(SOLVED) all the stories were set in a shared universe snd were written by a number of different authors. there were a number of alien races, including humans, that lived in a very advanced and largely peaceful universe, with several of the stories revolving around interest by the various species in ancient artifacts from a long vanished hyperadvanced race.
in one of the stories, humanity is trying to look into one of these artifacts on a world whose native sapient aliens are at a roughly medieval level of tech and culture and who have very strong cultural traditions around eating as a way of establishing ties, but whose food is lethally poisonous, after a few false starts ending in disaster they send a robot duplicate of one of these aliens down in an effort to safely establish ties with them, only for a jealous ambitious courtiers efforts at poisoning the robot to throw things into disarray.
another of the stories was set on a planet with a vast storm-ravaged ocean, into which a large research platform of humans along with collaborating aquatic aliens was sent to do science, with them eventually realizing to their dismay that the platforms inbuilt thrusters were inadequate to let them reliably navigate the ocean, leaving them unable to leave and due to extreme radio interference unable to communicate. i recall them using a glider they rigged up and i think a catamaran to try to escape.
Yet another story involved a sassy ai and a pilot finding an alien ship orbiting a planet with an alien artifact on it that turns out to scramble the Minds of collective entities, it turns the pilots of the orbiting ship into a bunch of bugs and also disable ai piloted missiles. The protagonist takes out the artifact with a ballistic cannon snd saves the day.