So, you've been playing for a couple of days, and have gotten to the point where you're ready to send out your first Short Range Colony ship. There are a few things you need to bear in mind before you start colonizing the Expanse.
Actually, I should put down what I did in my first few days; and then advise you to do completely the opposite... I'm fairly sure that there are any number of things I could have done better.
Don't just send your colony ship out to the first system you find. It's worth sending out as many probes as you can beforehand to find something suitable first, though with the increasing number of players, real estate is getting increasingly hard to find. So it's now you should consider whether you chose wisely in the beginning - I for one am limited to Orbit 3 planets, which means I've already lost the ability to colonise 85% of the planets out there. Oooops.
Consider what you want from a colony before you start. Is it somewhere to increase your output of resources? Somewhere to dump all your waste? In which case, think about the requirements of the buildings involved before you set out. You'll definitely want to include some of the waste recycling buildings, so make sure that any planet you're colonizing has Halite or Sulphur reserves - it's possible to get around that by shipping in resources, but do you really want to be shipping in resources every time you want to upgrade?
Check the resources available on a planet before heading out. There are twenty different types of ore in the game; planets are rated in how much of each resource they have, from 1 (a neglible amount) to lots - the highest I've seen is 8500. The non-negligible resources add up to around 10,000, I think, so if a planet has a high rating in one resource, it'll be lacking in others. You'll want a planet that has lots of various kinds of resources in lower amounts.
When your colony is established, you'll want to have a Dory on hand and ready to go when it lands. You get a small amount of resource generation from your new colony, but your Planetary Command Center won't generate much.
Happiness will be an important issue early on. Your PCC generates some food - Algae and Fungus - so getting some extra kinds of food in production will help no end; it's worth remembering that if you've got at least four kinds of food in storage, then when you issue a build order, you'll get as much Happiness as you spend in food. This is a very quick way to get your Happiness up quickly - remember, it's food in storage that counts, not necessarily food that's being produced locally, so if you've got a couple of different kinds of food on your supply Dory, then you can start benefitting from this straight way.
I'd advise setting up basic Waste recycling buildings early - certainly the Waste Sequestration Well will stop Waste becoming pollution and therefore lowering your Happiness; and the Waste Treatment Center is probably more worthwhile - it will let you pick and choose your recycling, so you can get that quick hit of the resource you really need right now.
Once you've got Waste covered, you should probably put together some Level 1 resource producing and storage buildings. The Development Ministry is a must, as it will let you start queuing buildings - the higher the level, the more buildings you can queue.
Concentrate more on upgrading the storage buildings rather than the production ones. Remember, you can resupply via Dory rather than waiting for the buildings locally to produce what you need, and it'll be a good long time before your storage buildings are large enough that you can't refill everything with the cargo from a Dory. By then, you should have built your production buildings up to the point where they can keep on top of your resource requirements.
So that's it - how to create your first colony. I hope it's of some use to you!
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