Okay so I started a new game last night on citizen level because I'm honestly truly trying to learn this game.

I hit planet fall
Send my scout to find stuff/explore
Set my Governor to BUILD
make a Colony Pod
Start a new colony

at this point I'm able to make rovers/car scouts

and from this point forward all of a sudden I'm finishing research on multiple technologies and sciences but I don't remember starting research on them, as well as I'm getting 2/3 of those rovers when i really would like scouts...

Basically can someone put together an idiots guide or point me in the direction of one?

First things first: Read the manual. No, really read it! It's a good manual, has lots of useful information and helps a lot!
I'm also playing my first game and reading the manual really cleared many things up. The in-game tutorial also gives many good tips.

About research: It's automated. You don't build labs like in many other games. There's many ways to boost and alter the research though; Social engineering, Buildings, Secret Projects, Alien artifacts etc.

About those rovers: The rovers you are getting are built by your automated governor. In early game you really don't need automation as you have only couple Colonies. They are easy enough to manage without automation.

Hope this helps in some ways at least.

There is a game option to use research broad areas (automated and default with standard rules) or direct investigation of technologies. I use latter one as I like to browse and read them before picking.

Do not automate production and just choose what to build.

By default it's set to Blind Research, which means you can't choose techs directly, but instead choose research paths(Build, Discover, Explore, Conquest, if I'm not mistaken) and techs are chosen randomly based on what categories you choose. You can turn this off and choose techs yourself, but I find Blind Research to be much more rewarding to the gameplay experience.

I suggest you not automate your colonies and instead choose what to build manually(Double click colony, click panel in the bottom left, choose what to build).