as a first time player i would suggest going Democracy government, setting your population on Mining,Construction,Production.
In regards to research Heavy Cargo Transfer (you need to be able to mine all your asteroids), Infrastructure (So you can keep building construction) and Hulls (You will need at least Frigate class hull technology to start stealing asteroids as a Terran) all these are important to get done early on. Travel Technology is also important you wanna get the first couple of these done along with the ones i have just mentioned. After that Core extraction is always a good road to go down. I personally ignore covert op as i rarely play such a planet.
Construction: Research Labs(around 4 should do), Factories (i like to do 5 of each or so but it depends on my ship build strategy) and a Few Metal refineries as Terran ships cost alot more metal than anything else, after that just mass finance centres.
This is just a rough guide for more detailed info i can usually be found in #Bootcamp on irc, if you dont have an irc client the in game com-unit will guide you
Hope this helps