Alright I'm about 80 hours in now. This game is sorta consuming my life outside work I find myself playing 6 hours every night until I have to go to bed. And you know how when you play a game and get obsessed that you get like a brain worm when trying to close your eyes and all you see is the game? Yea that has happened a couple times now, a sure sign I need to step away from the screen.
I've made so many mistakes in my colonies but I've really learned from them. The most important things when starting imo are shooting and building and then maybe plants and more important even then that is "burning desire" for pawns on the most important skills like building, cooking, shooting and farming. You can train up pawns fairly quickly that have the burning desire to train. For example you can take a level 2 cook and turn them into a skilled professional (level 9) in a few days. It's a bit of a pain to micro but it's so worth it to have your pawns only doing stuff they like: building, shooting, art, whatever.
I like to settle in the optimal zone with is a equatorial river highland in a temperate forest with temps between 50-75 that is on a highway with a couple neutral settlemens nearby (within a couple days) to trade with.
Once I land I like to build around the geysers + river for easy power and build into the side of a mountain. If it's "ancient danger" be careful opening it as their will be some dangerous shit in there that you aren't ready for most likely until you can upgrade your guns and armor and get some more manpower.
Once I get a basic barracks built (I don't bother with bedrooms for awhile) and kitchen then I build a freezer and nice rec room and production zone with the barracks and kitchen central with the production and rec areas towards the periphery with the storage areas and farming zone on the outside edges. I usually plant a big zone of rice (like 8x3, grows really quickly) and then a big one of corn and hops slightly separated in case of blight. Blight is a POA to micromanage when it happens.
Research wise I like to grab beer and water power then rush to guns and turrets and then finish up drug production for trading (flake).
Animals wise I like muffalos (good all around animal, gives fairly valuable wool, females produce milk, and they can release as meat shields during raids) and boomrats initially. Boomrats are easy to tame and you can herd them into a pen and then release them on a raid where they will explode choke points for you. Llamas are good early too for their soft valuable wool.
Later on rhinos and megasloths are awesome for hauling and protection. Any animal that will haul is good, hauling takes up a lot of time for your pawns no matter how organized your base is. I'm kinda partial to cougars for some reason as well, they seem to always bond with the master for the mood bonus.
Feeding them can be a bit of a poa but usually I just designate a barn zone for them and ban them from any zone inside the actual living area. I usually let them eat from half my rice crop + their usual roaming food so nobody starves.
Once the food cycle is rock solid and I've got some beer production going I like to form a caravan and go see what I can trade and/or do any quests around the area. The rescue quests can be dangerous but rewarding. Just make sure you have more than one person capable of being a doctor in case your main doctor gets hurt on the journey and obviously carry some meds with you.
At this point transitioning to mid game is where I'm at now on my latest, best colony so far and I'm determined not to fuck it up. Last colony I made way too much wealth (made a couple legendary art pieces) that attracted the wrong kind of attention before I was ready. The crashed ships in mid/late game are no joke. The mechanoids that come out you have to try and kite or just overwhelm with firepower. This time I need to make a shitload of defenses BEFORE I make a region famous art piece.
We'll see how it goes this time as I get into mid and late game. I'm still a noob and outside of reading the wiki I'm trying to learn everything as I go and not just min/max everything from guys with 2K hours that post on reddit and shit.
