the cycle delay on the fuel transfer tanker in half. If the 90% full harvester warning ever pops up I know something is VERY wrong with the cycle orders and fix it right away.
I have a 2 million capacity tanker going between 2 sorium harvesters parked at Saturn but because of the regularity of the journey nothing is getting above 5% of capacity - how do I give the tanker a hold order til there’s more fuel to bring or make a tanker with a smaller capacity
Does a deep space tracking station stack? I have built some on earth to take to new colonies but wondered if the 15 I have at earth are providing a better service
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Smaller/slower tankers work great. Either manufacturer some new ones or find your older tankers that aren’t as useful for expeditionary operations anymore.
To make the tanker you have carry more per journey (thus saving fuel on needless travel) you can either set a slower fleet speed or use an order delay. You can calculate the appropriate speed or delay, or use trial and error. As harvester commanders change out and your fuel production tech improves the “correct” speed or delay will change so I wouldn’t put too much thought into getting the perfect number.
Just send your tanker to Saturn and wait. When a harvester gets to 90% of capacity, you’ll get event log entries telling you so. At that point you give your tanker orders to ferry fuel from Saturn to Earth, and return to Saturn and wait again.
Save the orders as a template if you like, to reduce the number of clicks needed each time you do it.
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Yes, DSTS stack. IIRC the total planetary sensor strength is [number of DSTS] * [rating of highest planetary sensor strength tech].
At lower tech levels a single DSTS won’t give very much coverage, especially if you have orbital movement active for all bodies. You’re better off concentrating them in inhabited / key chokepoint systems and using sensor buoys to monitor jump points. The larger the system is the harder they are to make effective. Even in Sol it’ll take dozens and multiple techs for them to cover JPs that spawn out beyond Uranus/Neptune.
If you do have orbital motion off for e.g. asteroids, you might potentially have one in a position to cover a JP with minimal investment, but the chances of that happening in a system you really want to monitor are slim.
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Orbital movement affects the coverage provided by DSTS?
I think the implication was that DSTS coverage is less reliable when orbital motion is active (which will be always the case in 3.0, IIRC) because the sensor will not cover a target region of space reliably, only when the body in question passes nearby.
Since the only points in space besides bodies which typically need to be monitored are jump points (and their spoilery equivalents), I usually just use buoys for this job since anything transiting will be detected.
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Having found Proxima Centauri one hop from earth and an almost breathable earth sized planet at its centre with more minerals than any sensible space empire would need, is it just a case of copy and pasting the facilities on earth to make a new Sol here or are there some things one does not necessarily need
If I were you, I would double the Earth, to have two sources for ship constructions, ground forces training, research labs, etc.
How many inhabitants can the new planet hold?